Today is Monday, Aug. 14, the 226th day of 2017. There are 139 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On August 14, 1947, Pakistan became independent of British rule.
On this date:
In 1848, the Oregon Territory was created.
In 1900, international forces, including U.S. Marines, entered Beijing to put down the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreign influence.
In 1917, China declared war on Germany and Austria during World War I.
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman announced that Imperial Japan had surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.
In 1951, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, 88, died in Beverly Hills, California.
In 1967, folk singer Joan Baez performed a free concert on the grounds of the Washington Monument a day after she'd been denied the use of Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
In 1969, British troops went to Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
In 1973, U.S. bombing of Cambodia came to a halt.
In 1980, workers went on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk (guh-DANSK'), Poland, in a job action that resulted in creation of the Solidarity labor movement. Actress-model Dorothy Stratten, 20, was shot to death by her estranged husband and manager, Paul Snider, who then killed himself.
In 1992, the White House announced that the Pentagon would begin emergency airlifts of food to Somalia to alleviate mass deaths by starvation. Federal judge John J. Sirica, who had presided over the Watergate trials, died in Washington at age 88.
In 1997, an unrepentant Timothy McVeigh was formally sentenced to death for the Oklahoma City bombing.
