TODAY <$>is Friday, August 23, the 235th day of 2002. There are 130 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>

In 1754, France’s King Louis XVI was born at Versailles.

In 1914, Japan declared war on Germany in the First World War.

In 1926, silent film star Rudolph Valentino died in New York at age 31.

In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty.

In 1982, Lebanon’s parliament elected Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel president. Gemayel was assassinated three weeks later.

In 1989, in a case that inflamed racial tensions in New York City, Yusuf Hawkins, a 16-year-old black youth, was shot dead after he and his friends were confronted by white youths in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“Man alone can enslave man.” — Simone Weil, French philosopher (1909-1943).