@rh18bold:Today in History

Today is Saturday, Aug. 21, the 233rd day of 2010. There are 132 days left in the year.

On this date

In 1609, Galileo Galilei demonstrated his new telescope to a group of officials atop the Campanile in Venice.

In 1680, Pueblo Indians drive out the Spanish and take possession of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

In 1791, slaves rise, beginning the Haitian Revolution

In 1831, Nat Turner led a violent slave rebellion in Virginia resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people. (He was later executed.)

In 1917, German forces attack Russians on the Latvian front.

In 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany sign the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, a ten-year non-aggression treaty, with a secret addendum, to partition Poland. This treaty proved to be the fuse that ignited Second World War but lasted just two years.

In 1940, exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky died in a Mexican hospital from wounds inflicted by an assassin the day before.

In 1968, Soviet forces occupying Czechoslovakia seize liberal Communist leader Alexander Dubcek.

In 1983, Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., ending a self-imposed, three-year exile in the United States, was shot dead moments after stepping off a plane at a Manila Airport.

In 1986, more than 17,000 people die when toxic gas erupts from a volcanic lake in Cameroon.

In 1991, the 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.

In 2000, rescue efforts to reach the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk in the Barents Sea ended with divers announcing none of the 118 sailors had survived.

Thought for Today

"Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man." — Leon Trotsky (1879-1940).