Don Singleton: Sunday, August 21

Sunday, August 21, 2005

Sunday, August 21

This Day In History

1680 Pueblo Indians took possession of Santa Fe, N.M., after driving out the Spanish.
1831 Former slave Nat Turner led a violent insurrection in Virginia.
1858 The first of seven debates between U.S. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas was held in Ottawa, Ill.
1878 The American Bar Association was founded in Saratoga, N.Y.
1912 The first boy reached the rank of Eagle Scout, the highest rank in the Boy Scouts of America program. He was Arthur R. Eldred of Oceanside, NY.
1940 Exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by an assassin.
1945 President Harry S. Truman ended the Lend-Lease program that had shipped some $50 billion in aid to America's allies during World War II.
1950 The United Nations moved into its new permanent facilities in New York City -- on land donated by the Rockefeller family.
1959 The Hawaiian Islands became the State of Hawaii by a proclamation signed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In March of 1959, the statehood bill had been passed; but it contained a stipulation that the residents of the Hawaiian Islands would have to give their vote of approval. Three months later, they did so -- and by a huge margin. Hawaii, the Aloha State, finally became the 50th state of the United States of America. Although the Aloha State is made up of a chain of 122 volcanic islands spread out over 1,600 miles, only seven, at the southeastern end of the chain, are inhabited: Hawaii (the Big Island), Maui (the Valley Isle), Lanai (the Pineapple Isle), Molokai (the Friendly Isle), Kauai (the Garden Isle), Niihau (the Forbidden Island), and Oahu (the Gathering Place). Oahu is the home of the state capital, Honolulu, and about 75% of the state’s population ... a population that is truly a melting pot of all races and religions. The yellow hibiscus is the Hawaii state flower. The nene or Hawaiian goose is the state bird and the the humuhumunukunukuapua’a is the state fish. The state motto of Hawaii is: Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono. = The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.
1983 Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., ending a self-imposed exile in the United States, was shot dead moments after stepping off a plane at Manila International Airport.
1986 More than 1,700 people died when toxic gas erupted from a volcanic lake in the West African nation of Cameroon.
1987 Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the first Marine ever court-martialed for spying, was convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing secrets to the KGB.
1991 A hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.
1997 Hudson Foods Co. closed a plant in Nebraska, agreeing to destroy some 25 million pounds of hamburger after the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
1998 Samuel Bowers, a 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Miss., of ordering a 1966 firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer.
2002 A jury in San Diego convicted David Westerfield of kidnapping 7-year-old Danielle van Dam from her home and killing her; he was later sentenced to death.