By The Associated Press

Today is Wednesday, Aug. 21, the 234th day of 2024. There are 132 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Aug. 21, 1831, Nat Turner launched a violent slave rebellion in Virginia, resulting in the deaths of at least 55 white people; scores of Black people were killed in retribution in the aftermath of the rebellion, and Turner was later executed.

Also on this date:

In 1858, the first of seven debates took place between Illinois senatorial contenders Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas.

In 1911, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris. (It was recovered two years later in Italy.)

In 1944, the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and China opened talks at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington that helped pave the way for establishment of the United Nations.

In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order making Hawaii the 50th state.

In 1983, Filipino politician Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated as he exited an aircraft at Manila International Airport. (His widow, Corazon Aquino, would become president of the Philippines three years later.)

In 1991, a hardline coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.

In 1992, an 11-day siege began at the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, as government agents tried to arrest Weaver for failing to appear in court on charges of selling two illegal sawed-off shotguns; on the first day of the siege, Weaver’s teenage son, Samuel, and Deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan were killed.

In 1993, in a serious setback for NASA, engineers lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft as it was about to reach the red planet on a $980 million mission.