Right now is Saturday, Aug. 21, the 233rd working day of 2021. There are 132 times remaining in the yr.
On August 21, 1991, the tough-line coup towards Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the experience of a preferred rebellion led by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.
In 1831, Nat Turner introduced a violent slave riot in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 whites scores of Blacks were being killed in retribution in the aftermath of the rebel. (Turner was later captured and executed.)
In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (The portray was recovered two a long time later on in Italy.)
In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an govt purchase making Hawaii the 50th state.
In 1987, Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the very first Marine court docket-martialed for spying, was convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing strategies to the KGB. (Lonetree finished up serving 8 several years in a army prison.)
In 1992, an 11-day siege commenced at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as federal government agents attempted to arrest Weaver for failing to look in courtroom on costs of promoting two unlawful sawed-off shotguns on the to start with day of the siege, Weaver’s teenage son, Samuel, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan had been killed.
In 1993, in a really serious setback for NASA, engineers misplaced contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it was about to arrive at the red earth on a $980 million mission.
In 2010, Iranian and Russian engineers started loading fuel into Iran’s very first nuclear electric power plant, which Moscow promised to safeguard to avert content at the site from staying applied in any potential weapons generation.
In 2013, an Military private now regarded as Chelsea Manning was sentenced at Fort Meade, Maryland, to up to 35 a long time in prison for spilling an unprecedented trove of governing administration insider secrets. (The sentence for the former intelligence analyst was commuted by President Barack Obama in his final days in place of work.)
In 2014, Gov. Jay Nixon purchased the Missouri National Guard to start out withdrawing from Ferguson, where by nightly scenes of unrest had erupted due to the fact a white law enforcement officer fatally shot a Black 18-yr-previous practically two months earlier.
In 2015, a trio of Us citizens, U.S. Air Power Personnel Sgt. Spencer Stone, Countrywide Guardsman Alek Skarlatos and university scholar Anthony Sadler, and a British businessman, Chris Norman, tackled and disarmed a Moroccan gunman on a substantial-velocity train between Amsterdam and Paris.
10 decades ago: Euphoric Libyan rebels raced into Tripoli and took management of the centre with minimal resistance as Moammar Gadhafi’s defenses collapsed and his four-ten years regime appeared to be crumbling.
5 years ago: Shaking to samba and sharing reflections in uniquely Brazilian words and phrases, Olympians and lovers mentioned goodbye to the Rio Game titles with a single past huge bash inside of Maracana Stadium.
Just one year in the past: Michigan’s appeals court docket reported Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s crisis declarations and orders to curb the coronavirus plainly fell within just the scope of her legal powers.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor-director Melvin Van Peebles is 89. Rock-and-roll musician James Burton is 82. Singer Jackie DeShannon is 80. University and Professional Football Corridor of Famer Willie Lanier is 76. Actor Patty McCormack is 76. Pop singer-musician Carl Giammarese (jee-ah mah-REE’-see) is 74.