TODAY is Tuesday, August 20, the 232nd day of 2002. There are 133 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>

In 1833, Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, was born in North Bend, Ohio.

In 1914, German forces occupied Brussels, Belgium, during the First World War.

In 1918, Britain opened its offensive on the Western front during the First World War.

In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

In 1955, hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.

In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion-dollar anti-poverty measure.

In 1968, the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalisation drive of Alexander Dubcek’s regime.

In 1977, the US launched Voyager II, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“If a thing is absolutely true, how can it not also be a lie? An absolute must contain its opposite.” — Charlotte Painter, American writer and educator.