On August 23, 1784, four counties in western North Carolina declare their independence as the state of Franklin. The counties lay in what would eventually become Tennessee. The previous April, the state of North Carolina had ceded its western land claims between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River to the United States Congress. The […]

Allan Pinkerton, head of the new secret service agency of the Federal government, places Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow under house arrest in Washington, D.C. Greenhow was a wealthy widow living in Washington at the outbreak of the war. She was well connected in the capital and was especially close with Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson. […]

The death of silent-screen idol Rudolph Valentino at the age of 31 sends his fans into a hysterical state of mass mourning. In his brief film career, the Italian-born actor established a reputation as the archetypal screen lover. After his death from a ruptured ulcer was announced, dozens of suicide attempts were reported, and the […]

Despite worldwide demonstrations in support of their innocence, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for murder on August 23, 1927.  On April 15, 1920, a paymaster for a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts, was shot and killed along with his guard. The murderers, who were described as two Italian men, escaped […]

Though he had landed on the beaches of Normandy and been wounded in battle fighting with the U.S. Army, Staff Sergeant Marcario García was not yet a U.S. citizen when President Harry S. Truman awarded him the Medal of Honor on August 23, 1945. García became the first Mexican national to receive the American military’s […]

On August 23, 1947, the first Little League World Series championship game—the culmination of a three-day tournament in Williamsport, Pennsylvania—features teams from Pennsylvania. Before roughly 2,500 fans, Maynard, a team from Williamsport, defeats Lock Haven, 16-7, to win the title at Original Field. Although it is called the “World Series,” 11 of the 12 teams in […]

On the morning of August 23, 1968, a group of Black soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas stage one of the largest acts of civil disobedience ever recorded among members of the United States military. Adopting the nonviolent tactics of the civil rights movement, the soldiers stage a sit-in to protest their impending deployment to Chicago […]

On August 23, 1989, as punishment for betting on baseball, Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose accepts a settlement that includes a lifetime ban from the game. The ban is publicly announced the following morning. A heated debate continues to rage as to whether Rose, a former player who remains the game’s all-time hits leader, should […]

Natascha Kampusch, an Austrian teenager who was kidnapped at age 10, escapes from her captor, Wolfgang Priklopil, after more than eight years. Shortly after her escape, Priklopil died by suicide. On March 2, 1998, Kampusch was abducted from a street in Vienna while walking to school. One of Austria’s largest missing-person searches followed, during which […]

On August 23, 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fully approves the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people aged 16 and older, following a manufacturing review and analysis of the company’s expanded clinical trial, which included approximately 44,000 participants and found the vaccine to be 91 percent effective in preventing COVID-19.  The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was […]