Today is Tuesday, Aug. 18, the 230th day of 2009. There are 135 days left in the year.

On this date:

In 1587, Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents to be born on American soil, on what is now Roanoke Island in North Carolina. (However, the colony Virginia was born into ended up mysteriously disappearing.)

In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed the right of all American women to vote, was ratified as Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King dedicated the Thousand Islands Bridge connecting the United States and Canada.

In 1963, James Meredith became the first black student to graduate from the University of Mississippi.

In 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, New York, which had fallen behind schedule, finally wound to a close after three nights with a midmorning set performed by Jimi Hendrix.

In 1999, a day after a deadly earthquake struck western Turkey, survivors denounced the rescue effort as sluggish and disorganized. (The death toll eventually topped 17,000.)

Thought for Today:

"That is one of the bitter curses of poverty; it leaves no right to be generous." — George Gissing, English author and critic (1857-1903).