Today is Sunday, Aug. 23, the 235th day of 2026. There are 130 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Aug. 23, 2003, former priest John Geoghan (GAY’-gun), 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.
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 farmworker strike in U.S. history.
In 2000, a Gulf Air Airbus crashed into the Persian Gulf near Bahrain, killing all 143 people aboard.
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 the 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 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.
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 97.
- Actor Barbara Eden is 95.
- Ballerina Patricia McBride is 84.
- Singer-songwriter Linda Thompson is 79.
- Author and motivational speaker Rudy Ruettiger is 78.
- Actor Shelley Long is 77.
- Actor-singer Rick Springfield is 77.
- Noor al-Hussein (Queen Noor of Jordan) is 75.
- Film composer Alexandre Desplat is 65.
- Actor Jay Mohr is 56.
- Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is 55.
- Actor Ray Park is 52.
- Actor Scott Caan is 50.
- Rock singer Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) is 48.
- Actor Joanne Froggatt is 46.
- Olympic gold medal swimmer Natalie Coughlin Hall is 44.
- Musician Lil Yachty is 29.
- NBA basketball player Devin Vassell is 26.
