August 12
1624 - Cardinal Richelieu was named chief minister of France by King Louis XIII.
1851 - Issac Singer patented the sewing machine.
1865 - British surgeon Joseph Lister became the first doctor to use an antiseptic during surgery.
1867 - President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, with whom he had clashed over Reconstruction policies. (Johnson would be impeached and later acquitted by the Senate.)
1898 - A peace protocol ending the Spanish-American War was signed.
1944 - During World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed along with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.
1953 - The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
1960 - The first balloon communications satellite, Echo 1, was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.
1972 - The last American combat troops left Vietnam.
1981 - IBM launched its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.
1985 - In the world's largest single-aircraft disaster, a Japan Air Lines 747 crashed into Mount Osutaka, killing 520 of the 524 people on board.
1990 - Fossil collector Sue Hendrickson found one of the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons ever discovered; nicknamed “Sue” after Hendrickson, the skeleton is now on display at Chicago’s Field Museum.
1998 - Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle lawsuits brought by Holocaust survivors and their heirs. The banks were charged with having kept millions of dollars deposited by Holocaust victims before and during World War II.
2000 - The Russian military submarine Kursk and its 118-member crew were lost in the Barents Sea.
2004 - New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey announced his resignation.
2013 - Notorious Boston gangster James (Whitey) Bulger was found guilty of 31 of the 32 charges he faced, including murder, extortion, money laundering, drug dealing, and possession of weapons. (He was sentenced to life in prison; he was fatally beaten at a West Virginia facility in 2018, hours after having been transferred from a facility in Florida.)
2017 - A driver sped into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.)
2022 - Salman Rushdie, the author whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was attacked and stabbed in the neck by a man who rushed the stage as he was about to give a lecture in western New York.
Birthdays
23 - Judaea Brown (actress)
26 - Stefanos Tsitsias (tennis player)
26 - Rudy Pankow (actor)
31 - Imani Hakim (actress)
32 - Cara Delevingne (actress)
33 - Khris Middleton (basketball player)
36 - Tyson Fury (boxer)
44 - Malaysia Pargo (reality star)
49 - Casey Affleck (actor)
53 - Yvette Nicole Brown (actress)
53 - Michael Ian Black (actor/comedian)
53 - Pete Sampras (tennis player)
59 - Peter Krause (actor)
61 - Sir Mix-A-Lot (rapper)
65 - Lynette Woodard (basketball player)
68 - Bruce Greenwood (actor)
74 - Kid Creole (singer)
85 - George Hamilton (actor)
========================================
Today in Sports History - August 12
1909 - The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened.
1963 - St. Louis Cardinals great Stan Musial announces his retirement from baseball.
1964 - Mickey Mantle set a major league baseball record when he hit home runs from both the left and ride sides of the plate in the same game for the 10th time in his career.
1967 - The New Orleans Saints play their inaugural football game, a 23-14 preseason victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
1969 - The Boston Celtics were sold for $6 million, a then record for an NBA franchise.
1973 - Jack Nicklaus broke Bobby Jones' 50-year-old record when he won his 14th major championship; the win was Nicklaus' third PGA Championship.
1974 - Nolan Ryan of the California Angels records 19 strikeouts in a game against the Boston Red Sox.
1974 - Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1978 - New England Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley suffers a spinal cord injury leaving him with incomplete quadriplegia from a hit by Oakland Raiders Jack Tatum, in a pre-season exhibition game
1984 - The Atlanta Braves defeat the San Diego Padres 5-3 in a game that saw two fights and 19 ejections.
1984 - Harmon Killebrew, Rick Ferrell, Don Drysdale, Pee Wee Reese and Luis Aparicio are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1986 - The California Angels retired Rod Carew's #29.
1994 - In baseball's eighth work stoppage since 1972, players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries. (The strike would last for 232 days and as a result would wipe out the World Series for the first time in 90 years.)
1994 - FOX broadcasts its first NFL game, a preseason contest between the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos.
2007 - Tiger Woods wins his fourth PGA Championship.
2016 - At the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, American Katie Ledecky won the 200, 400 and 800 meter freestyle swimming events, becoming the first swimmer to win all three events at the same Olympics since Debbie Meyer in 1968; Ledecky ends the games with five total medals to become the most decorated U.S. female athlete at a single Olympic Games.
2018 - Brooks Koepka becomes just the fifth golfer to win two major titles in the same calendar year after winning the PGA Championship (also won the the U.S. Open).
2021 - Kawhi Leonard re-signs with the Los Angeles Clippers with a four-year, $176.3 million contract.
