Today is Friday, August 21, 2026

Today in
Crime History

1940 - Exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky died in Mexico City from wounds that had inflicted by an assassin.

1983 - Philippine politician Benigno Simeon Aquino was assassinated as he deplaned in Manila.

1987 - A U.S. Marine was convicted for spying for the first time. Sergeant Clayton Lonetree was giving secrets to the KGB while working as a guard at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He served eight years in a military prison.

1989 - In Columbia, The estates of drug lords were raided in a crackdown that occurred after the killing of a presidential candidate.

1992 - Randall Weaver, a neo-Nazi leader, opened fire on U.S. marshals from his home in Idaho. Weaver surrendered 11 days later ending the standoff. During the standoff a deputy marshal, Weaver's wife and his son were killed.

1995 - In Jerusalem, Israel, a bus bombing by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) killed four and wounded more than 100.

1998 - Samuel Bowers, a 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted in Hattiesburg, MS, of ordering a firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer in 1966.

Today in
Disaster History

1986 - In Cameroon, 1,746 people were killed when toxic gas erupted from a volcano under Lake Nyos.

1995 - Nine people died in a plane crash in Georgia.

1988 - On the Nepal-Indian border, more than 1,000 people were killed in an earthquake.

2006 - In Qalyoub, Egypt, a passenger train crashed into a station and collided with a second train killing at least 51 and injuring more than 100.

Today in
Death History

1940 - Ernest Lawrence Thayer died at age 77. He wrote the poem "Casey at the Bat."





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