Today in History: August 15, Woodstock music festival begins

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Today is Saturday, Aug. 15, the 227th day of 2026. There are 138 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Aug. 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York; more than 460,000 people attended the three-day festival, which would become a watershed event in American music and culture.

Also on this date:

In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had killed 17 years earlier.

In 1914, the Panama Canal officially opened as the SS Ancon crossed the just-completed waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.

In 1947, India gained independence after nearly 200 years of British rule.

In 1961, as workers began constructing a Berlin Wall made of concrete, East German soldier Conrad Schumann leapt to freedom over a tangle of barbed wire.

In 1989, F.W. de Klerk was sworn in as acting president of South Africa, one day after P.W. Botha resigned because of a power struggle within the National Party.

In 1998, 29 people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh (OH’-mah), Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility.

In 2003, bouncing back from the largest blackout in U.S. history, cities from the Midwest to Manhattan restored power to tens of millions of people.

In 2021, the Taliban regained control of the Afghan capital of Kabul after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

In 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a much-anticipated summit in Alaska but failed to secure an agreement to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Jim Dale is 91. Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is 88. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is 88. Author-journalist Linda Ellerbee is 82. Songwriter Jimmy Webb is 80. Actor Phyllis Smith is 77. Britain’s Princess Anne is 76. Actor Tess Harper is 76. Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio is 64. Film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (ihn-YAH’-ee-tu) is 63. Philanthropist Melinda French Gates is 62. Actor Debra Messing is 58. Actor Anthony Anderson is 56. Actor Ben Affleck is 54. Olympic gold medal beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings is 48. Rock singer Joe Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) is 37. Actor Jennifer Lawrence is 36.