This day in history - August 20

[seamusTX]

1794 - General "Mad Anthony" Wayne routed Indian warriors allied with the British at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, in modern-day Ohio.

This battle conclusively established United States authority over what was then called the Northwest Territory.

Fort Wayne, Indiana, is named after Gen. Wayne.

1866 - President Andrew Johnson formally declared the War Between the States over. Military battles had ended months earlier.

1896 - John and Charles J. Erickson and A.E. Keith applied for a patent on the dial telephone, which was granted. These men and a few others largely invented automated telephone exchanges from scratch.

1940 - Leon Trotsky, exiled Russian revolutionary and opponent of Stalin, was assassinated in Mexico City by a Soviet agent who planted an ice pick in his skull.

1940 - Winston Churchill uttered the immortal words, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." He was speaking of the RAF contribution to the Battle of Britain.

1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, one phase of his Great Society and War on Poverty programs.

Head Start and Job Corps are among the surviving elements of this program.

1968 - Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops violently repressed the "Prague Spring" movement in Czechoslovakia, which was attempting to restore human rights and liberalize the economy.

Western countries objected. Some may even have raised their voices above a polite mumble.

1977 - The United States launched Voyager 2 on a mission that reached Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Voyager 2 and its companion Voyager 1 are still returning data and are now the farthest man-made objects from earth and the oldest functioning space probes. They will retain those records for the indefinite future.

1986 - A disgruntled Postal Service employee in Edmond, Oklahoma, killed 14 other people and himself and wounded 6 others, giving rise to the phrase "going postal."

1990 - Saddam Hussein moved foreign non-combatants to military sites in Iraq to serve as human shields.

- Jim