On Aug. 15, 1057, Macbeth, King of Scotland and the inspiration for Shakespeare’s play, was murdered by Malcolm III, son of King Duncan.
In 1769 Napoleon Bonaparte was born on the island of Corsica.
In 1771 Scottish novelist Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh.
In 1859 Charles Comiskey, owner of the White Sox in the early 1900s, was born in Chicago.
In 1888 T.E. Lawrence, the British soldier who gained fame as “Lawrence of Arabia,” was born in Tremadoc, Wales.
In 1914 the Panama Canal was opened.
In 1918 the United States and Russia severed diplomatic relations.
In 1935 humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska.
In 1939 the MGM film musical “The Wizard of Oz” premiered. at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
In 1944 Allied forces landed in southern France.
In 1945 “V-J Day” was proclaimed, a day after Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally.
In 1947 India became independent after two centuries of British rule.
In 1948 the Republic of Korea was proclaimed.
In 1961 East Germany began building the Berlin Wall.
In 1967 Mayor Richard Daley unveiled Pablo Picasso’s 162-ton, 50-foot-high steel gift “to the people of Chicago,” the Daley Plaza sculpture now known as the Picasso.
In 1969 the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York.
In 1971 President Richard Nixon ordered a 90-day wage-price-rent freeze and announced imposition of a 10 percent surcharge on foreign imports.
In 1973, in a nationwide broadcast, Nixon denied any involvement in the Watergate break-in or cover-up.
In 1974 South Korean President Park Chung Hee escaped unharmed when a man shot at him during national holiday ceremonies in Seoul. (Park’s wife was killed.)
In 1979 UN Ambassador Andrew Young resigned amid controversy generated by an unauthorized meeting he had held with a Palestine Liberation Organization representative.
In 1985 South African President P.W. Botha, rejecting Western pleas to abolish apartheid, declared, “I am not prepared to lead white South Africans and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide.”
In 1987 thousands of people marched past the grave of Elvis Presley in Memphis, as they began an all-night vigil marking the 10th anniversary of his death.
In 1993 Pope John Paul II ended his four-day U.S. visit with a farewell Denver address in which he denounced the “culture of death” of abortion and euthanasia.
In 1994 terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as “Carlos the Jackal,” was jailed in France after being captured in Sudan.
In 1995 the Justice Department agreed to pay $3.1 million to white separatist Randy Weaver and his family to settle their claims over the killing of Weaver’s wife and son during a 1992 siege by federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. Also, pioneering TV journalist and Timex watch pitchman John Cameron Swayze died at 89 in Sarasota, Fla.
In 1999 Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship, becoming the youngest player to win two majors since Seve Ballesteros.
In 2001 astronomers announced the discovery of the first solar system outside our own.
In 2006 Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, the queen of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori population, died at 75 on North Island.
