August 19th
Events:
*1692 - Salem Witch Trials: In Salem, Massachusetts five women and a clergyman are executed after being convicted of witchcraft.
* 1990 - Leonard Bernstein conducts his final concert, ending with Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.
# 1991 - Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev is overthrown by a coup. This leads to the fall of the Soviet Union (I remember waking up early in the morning to hear this news on the radio)
Births:
1871 - Orville Wright, American aviation pioneer (d. 1948)
1883 - Coco Chanel, French clothing designer (d. 1971)
1930 - Frank McCourt,
Deaths:
1662 - Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, physicist, and philosopher (b. 1623)
1980 - Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank (b. 1889)