Today in History, August 12th
On August 12, 1898, Spain agreed to an armistice ending the Spanish-American War. Plus the T. rex found in South Dakota and the Kursk disaster.
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August 12 is best known for 1898, when Spain agreed to an armistice with the United States, ending the fighting in the Spanish-American War. The date also saw a strikingly complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton found in South Dakota in 1990 and the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sink in the Barents Sea in 2000.
The big story: Spain and the U.S. agree to stop fighting (1898)
Cuba had been in revolt against Spain since 1895, and American newspapers were full of stories about Spanish forces herding rural Cubans into disease-ridden camps. In February 1898, the battleship USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor, killing 260 crew members. What caused the blast was never settled, but many Americans blamed Spain, and by late April the two countries were at war. It was short. Commodore George Dewey wrecked Spain’s Pacific fleet at Manila Bay on May 1, American troops won at San Juan Hill on July 1, and Spain gave up Santiago, and with it Cuba, on July 17. On August 12, 1898, Spain accepted a peace protocol on American terms: it would give up Cuba and hand over Puerto Rico and Manila until a treaty settled the details. That treaty, signed in Paris in December, gave the U.S. Puerto Rico and Guam and sold it the Philippines for $20 million. The U.S. had gained its first overseas empire.
More events on August 12
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1676 | King Philip’s War in New England ended when the Wampanoag leader the English called King Philip was killed by a Native American fighting on the English side (Old Style date). |
| 1964 | Ian Fleming, the British author who created James Bond, died of a heart attack at 56. |
| 1970 | The soccer club Paris Saint-Germain was founded through a merger of two clubs. |
| 1973 | Jack Nicklaus won the PGA Championship for his 14th major title, passing Bobby Jones’s record of 13. |
| 1985 | Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crashed into a mountain in Japan with 524 people aboard. Only four survived. |
| 1988 | Self-taught painter Jean-Michel Basquiat died of an overdose at 27. |
| 1990 | Fossil hunters in South Dakota found the most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton discovered up to that time. |
| 1994 | Major League Baseball players began a strike that lasted 232 days and wiped out the World Series, the first canceled in 90 years. |
| 2000 | The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea, and all 118 crew members died. |
| 2014 | Hollywood star Lauren Bacall died at her New York City home at 89. |
Born on August 12
- 1881: Cecil B. DeMille, Hollywood director and producer famous for grand-scale epics, born in Ashfield, Massachusetts.
- 1887: Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics for new forms of atomic theory, born in Vienna.
- 1971: Pete Sampras, American tennis star and winner of 14 Grand Slam singles titles, born in Washington, D.C.
Sources
- Armistice ends the Spanish-American War, History.com
- This Day in History: August 12, History.com
- On This Day: August 12, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Cecil B. DeMille, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Erwin Schrödinger: Facts, NobelPrize.org
- Pete Sampras, Encyclopaedia Britannica
