► Today is Monday, Aug. 17, the 229th day of 2009. There are 136 days left in the year.
► Today’s birthdays: Actress Maureen O’Hara is 89. Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin is 83. Author V.S. Naipaul is 77. Actor Robert De Niro is 66. Movie director Martha Coolidge is 63. Rock musician Gary Talley (The Box Tops) is 62. Rock musician Sib Hashian is 60. Actor Robert Joy is 58. Tennis Hall of Famer Guillermo Vilas is 57. Rock singer Kevin Rowland (Dexy’s Midnight Runners) is 56. Rock musician Colin Moulding (XTC) is 54. Country singer Kevin Welch is 54. Gold medal figure skater Robin Cousins is 52. Singer Belinda Carlisle is 51. Author Jonathan Franzen is 50. Actor Sean Penn is 49. Jazz musician Everette Harp is 48. Rock musician Gilby Clarke is 47. Singer Maria McKee is 45. Rock musician Steve Gorman (The Black Crowes) is 44. Rock musician Jill Cunniff is 43. Actor David Conrad is 42. Singer-actor Donnie Wahlberg is 40. Rapper Posdnuos is 40. Tennis player Jim Courier is 39. New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada is 38. Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia is 26. Actor Bryton McClure is 23. Actor Brady Corbet is 21.
► In 1807, Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat began heading up the Hudson River on its successful trip between New York and Albany.
► In 1863, federal batteries and ships began bombarding Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor during the Civil War.
► In 1915, a mob in Cobb County, Ga., lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who’d maintained his innocence, was pardoned by Georgia in 1986.)
► In 1943, the Allied conquest of Sicily was completed as forces entered Messina.
► In 1969, Hurricane Camille slammed into the Mississippi coast as a Category 5 storm with top sustained winds estimated at nearly 200 m.p.h. The hurricane and resulting flash floods were blamed for 256 US deaths, three in Cuba.
► In 1987, Rudolf Hess, the last member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, died at Spandau Prison at 93, an apparent suicide.
► In 1988, Pakistani President Mohammad Zia ul-Haq and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel were killed in a mysterious plane crash.
► In 1999, more than 17,000 people were killed when a magnitude 7.4 earthquake hit Turkey.
► In 2004, British police charged eight terrorism suspects. (The leader of the group, Al Qaeda operative Dhiren Barot, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mass murder and was sentenced to life in prison, although the term was reduced to 30 years; the other seven received sentences ranging up to 26 years.)
► In 2008, at the Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps and three teammates won the 400-meter medley relay for Phelps’s eighth gold medal.
