Today is Friday, August 23, the 236th day of 2024. There are 130 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On August 23, 1970, the Salad Bowl Strike began, organized by farm labor leader Cesar Chavez. Between 5,000 and 10,000 workers walked out, creating the largest farm labor strike in U.S. history.

Also on this date:

In 1305, the Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.

In 1775, British King George III declared the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”

In 1914, Japan declared war on Germany during World War I.

In 1927, amid worldwide protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murder of two men during a 1920 robbery. (On the 50th anniversary of their execution, then-Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation declaring that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted.)

In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

In 2000, a Gulf Air Airbus crashed into the Persian Gulf near Bahrain, killing all 143 people on board.

In 2003, former priest John Geoghan (GAY’-gun), the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked a sex abuse scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.

In 2011, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck near Mineral, Virginia. It was the largest earthquake on the East Coast since 1944. It caused cracks in the Washington Monument and damaged the Washington National Cathedral.

In 2013, a military jury convicted Major Nidal Hasan of the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 people dead. 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 attempted to arrest Blake on an outstanding warrant. The shooting left Blake partially paralyzed and sparked 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 exposed by the FBI and described by anti-government extremists as a rallying cry for an American civil war.

Today’s birthday:

• Actor Vera Miles is 95.
• Actor Barbara Eden is 93.
• Football Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen is 90 years old.
• Ballerina Patricia McBride is 82 years old.
• 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.
• Actress Joanne Froggatt is 44.
• Olympic gold medal swimmer Natalie Coughlin Hall is 42 years old.
• Musician Lil Yachty is 27.