Today is Tuesday, August 24, the 236th day of 2010. 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
1814 _ British sack Washington, D.C., White House burned
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
1991 _ Ukraine declares independence from the USSR