On This Day

[Altobelli]

20 AUGUST

1597 1st Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East

1619 1st known African Americans in English North America (approx. 20) land at Point Comfort (Fort Monroe), Virginia. They are then sold or traded into servitude.

1741 Alaska first sighted by Danish explorer Vitus Bering at head of Russian expedition

1866 President Andrew Johnson formally declares US Civil War over

1882 Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" opens in Moscow

1968 During the night 200,00 Warsaw Pact Soviet led troops begin to invade Czechoslovakia in response to the Prague Spring

1993 Oslo Peace Accords signed, after secret negotiations in Norway, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month

Famous Birthday's

Benjamin Harrison
(1833 - 1901)

Slobodan Milosevic
(1941 - 2006)

Robert Plant
69th Birthday

Famous Death's

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
(1775 - 1854)

Hua Guofeng
(1921 - 2008)

Phyllis Diller
(1917 - 2012)

Jerry Lewis
(1926 - Today 2017)


Famous Weddings

1836 English novelist (Vanity Fair) William Makepeace Thackeray (25) marries Isabella Gethin Shawe (20)

1939 "Rebecca" actress Joan Fontaine (21) weds actor Brian Aherne (37)

1992 Rocker Sting weds Trudie Styler at an 11th century chapel in Wiltshire, England

2005 "24" actress Sarah Wynter (32) weds "Details" magazine editor-in-chief Dan Peres in Sydney, Australia

2005 Award-winning American news anchor Lauren Sanchez (35) weds prominent talent agent Patrick Whitesell at The Bacara Resort and Spa in Santa Barbara, California

Famous Diverces

2012 The man known primarily for gatecrashing the White House, Tareq Salahi (42) divorces socialite Michaele Salahi (46) due to adultery, desertion and construction desertion