WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2011

Today is Wednesday, August 24, the 236th day of 2011. There are 129 days left in the year.

79 ― Mt. Vesuvius erupts, buries Pompeii and Herculaneum

410 ― Rome overrun by Visigoths, symbolized fall of Western Roman Empire

1853 ― First potato chips prepared by Chef George Crum (Saratoga Springs, N.Y.)

1869 ― Waffle iron invented

1891 ― Thomas Edison patents motion picture camera

1949 ― North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established

1954 ― Communist Control Act passed, at height of McCarthyism

1968 ― France became world's fifth thermonuclear power

1981 ― Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life for Lennon's murder

1991 ― Gorbachev resigns as head of USSR Communist Party