Today in history 8/23/2021

August 23rd, 1939:

In Moscow, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact, which divided Eastern Europe into spheres of Nazi and Soviet influence, just days before World War II began as the Nazis invaded Poland.

1927:

In Boston, Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, were executed for the murders of two men during a robbery.

50 years later, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis proclaimed that, "any stigma and disgrace should be forever removed from their names."

But controversy over Sacco and Vanzetti's guilt and whether they got a fair trial persist to this day.

2003:

Next, defrocked Roman Catholic priest John Geoghan was beaten and strangled to death while serving time in prison.

Geoghan, who was convicted of child sex abuse, became a symbol of the clergy sex abuse scandal that stunned America's Catholic church.

1926:

In New York, silent movie heartthrob Rudolph Valentino, one of film's first major sex symbols, died of a perforated ulcer at the age of 31.

1960:

Oscar Hammerstein, the Broadway librettist, met his demise in Doylestown, Pennsylvania at the age of 65.