|
Today's Highlight in History: On August 27th, 1975, Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia's 3,000-year-old monarchy, died in Addis Ababa at age 83 almost a year after he was overthrown in a military coup. On this date: In 1770, German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born in Stuttgart. In 1883, the island volcano Krakatoa blew up; the resulting tidal waves in Indonesia's Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra. In 1892, fire seriously damaged New York's original Metropolitan Opera House. In 1894, Congress passed the Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act, which contained a provision for a graduated income tax that was later struck down by the Supreme Court. In 1908, Lyndon B. Johnson, the 36th president of the United States, was born near Stonewall, Texas. In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in Paris, outlawing war and providing for the peaceful settlement of disputes. In 1945, American troops began landing in Japan following the surrender of the Japanese government in World War Two. In 1962, the United States launched the Mariner Two space probe, which flew past Venus the following December. In 1967, Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, was found dead in his London flat from an overdose of sleeping pills. | 
