19751776 Club

NASA sends Viking 1 toward Mars

The probe will not reach the planet for another ten months.

NASA had spent seven years developing Viking 1 to do something no American spacecraft had done: land intact on Mars and search its soil for life. On August 20, 1975, Viking 1 lifted off, carrying an orbiter and a lander built to work as one unit until they reached the planet. The probe would not arrive until the following June. Its twin, Viking 2, was scheduled to follow about three weeks later…

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Washington expels the Soviet consul who wouldn't produce Oksana Kasenkina

Eight days after she jumped from his consulate's third-floor window, Jacob Lomakin is handed his passport home.

2020

Biden accepts the nomination alone in a Delaware ballroom, no crowd, no roar

A pandemic convention ends with the nominee speaking to a camera instead of a stadium.

1998

Thirteen Tomahawks hit a Khartoum medicine factory; Washington says it made nerve gas

The strike came thirteen days after the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the target was a plant that made most of Sudan's antibiotics.

19201776 Club

The Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles lay the first plank of what becomes the NFL.

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Read the full August 20 edition →Everything that happened on August 20 →

A 6.9 quake hits the Bay Area as the World Series is about to start on live national TV

Light rush-hour traffic, cleared early for the game, kept the Nimitz Freeway collapse from killing far more.

1948

Truman stands on Union Square to honor three presidents North Carolina gave the nation

A sitting president stood before bronze and granite to mark where Jackson, Johnson and Polk were born.

1950

Pyongyang falls to UN troops; by nightfall, China's army is already crossing the border

Church bells rang over the North Korean capital hours before Beijing's soldiers began wading the Yalu.

1973

Two Justice Department chiefs quit in one night rather than fire the Watergate prosecutor

Nixon finally finds a third official willing to do it: Solicitor General Robert Bork.

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