August 18, 1991 : Soviet hard-liners launch coup against Gorbachev

On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is placed
under house arrest during a coup by high-ranking members of his own
government, military and police forces.

Since becoming secretary of the Communist Party in 1985 and president
of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1988, Gorbachev
had pursued comprehensive reforms of the Soviet system. Combining
perestroika ("restructuring") of the economy--including a greater
emphasis on free-market policies--and glasnost ("openness") in
diplomacy, he greatly improved Soviet relations with Western
democracies, particularly the United States. Meanwhile, though, within
the USSR, Gorbachev faced powerful critics, including conservative,
hard-line politicians and military officials who thought he was
driving the Soviet Union toward its downfall and making it a
second-rate power. On the other side were even more radical
reformers--particularly Boris Yeltsin, president of the most powerful
socialist republic, Russia--who complained that Gorbachev was just not
working fast enough.

The August 1991 coup was carried out by the hard-line elements within
Gorbachev's own administration, as well as the heads of the Soviet
army and the KGB, or secret police. Detained at his vacation villa in
the Crimea, he was placed under house arrest and pressured to give his
resignation, which he refused to do. Claiming Gorbachev was ill, the
coup leaders, headed by former vice president Gennady Yanayev,
declared a state of emergency and attempted to take control of the
government.

Yeltsin and his backers from the Russian parliament then stepped in,
calling on the Russian people to strike and protest the coup. When
soldiers tried to arrest Yeltsin, they found the way to the
parliamentary building blocked by armed and unarmed civilians. Yeltsin
himself climbed aboard a tank and spoke through a megaphone, urging
the troops not to turn against the people and condemning the coup as a
"new reign of terror." The soldiers backed off, some of them choosing
to join the resistance. After thousands took the streets to
demonstrate, the coup collapsed after only three days.

Gorbachev was released and flown to Moscow, but his regime had been
dealt a deadly blow. Over the next few months, he dissolved the
Communist Party, granted independence to the Baltic states, and
proposed a looser, more economics-based federation among the remaining
republics. In December 1991, Gorbachev resigned. Yeltsin capitalized
on his defeat of the coup, emerging from the rubble of the former
Soviet Union as the most powerful figure in Moscow and the leader of
the newly formed Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

August 19, 1999:
American President Bill Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil lawsuit.

1991 : A Jewish youth is killed by a mob

Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting student from Australia, is stabbed to death by an angry mob in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. The crowd, consisting of young black men, had been intent on seeking revenge against Jewish people for the death of seven-year-old Gavin Cato, who had been struck by a car driven by a Hasidic Jew three hours earlier. Following Rosenbaum's murder, rioting continued against Jews for four days in Crown Heights, while many complained that the response by police and Mayor David Dinkins was inadequate.

In October, 16-year-old Lemrick Nelson was charged with the murder of Rosenbaum but was acquitted after a racially charged trial the following year. But the case did not end there. Due in part to lobbying by the victim's brother, Norman Rosenbaum, the federal government charged Nelson with violating Rosenbaum's civil rights in 1994. In the meantime, a state report criticized Mayor Dinkins and the police for their lack of action during the riots-a claim that helped Rudolph Giuliani defeat Dinkins in the next mayoral election.

In 1996, a videotape of the Crown Heights incident came to light, showing Charles Price inciting a mob to assault Jews in retaliation for Cato's death. He shouted, "Kill the Jews!" and, "An eye for an eye!" In February 1997, a jury convicted both Nelson and Price for their roles in Rosenbaum's murder. Nelson was sentenced to 19 years in prison, while Price received 21 years, despite his claim that he had been exercising his right to freedom of speech.

Later, Mayor Giuliani apologized and blamed his predecessor for the city's lack of action and offered a $1.1 million settlement from the City of New York to Jews who claimed they were unprotected during the riots. Norman Rosenbaum continued to push Attorney General Janet Reno to reopen the case and go after the others in the mob, but no further arrests were made.

The driver of the car that killed Gavin Cato was cleared of any wrongdoing, and he returned to Israel.

August 20 1862:

Today marks a birthday of sorts for the eight-hour workday.
In the mid-1800s most people worked ten- or twelve-hour days,
prompting the newly formed National Labor Union (NLU) to call on Congress to officially trim the workday.
While Congress didn't heed the NLU's pleas, the union's efforts pushed the issue onto the national stage.
The public picked up the call for shorter hours, as did some legislators:
Federal employees were the first to enjoy truncated days when Congress passed appropriate legislation in 1863.
However, after a few fruitful decades, the drive for the eight-hour day hit a snag in 1886, when a strike by workers at the McCormick Reaper Manufacturing Company turned bloody.
Though the workers, who had hit the picket line to protest for shorter hours, were victims of violence,
the ugly affair, along with the ensuing Haymarket Riot, branded the push for the eight-hour day as a radical movement.
But, in 1923, the movement received support from an unlikely ally, as the Carnegie Steel Corporation granted shorter work hours to its employees.
Eventually, President Franklin Roosevelt made the eight-hour workday an official part of his New Deal legislation.

August 20, 1911 : First around-the-world telegram sent, 66 years before Voyager II launch

On this day in 1911, a dispatcher in the New York Times office sends
the first telegram around the world via commercial service. Exactly 66
years later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
sends a different kind of message--a phonograph record containing
information about Earth for extraterrestrial beings--shooting into
space aboard the unmanned spacecraft Voyager II.


The Times decided to send its 1911 telegram in order to determine how
fast a commercial message could be sent around the world by telegraph
cable. The message, reading simply "This message sent around the
world," left the dispatch room on the 17th floor of the Times building
in New York at 7 p.m. on August 20. After it traveled more than 28,000
miles, being relayed by 16 different operators, through San Francisco,
the Philippines, Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Bombay, Malta, Lisbon
and the Azores--among other locations--the reply was received by the
same operator 16.5 minutes later. It was the fastest time achieved by
a commercial cablegram since the opening of the Pacific cable in 1900
by the Commercial Cable Company.

On August 20, 1977, a NASA rocket launched Voyager II, an unmanned
1,820-pound spacecraft, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It was the first
of two such crafts to be launched that year on a "Grand Tour" of the
outer planets, organized to coincide with a rare alignment of Jupiter,
Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Aboard Voyager II was a 12-inch copper
phonograph record called "Sounds of Earth." Intended as a kind of
introductory time capsule, the record included greetings in 60
languages and scientific information about Earth and the human race,
along with classical, jazz and rock 'n' roll music, nature sounds like
thunder and surf, and recorded messages from President Jimmy Carter
and other world leaders.

The brainchild of astronomer Carl Sagan, the record was sent with
Voyager II and its twin craft, Voyager I--launched just two weeks
later--in the faint hope that it might one day be discovered by
extraterrestrial creatures. The record was sealed in an aluminum
jacket that would keep it intact for 1 billion years, along with
instructions on how to play the record, with a cartridge and needle
provided.

More importantly, the two Voyager crafts were designed to explore the
outer solar system and send information and photographs of the distant
planets to Earth. Over the next 12 years, the mission proved a
smashing success. After both crafts flew by Jupiter and Saturn,
Voyager I went flying off towards the solar system's edge while
Voyager II visited Uranus, Neptune and finally Pluto in 1990 before
sailing off to join its twin in the outer solar system.