1624 - Cardinal Richelieu was named chief minister of France by King Louis XIII.
1851 - Issac Singer patented the sewing machine.
1865 - British surgeon Joseph Lister became the first doctor to use an antiseptic during surgery.
1867 - President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, with whom he had clashed over Reconstruction policies. (Johnson would be impeached and later acquitted by the Senate.)
1898 - A peace protocol ending the Spanish-American War was signed.
1944 - During World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed along with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.
1953 - The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
1960 - The first balloon communications satellite, Echo 1, was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.
1972 - The last American combat troops left Vietnam.
1981 - IBM launched its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.
1985 - In the world's largest single-aircraft disaster, a Japan Air Lines 747 crashed into Mount Osutaka, killing 520 of the 524 people on board.
1990 - Fossil collector Sue Hendrickson found one of the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons ever discovered; nicknamed “Sue” after Hendrickson, the skeleton is now on display at Chicago’s Field Museum.
1998 - Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion to settle lawsuits brought by Holocaust survivors and their heirs. The banks were charged with having kept millions of dollars deposited by Holocaust victims before and during World War II.
2000 - The Russian military submarine Kursk and its 118-member crew were lost in the Barents Sea.
2004 - New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey announced his resignation.
2013 - Notorious Boston gangster James (Whitey) Bulger was found guilty of 31 of the 32 charges he faced, including murder, extortion, money laundering, drug dealing, and possession of weapons. (He was sentenced to life in prison; he was fatally beaten at a West Virginia facility in 2018, hours after having been transferred from a facility in Florida.)
2017 - A driver sped into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.)
2022 - Salman Rushdie, the author whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was attacked and stabbed in the neck by a man who rushed the stage as he was about to give a lecture in western New York.
Birthdays
23 - Judaea Brown (actress)
26 - Stefanos Tsitsias (tennis player)
26 - Rudy Pankow (actor)
31 - Imani Hakim (actress)
32 - Cara Delevingne (actress)
33 - Khris Middleton (basketball player)
36 - Tyson Fury (boxer)
44 - Malaysia Pargo (reality star)
49 - Casey Affleck (actor)
53 - Yvette Nicole Brown (actress)
53 - Michael Ian Black (actor/comedian)
53 - Pete Sampras (tennis player)
59 - Peter Krause (actor)
61 - Sir Mix-A-Lot (rapper)
65 - Lynette Woodard (basketball player)
68 - Bruce Greenwood (actor)
74 - Kid Creole (singer)
85 - George Hamilton (actor)
========================================
Today in Sports History - August 12
1909 - The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened.
1963 - St. Louis Cardinals great Stan Musial announces his retirement from baseball.
1964 - Mickey Mantle set a major league baseball record when he hit home runs from both the left and ride sides of the plate in the same game for the 10th time in his career.
1967 - The New Orleans Saints play their inaugural football game, a 23-14 preseason victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
1969 - The Boston Celtics were sold for $6 million, a then record for an NBA franchise.
1973 - Jack Nicklaus broke Bobby Jones' 50-year-old record when he won his 14th major championship; the win was Nicklaus' third PGA Championship.
1974 - Nolan Ryan of the California Angels records 19 strikeouts in a game against the Boston Red Sox.
1974 - Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1978 - New England Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley suffers a spinal cord injury leaving him with incomplete quadriplegia from a hit by Oakland Raiders Jack Tatum, in a pre-season exhibition game
1984 - The Atlanta Braves defeat the San Diego Padres 5-3 in a game that saw two fights and 19 ejections.
1984 - Harmon Killebrew, Rick Ferrell, Don Drysdale, Pee Wee Reese and Luis Aparicio are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
1986 - The California Angels retired Rod Carew's #29.
1994 - In baseball's eighth work stoppage since 1972, players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries. (The strike would last for 232 days and as a result would wipe out the World Series for the first time in 90 years.)
1994 - FOX broadcasts its first NFL game, a preseason contest between the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos.
2007 - Tiger Woods wins his fourth PGA Championship.
2016 - At the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, American Katie Ledecky won the 200, 400 and 800 meter freestyle swimming events, becoming the first swimmer to win all three events at the same Olympics since Debbie Meyer in 1968; Ledecky ends the games with five total medals to become the most decorated U.S. female athlete at a single Olympic Games.
2018 - Brooks Koepka becomes just the fifth golfer to win two major titles in the same calendar year after winning the PGA Championship (also won the the U.S. Open).
2021 - Kawhi Leonard re-signs with the Los Angeles Clippers with a four-year, $176.3 million contract.
