Today is Saturday, Aug. 23, the 235th day of 2025. There are 130 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Aug 23, 2020, a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, seven times as officers tried to arrest Blake on an outstanding warrant; the shooting left Blake partially paralyzed and triggered several nights of violent protests.
Also on this date:
In 1305, Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.
In 1775, Britain’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”
In 1914, Japan declared war against Germany in World War I.
In 1927, amid worldwide protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. (On the 50th anniversary of their executions, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted.)
In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow.
In 1970, the Salad Bowl strike began, organized by farm labor leader Cesar Chavez; between 5,000 to 10,000 laborers walked off the job, leading to the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history.
In 2000, A Gulf Air Airbus crashed into the Persian Gulf near Bahrain, killing all 143 people aboard.
In 2003, former priest John Geoghan, the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.
In 2011, a magnitude-5.8 earthquake centered near Mineral, Virginia, the strongest on the East Coast since 1944, caused cracks in the Washington Monument and damaged Washington National Cathedral.
In 2013, a military jury convicted Maj. Nidal Hasan in the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives; the Army psychiatrist was later sentenced to death.
In 2022, a jury convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a victory for prosecutors in a plot that was broken up by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Vera Miles is 96. Actor Barbara Eden is 94. Football Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen is 91. Ballerina Patricia McBride is 83. Former Surgeon General Antonia Novello is 81. Singer-songwriter Linda Thompson is 78. Author and motivational speaker Rudy Ruettiger is 77. Actor Shelley Long is 76. Actor-singer Rick Springfield is 76. Noor al-Hussein (Queen Noor of Jordan) is 74. Film composer Alexandre Desplat is 64. Actor Jay Mohr is 55. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is 54. Actor Ray Park is 51. Actor Scott Caan is 49. Rock singer Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) is 47. Actor Joanne Froggatt is 45. Olympic gold medal swimmer Natalie Coughlin Hall is 43. Musician Lil Yachty is 28.
