AP Highlight in History: On Aug. 21, 1991, a hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.
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On this date in:
1680
Pueblo Indians took possession of Santa Fe, N.M., after driving out the Spanish.
1831
Nat Turner launched a short-lived, violent slave rebellion in Virginia.
1858
The first of seven debates between U.S. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas was held in Ottawa, Ill.
1878
The American Bar Association was founded in Saratoga, N.Y.
1904
Jazz musician and bandleader William "Count" Basie was born in Red Bank, N.J.
1940
Exiled Russian Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky died in Mexico City from wounds inflicted by an assassin.
1945
President Harry S. Truman ended the Lend-Lease program that had shipped some $50 billion in aid to America's allies during World War II.
1959
President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union.
1983
Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., ending a self-imposed exile in the United States, was shot dead moments after stepping off a plane at Manila International Airport.
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1987
Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, the first Marine ever court-martialed for spying, was convicted in Quantico, Va., of passing secrets to the KGB.
1997
Hudson Foods Co. closed a plant in Nebraska, agreeing to destroy some 25 million pounds of hamburger after the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
1998
Samuel Bowers, a 73-year-old former Ku Klux Klan leader, was convicted in Hattiesburg, Miss., of ordering a 1966 firebombing that killed civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer.
2000
Rescue efforts to reach the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk ended with divers announcing none of the 118 sailors had survived.
2002
A jury in San Diego convicted David Westerfield of kidnapping 7-year-old Danielle van Dam from her home and killing her; he was later sentenced to death.
2006
British prosecutors announced that 11 people had been charged in an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners bound for the United States.
