August 20th

Today's Highlight in History:
On August 20th, 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

On this date:
In 1833, Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, was born in North Bend, Ohio.

In 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, even though the fighting had stopped months earlier.

In 1918, Britain opened its offensive on the Western front during World War One.

In 1920, pioneering American radio station Eight-M-K (8MK) in Detroit (later WWJ) began daily broadcasting.

In 1953, the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.

In 1955, hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.

In 1964, President Johnson signed a nearly one billion-dollar anti-poverty measure.

In 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia.

In 1977, the US launched "Voyager Two," an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.

In 1994, Benjamin Chavis Junior was fired as head of the NAACP after a turbulent 16-month tenure.

Ten years ago: For the first time since Iraq began detaining foreigners, President Bush publicly referred to the detainees as hostages, and demanded their release. Three former Northwest Airlines pilots were convicted in Minneapolis of flying while intoxicated.

Five years ago: In northern India, 348 people were killed when a passenger train rammed another that had stopped on the tracks after hitting a cow. The remnants of an American peace delegation headed home from Bosnia-Herzegovina with the bodies of three diplomats killed in an accident.

One year ago: In a highly unusual move, the CIA pulled the security clearances for former Director John Deutch for keeping secret files on an unsecured home computer. Three Japanese banks announced a broad alliance plan that would create the world's largest banking group with assets of well over one trillion dollars.

"I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries `Give, give!"'

-- Abigail Adams, American writer (1744-1818).