1
Today in History: August 23, farmworkers’ 'Salad Bowl strike'
Police officer shot a man leaving him paralyzed; the incident triggered violent protests.
1 minuto de lectura'
LA NACION
Today is Sunday, Aug. 23, the 235th day of 2026. There are 130 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Aug. 23, 1970, the Salad Bowl strike began, organized by farm labor leader Cesar Chavez; between 5,000 to 10,000 laborers walked off the job, leading to the largest farmworker strike in U.S. history.
Also on this date:
In 1305, Scottish rebel leader Sir William Wallace was executed by the English for treason.
In 1775, Britain’s King George III proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.”
In 1914, Japan declared war against Germany in World War I.
In 1927, amid worldwide protests, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a 1920 robbery. (On the 50th anniversary of their executions, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted.)
In 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, in Moscow.
In 2000, a Gulf Air Airbus crashed into the Persian Gulf near Bahrain, killing all 143 people aboard.
In 2003, former priest John Geoghan (GAY’-gun), the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, died after another inmate attacked him in a Massachusetts prison.
In 2011, a magnitude-5.8 earthquake centered near Mineral, Virginia, the strongest on the East Coast since 1944, caused cracks in the Washington Monument and damaged the Washington National Cathedral.
In 2013, a military jury convicted Maj. Nidal Hasan in the deadly 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, that claimed 13 lives; 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 tried to arrest Blake on an outstanding warrant; the shooting left Blake partially paralyzed and triggered 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 that was broken up by the FBI and described as a rallying cry for a U.S. civil war by anti-government extremists.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Vera Miles is 97. Actor Barbara Eden is 95. Ballerina Patricia McBride is 84. Singer-songwriter Linda Thompson is 79. Author and motivational speaker Rudy Ruettiger is 78. Actor Shelley Long is 77. Actor-singer Rick Springfield is 77. Noor al-Hussein (Queen Noor of Jordan) is 75. Film composer Alexandre Desplat is 65. Actor Jay Mohr is 56. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is 55. Actor Ray Park is 52. Actor Scott Caan is 50. Rock singer Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) is 48. Actor Joanne Froggatt is 46. Olympic gold medal swimmer Natalie Coughlin Hall is 44. Musician Lil Yachty is 29. NBA basketball player Devin Vassell is 26.
