► Today is Monday, Aug. 24, the 236th day of 2009. There are 129 days left in the year.
► Today’s birthdays: Actor Kenny Baker (“Star Wars’’) is 75. Composer-musician Mason Williams is 71. R&B singer Marshall Thompson (The Chi-Lites) is 67. Rock musician Ken Hensley is 64. Actress Anne Archer is 62. Actor Joe Regalbuto is 60. Actor Kevin Dunn (“Samantha Who?’’) is 54. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is 54. Actor-writer Stephen Fry is 52. Actor Steve Guttenberg is 51. Baseball Hall of Famer Cal Ripken Jr. is 49. Talk show host Craig Kilborn is 47. Rock singer John Bush is 46. Actress Marlee Matlin is 44. Retired NBA player Reggie Miller is 44. Broadcast journalist David Gregory is 39. Country singer Kristyn Osborn (SheDaisy) is 39. Comedian Dave Chappelle is 36. Actor Carmine Giovinazzo is 36. Actress Beth Riesgraf is 31. NBA player Michael Redd is 30. Actor Chad Michael Murray is 28. Christian rock musician Jeffrey Gilbert (Kutless) is 26. Singer Mika is 26. Actor Rupert Grint is 21.
► In 1814, British forces invaded Washington, D.C., setting fire to the Capitol (which was still under construction) and the White House.
► In 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty came into force.
► In 1954, President Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act, outlawing the Communist Party in the United States.
► In 1968, France became the fifth thermonuclear power as it exploded a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.
► In 1970, a bomb planted by antiwar extremists exploded at the University of Wisconsin’s Sterling Hall in Madison, killing 33-year-old researcher Robert Fassnacht.
► In 1989, Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned Pete Rose from the game for betting on his own team, the Cincinnati Reds.
► In 1992, Hurricane Andrew smashed into Florida, causing $30 billion in damage; 43 US deaths were blamed on the storm.
► In 2004, an independent commission said the blame for abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison lay mainly with the American soldiers who ran the jail, but said senior commanders and top-level Pentagon officials could also be faulted for failed leadership and oversight. Chechen separatists set off bombs aboard two Russian airliners that crashed after taking off from the same Moscow airport, killing 90 people. Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who theorized that terminally ill patients go through five stages of grief, died in Scottsdale, Ariz., at 78.
► In 2008, a suicide bomber struck a celebration on Baghdad’s outskirts for an Iraqi detainee released from US custody, killing 25 people. An Iran-bound passenger jet carrying 90 people crashed in Kyrgyzstan, killing 70 people.
