On This Day:
Saturday August 24, 2013 This is the 236th day of the year, with 129 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: oceans From space, our planet appears blue because the majority of its surface is covered by oceans and seas. There are five "great" oceans: the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian, which all merge into the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, and the Arctic Ocean which comprises the northern parts of the Atlantic and Pacific. The deepest places on Earth are ocean trenches, where the ocean floor plunges so steeply that the waters above could easily swallow Mount Everest.
Holidays Feast day of St. Bartholomew, the Martyrs of Utica, and St Audenoeus or Ouen.
Liberia: Flag Day.
Ukraine: Independence Day.
Events 79 - Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash and killing an estimated 20,000.
410 - The Visigoths (German barbarians), led by Alaric, sacked Rome.
1542 - In South America, Gonzalo Pizarro returned to the mouth of the Amazon River after having sailed as far as the Andes Mountains.
1682 - The Duke of York awarded Englishman William Penn the three "lower counties" in the American colonies which later became the state of Delaware.
1814 - British forces invaded Washington, D.C., setting fire to the Capitol and the White House.
1821 - Eleven years after the outbreak of the Mexican War of Independence, Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donojú signed the Treaty of Córdoba, which made Mexico an independent constitutional monarchy.
1857 - The catalyst for the Panic of 1857 was this day's failure of the New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company.
1891 - Thomas Edison filed a patent for the motion picture camera.
1932 - Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly non-stop across the United States, traveling from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey, in just over 19 hours.
1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty went into effect.
1981 - Mark David Chapman was sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of rock musician John Lennon.
1989 - Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose from the game for gambling.
1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as First Secretary of the USSR Communist Party.
1995 - The Windows 95 operating system by Microsoft is released with much fanfare.
2006 - The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is no longer considered a planet.
Births 1899 - Jorge Luis Borges, Argentinian writer of poems, essays, short stories.
1912 - Durward Kirby, American TV announcer.
1929 - Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader.
1936 - A. S. Byatt (born Antonia Susan Drabble), English novelist.
1945 - Vince McMahon, American professional wrestling promoter.
1973 - Dave Chappelle, American comedian.
Deaths 1680 - Thomas Blood, Irish adventurer.
1954 - Getúlio Vargas, President of Brazil.
1967 - Henry J. Kaiser, American industrialist.
1995 - Alfred Eisenstaedt, German-born photographer and photojournalist.
1998 - E.G. Marshall (born Everett Eugene Grunz), American actor.
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