August 20
Today is
World Mosquito Day, so, get bit.
Events
1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.
1866 – President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.
1882 – Tchaikovsky's
1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia.
1938 – Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam, a record that stood for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.
1940 – In Mexico City, Mexico, exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramón Mercader. He dies the next day.
1940 – World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line
"Never was so much owed by so many to so few".
1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide. The phrase "
going postal" is inspired by this event.
1988 – Fires in the United States' Yellowstone National Park
destroyed more than 150,000 acres (610 km2), the single-worst day of the conflagration.