On Aug. 23, 1912, actor, dancer and choreographer Gene Kelly was born in Pittsburgh.
In 1914 Japan declared war against Germany in World War I.
In 1926 silent-film star Rudolph Valentino died in New York at 31.
In 1939 Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact.
In 1946 Keith Moon, founding drummer of The Who, was born in London.
In 1960 Broadway librettist Oscar Hammerstein II died at 65 in Doylestown, Pa. (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text)
In 1982 Lebanon’s parliament elected Christian militia leader Bashir Gemayel president. (He was assassinated three weeks later.)
In 1996 President Bill Clinton imposed limits on peddling cigarettes to children as he unveiled Food and Drug Administration regulations declaring nicotine an addictive drug.
In 1999, 50 years after the German government moved its capital to Bonn, Berlin reclaimed its role as a center of power with the arrival of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
In 2003 John Geoghan, the predator-priest whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another convict attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.
