Today's Highlight in History:
On August 12th, 1960, the first balloon satellite -- the "Echo One" -- was launched by the United States from Cape1 Canaveral.
On this date:
In 1851, Isaac Singer was granted a patent on his sewing machine.
In 1867, President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach2 him as he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
In 1898, the peace protocol3 ending the Spanish-American War was signed.
In 1898, Hawaii was formally annexed4 to the United States.
In 1944, Joseph P. Kennedy Junior, eldest5 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 Soviet6 Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.
In 1972, the last American combat ground troops left Vietnam.
In 1985, the world's worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing7 520 people.
In 1994, Woodstock '94 opened in Saugerties, New York.
In 1998, Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion as restitution8 to Holocaust9 survivors10 to settle claims for their assets.
Ten years ago: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sought to tie any withdrawal11 of his troops from Kuwait to an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Air Force Staff Sergeant12 John Campisi of West Covina, California, died after being hit by a military truck in Saudi Arabia, becoming the first US casualty of the Persian Gulf13 crisis.
Five years ago: In a methodical, daylong procession, Republican presidential candidates courted Ross Perot's followers14 at a United We Stand America conference in Dallas.
One year ago: Los Angeles County prosecutors15 charged white supremacist Buford O. Furrow16 with murder and five counts of attempted murder, all filed as hate crimes, in the wounding of five people at a Jewish community center and the shooting death of a Filipino-American mail carrier. (Federal prosecutors already had charged Furrow in the postman's slaying17.)
收听单词发音 
