Today in History: August 12, Charlottesville car attack

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2026. There are 141 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Aug. 12, 2017, a driver sped into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.)

Also on this date:

In 1867, President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, with whom he had clashed over Reconstruction policies. (Johnson was acquitted by the Senate.)

In 1898, fighting in the Spanish-American War came to an end.

In 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened.

In 1944, during World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.

In 1953, the Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

In 1960, the first balloon communications satellite — the Echo 1 — was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.

In 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.

In 1985, the world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. Four passengers survived.

In 1990, fossil collector Sue Hendrickson found one of the largest and best preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons ever discovered; nicknamed “Sue” after Hendrickson, the skeleton, found in South Dakota, is now on display at Chicago’s Field Museum.

In 1994, in baseball’s eighth work stoppage since 1972, players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries.

In 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and its 118-man crew were lost during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.

In 2013, James “Whitey” Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives, was convicted in a string of 11 killings and dozens of other gangland crimes, many of them committed while he was said to be an FBI informant. (Bulger was sentenced to life; he was fatally beaten at a West Virginia prison in 2018, hours after being transferred from a facility in Florida.)

In 2022, Salman Rushdie, the author whose writing led to death threats from Iran in the 1980s, was attacked and stabbed in the neck by a man who rushed the stage as he was about to give a lecture in western New York.

Today’s Birthdays: Investor and philanthropist George Soros is 96. Actor George Hamilton is 87. Singer-musician Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits) is 77. Singer Kid Creole (Kid Creole and the Coconuts) is 76. Film director Chen Kaige is 74. Jazz guitarist Pat Metheny is 72. Actor Bruce Greenwood is 70. Basketball Hall of Famer Lynette Woodard is 67. Rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot is 63. Actor Peter Krause (KROW’-zuh) is 61. Tennis Hall of Famer Pete Sampras is 55. Actor-comedian Michael Ian Black is 55. Actor Yvette Nicole Brown is 55. Actor Casey Affleck is 51. Boxer Tyson Fury is 38. Actor Lakeith Stanfield is 35. NBA All-Star Khris Middleton is 35. Actor Cara Delevingne (DEHL’-eh-veen) is 34. Tennis player Stefanos Tsitsipas is 28.