“An army of Romanian civilians, men and women, both young and
old (above) dig anti-tank ditches in a border area, on June 22, 1944,
in readiness to repel Soviet armies.” (AP)   

On August 22, 1944, Soviet forces break through to Jassy, in northeastern 
Romania, convincing Romania’s king to sign an armistice with the Allies  
and concede control of his country to the USSR.

 
Soviet tanks occupy Bucharest.

  
           
            The Romanian Communist Party

Retired singer Kenneth Ray Rogers is 81 today.

Kenny Rogers and The First Edition, sometimes billed as The First Edition, was an eclectic rock band whose styles ranged from rock
and roll to R&B, folk, and country.

Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers

      
CAMILLE
BOHANNON

On this day in 1977, Voyager 2 was launched by NASA from a
spaceport in Cape Canaveral, Florida with a Titan IIIE / Centaur
rocket . The spacecraft was carrying a copper phonograph
record containing greetings in dozens of languages and
samples of music (below).

Singer Robert Anthony Plant is 71 today.

Led Zepplin reunited for a show at London’s O2 arena, 2007.

Richard Edmund Williams (March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019)

LONDON (AP) — Richard Williams, a Canadian-British animator whose work
on the bouncing cartoon bunny in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988) helped
blur the boundaries between the animated world and our own, has died. His 
daughter, Natasha Sutton Williams, said the Oscar-winning artist died from 
cancer at his home in Bristol, England on Friday.

The first race was held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, now the home of
the world’s most famous motor racing competition, the Indianapolis 500.

Built on 328 acres of farmland five miles northwest of Indianapolis, Indiana,
the speedway was started by local businessmen as a testing facility for
Indiana’s growing automobile industry. The idea was that occasional races
at the track would pit cars from different manufacturers against each other
and after seeing what these cars could do, spectators would presumably
head down to the showroom of their choice to get a closer look.

The rectangular two-and-a-half-mile track linked four turns, each exactly 440
yards from start to finish, by two long and two short straight sections. In that
first five-mile race on August 19, 1909, 12,000 spectators watched Austrian
engineer Louis Schwitzer win with an average speed of 57.4 miles per hour.

 
Louis Schwitzer (1880 – 1967) winner of the inaugural
race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.