Today is Saturday, Aug. 23, the 235th day of 2025
with 130 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus. Evening stars are Mars, Mercury, Neptune and Saturn.
On this date in history:
In 1305, Scottish leader William Wallace was executed in London.
In 1914, the British Expeditionary Force fought on European soil for the first time since the 1815 Battle of Waterloo in a confrontation with the German army in the Battle of Mons in Belgium.
In 1927, despite worldwide demonstrations on their behalf, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for murder.
In 1939, Germany's Adolf Hitler and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin signed a nonaggression pact. Less than two years later, Germany launched a blitzkrieg attack on Russia.
In 1945, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Marcario García became the first Mexican American to receive the U.S. Medal of Honor. He sustained multiple injuries while single-handedly eliminating a machine gun position, allowing his company to advance in Germany during World War II.
In 1982, Beirut Christian leader Beshir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon. He was assassinated less than one month later and was succeeded by his brother Amin.
In 1990, East and West Germany announced they would reunite on Oct. 3.
In 2008, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois confirmed he chose fellow Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware as his vice presidential running mate at the top of the Democratic Party ticket.
In 2011, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake, unusually strong for the eastern United States, rattled Washington and Virginia with shockwaves as far north as Canada. The quake was the strongest to hit Virginia in more than a century, briefly causing a power shutdown at a nuclear plant. The Washington Monument and National Cathedral in Washington were damaged by the quake.
In 2017, after two major warship collisions that killed several sailors, the U.S. Navy removed Vice Adm. Joseph Auction as the Pacific Fleet's commander.
In 2023, Wagner Mercenary Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a private jet that crashed in Russia, killing all 10 people on board. The crash came two months after Prigozhin led his forces in a mutiny against the Russian military amid the invasion of Ukraine.
