On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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David Gonzalez About New York column on alleged torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima by police officers at 70th Precinct in Brooklyn; cites contention of Dr Douglas Shenson of Human Rights Clinic at North Central Bronx Hospital that many Haitians came to New York City just to get away from police brutality in their homeland (M)
Public Utilities Board, concerned about number of power failures that GPU Energy's customers have experienced this year, orders formal review of company's ability to cope with destructive storms (New Jersey Daily Briefing) (S)
Federal Reserve votes to leave interest rates unchanged; decision reflects low inflation, despite shrinking unemployment and unusually strong economic growth (S)
Astronauts repair computer that sent Mir space station whirling blindly and use thruster rockets on Soyuz space capsule to nudge Mir back into orbit and align it so that batteries can start absorbing solar energy; Russian Mission Control aide, Viktor Blagov, frustrated by problems with Mir and attention problems attract, breaks space agency's stoic silence and complains about money shortage that barred regular replacement of Mir's computer parts before they died; parts of Mir's main computer have not been changed or repaired in station's 11 years in orbit (M)
Article discusses growing popularity of growing different varieties of tomatoes; photo (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of August 20, 1997, covering August 20, 1997.
Puff Daddy & The Family
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Soundtrack
311
Spice Girls
1997Kaho Minagawa, Japanese rhythmic gymnast[â ]
Kaho Minagawa is a retired Japanese individual rhythmic gymnast. She is the 2017 Asian Championships All-around silver medalist. She trained in Novogorsk in Moscow, Russia. She is the first Japanese individual rhythmic gymnast to win a medal at the World Cup series.
1997Daniel VladaĆ, Czech ice hockey player[â ]
Daniel VladaĆ is a Czech professional ice hockey goaltender for the Calgary Flames of the National Hockey League (NHL). Selected by the Boston Bruins in the 2015 NHL entry draft, VladaĆ played several years in his native Czech Republic before moving to North America in 2015. After four seasons in the minor leagues he made his NHL debut with the Bruins during the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs.
1997Norris Bradbury, American soldier, physicist, and academic (born 1909)[â ]
Norris Edwin Bradbury was an American physicist who served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 25 years from 1945 to 1970. He succeeded Robert Oppenheimer, who personally chose Bradbury for the position of director after working closely with him on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Bradbury was in charge of the final assembly of "the Gadget", detonated in July 1945 for the Trinity test.
1997LĂ©on Dion, Canadian political scientist and academic (born 1922)[â ]
LĂ©on Dion was a Canadian political scientist.
1997Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped.[â ]
The largest of the Souhane massacres occurred in the small mountain town of Souhane on 20â21 August 1997. 64 people were killed, and 15 women were kidnapped; the resulting terror triggered a mass exodus, reducing the town's population down from 4000 before the massacre to just 103 in 2002. Smaller-scale massacres later took place on November 27, 1997 and 2 March 2000, when some 10 people from a single household were killed by guerrillas. The massacres were attributed on Islamist groups such as the GIA.
In 1997, the world population was approximately 5,924,787,816 people[â ]