Cesar Chavez, who has launched a nationwide lettuce boycott to gain recognition of his ALF-CIO United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, relaxes in a room attached to his headquarters in Salinas, Calif., Sept. 19, 1970. Chavez’s “salad bowl” strike is a bitter union battle that is pitting grower against grower and Mexican-American against Mexican-American. (AP Photo/Sal Veder)
By The Associated Press
Today is Friday, Aug. 23, the 236th day of 2024. There are 130 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Aug 23, 1970, the Salad Bowl strike began, organized by farm labor leader Cesar Chavez; between 5,000-10,000 laborers walked off the job, leading to the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history.
Also on this date:
In 1305, Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.
In 1775, Britain’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”
In 1914, Japan declared war against Germany in World War I.
In 1927, amid worldwide protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. (On the 50th anniversary of their executions, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted.)
In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow.
In 2000, A Gulf Air Airbus crashed into the Persian Gulf near Bahrain, killing all 143 people aboard.
In 2003, former priest John Geoghan, the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.
In 2011, a magnitude-5.8 earthquake centered near Mineral, Virginia, the strongest on the East Coast since 1944, caused cracks in the Washington Monument and damaged Washington National Cathedral.
In 2013, a military jury convicted Maj. Nidal Hasan in the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives; the Army psychiatrist was later sentenced to death.
In 2020, a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot a Black man, Jacob Blake, seven times as officers tried to arrest Blake on an outstanding warrant; the shooting left Blake partially paralyzed and triggered several nights of violent protests.
In 2022, a jury convicted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a victory for prosecutors in a plot that was broken up by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Vera Miles is 95. Actor Barbara Eden is 93. Football Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen is 90. Ballerina Patricia McBride is 82. Author Nelson DeMille is 81. Former Surgeon General Antonia Novello is 80. Singer-songwriter Linda Thompson is 77. Author and motivational speaker Rudy Ruettiger is 76. Actor Shelley Long is 75. Actor-singer Rick Springfield is 75. Noor al-Hussein (Queen Noor of Jordan) is 73. Film composer Alexandre Desplat is 63. Actor Jay Mohr is 54. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is 53. Actor Ray Park is 50. Actor Scott Caan is 48. Rock singer Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) is 46. Actor Joanne Froggatt is 44. Olympic gold medal swimmer Natalie Coughlin Hall is 42. Musician Lil Yachty is 27.