On this day: August 15
The Panama Canal opens for business, "The Wizard of Oz" comes to Hollywood, World War II comes to an end and "3 days of peace & music" starts up in Bethel, N.Y., all on this day.
1769: Napoleon Bonaparte, the French military officer and emperor of France, is born in Ajaccio, Corsica.
1769: Napoleon Bonaparte, the French military officer and emperor of France, is born in Ajaccio, Corsica.
1843: Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opens in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1877: Thomas Edison coins the telephone greeting "Hello" by suggesting the use of the word to president of the Telegraph Company to answer the phone instead of "Ahoy, ahoy" as suggested by Alexander Bell.
1912: Julia Child, American cook and TV personality, is born in Pasadena, Calif.
1914: While Frank Lloyd Wright is working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, sets fire to the living quarters of the architect's Wisconsin home, Taliesin, murders seven people and burns the living quarters to the ground. The dead include Wright's lover, Mamah Borthwick Cheney; her two children; a gardener; a draftsman named Emil Brodelle; a workman; and another workman's son. Carlton swallows muriatic acid immediately following the attack in an attempt to kill himself, but dies from starvation in jail seven weeks after the incident.
1914: The Panama Canal officially opens to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship SS Ancon.
1935: Cowboy and film star Will Rogers (standing on the wing) and the famed aviator Wiley Post (by the propeller) are killed when their plane develops engine problems at takeoff and crashes in Barrow, Alaska.
1939: "The Wizard of Oz" premieres at at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. The movie opened nationwide 10 days later on Aug. 25.
1941: Cpl. Josef Jakobs is executed by firing squad at the Tower of London at 7:12 am, making him the last person to be executed at the Tower for treason. The German spy had been caught shortly after parachuting into the United Kingdom on Jan. 31, 1941.
1945: Japan surrenders to end World War II.
1948: The Republic of Korea is established south of the 38th parallel north.
1958: Buddy Holly and Maria Elena Santiago are married in a private ceremony at his parents' home in Lubbock, Texas. The couple got married less than two months after their first date -- during which Holly proposed -- and were married for less than six months before Holly's death in a plane crash.
1965: The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, in an event later seen as marking the birth of stadium rock.
1968: Actress Debra Messing ("Will & Grace," "Smash") is born in Brooklyn, N.Y.
1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Festival opens in the town of Bethel, N.Y.
1972: Actor and film director Ben Affleck ("The Town," "Good Will Hunting") is born in Berkeley, Calif.
1978: American beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings (left) is born in Santa Clara, Calif. She's seen here with her teammate Misty May-Treanor.
1979: The movie "Apocalypse Now," starring Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall and Martin Sheen and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, opens in theaters.
1979: Led Zeppelin releases their last album together, "In Through The Out Door."
1990: Actress Jennifer Lawrence ("The Hunger Games," "Winter's Bone") is born in Louisville, Ky.
1991: Paul Simon plays a free concert at New York's Central Park in front of an estimated 750,000 people.
1995: In South Carolina, Shannon Faulkner becomes the first female cadet to enroll at The Citadel following a lawsuit against the military academy. She would drop out less than a week later.
1998: The Real Irish Republican Army, a splinter group of former Provisional Irish Republican Army members, carries out a car bomb attack in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killing 29 and injuring another 220. The BBC describes the attack as "Northern Ireland's worst single terrorist atrocity" and Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness condemn the attack and the RIRA itself.
2007: An 8.0-magnitude earthquake off the Pacific coast devastates Ica and various regions of Peru, killing 519 and injuring 1,366.
