“This Week” looks back at key events from this week in history.
Aug. 15
1057: Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.
1914: The Panama Canal officially opened as the SS Ancon crossed the newly completed waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
1947: India gained independence after nearly 200 years of British rule.
1969: Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York; more than 460,000 people attended the three-day festival, which would become a watershed event in American music and culture.
Aug. 16
1777: American forces won the Battle of Bennington, considered a turning point in the Revolutionary War.
1948: Baseball legend Babe Ruth died in New York at age 53.
1977: Elvis Presley died at his Graceland estate in Memphis, Tennessee, at age 42.
2018: Aretha Franklin, the undisputed “Queen of Soul,” died of pancreatic cancer at 76.
Aug. 17
1807: Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat made its first voyage, heading up the Hudson River on a successful round trip between New York City and Albany.
1945: George Orwell’s novel “Animal Farm,” an allegorical satire of Soviet communism, was published.
1959: Trumpeter Miles Davis released “Kind of Blue,” regarded as one of the most influential jazz albums of all time.
1978: The first successful trans-Atlantic balloon flight ended as Maxie Anderson, Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman landed their Double Eagle II outside Paris.
1998: President Bill Clinton delivered a TV address in which he admitted his relationship with Monica Lewinsky
Aug. 18
1587: Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents born in present-day America on Roanoke Island in North Carolina. (However, the Roanoke colony mysteriously disappeared.)
1894: Congress established the Bureau of Immigration.
1920: The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, guaranteeing American women’s right to vote, was ratified as Tennessee became the 36th state to approve it.
Aug. 19
A.D. 14: Caesar Augustus, Rome’s first emperor, died at age 76 after a four-decade reign; he was succeeded by his stepson Tiberius.
1812: The USS Constitution defeated the British frigate HMS Guerriere off Nova Scotia during the War of 1812, earning the nickname “Old Ironsides.”
1814: During the War of 1812, British forces landed at Benedict, Maryland, to capture Washington, D.C.
1848: The New York Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.
1942: During World War II, about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France.
Aug. 20
1882: Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” had its premiere in Moscow.
1940: Exiled Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky was assassinated in Coyoacan, Mexico, by Ramon Mercader.
1955: Hundreds of people were killed in anti-French riots in Morocco and Algeria.
1968: The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization drive.
Aug. 21
1911: Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (The painting was recovered two years later in Italy.)
1959: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order making Hawaii the 50th state.
