Today is Monday, August 20, the 231st day of 2007. There are 134 days left in the year.
1866 _ U.S.President Andrew Johnson formally declares Civil War over
1896 _ Dial telephone patented
1908 _ Congo Free State becomes the Belgian Congo
1914 _ German forces occupy Brussels, Belgium during WW I
1918 _ Britain opens offensive on Western front during WW I
1925 _ WJR-AM in Detroit MI begins radio transmissions
1940 _ British PM Winston Churchill says of the Royal Air Force, ``Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few"
1940 _ Leon Trotsky, assassinated in Mexico City by Stalin agents, dies Aug. 21
1948 _ The U.S. expels Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob Lomakin
1953 _ Russia publicly acknowledges hydrogen bomb test detonation
1960 _ Senegal breaks from the Mali federation; declaring independence
1960 _ USSR recovers 2 dogs; 1st living organisms to return from space
1968 _ 650,000 Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia
1977 _ NASA launches Voyager 2 towards Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune
1978 _ Gunmen open fire on an Israeli El Al Airline bus in London
1980 _ Reinhold Messner of Italy is 1st to solo ascent Mt. Everest
1980 _ The U.N. Security Council condemns (14-0, the U.S. abstains) Israeli declaration that all of Jerusalem is its capital
1990 _ Iraq moves Western hostages to military installations (human shields)