• On Aug. 24, 79 A.D., after centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, burying Pompeii and killing thousands. The city, rediscovered in the 18th century, provided an archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization.

•On Aug. 25, 1819, fabled crime fighter Allan Pinkerton is born in Glasgow, Scotland. Pinkerton founded a detective agency in Chicago that originally gained fame for solving a series of train robberies and later became known for helping management break strikes by the new labor unions.

•On Aug. 22, 1864, the International Red Cross is founded by signed agreement among 12 nations. A red cross on a white background — the Swiss flag in reverse — was chosen as the international emblem in honor of Swiss humanitarian Jean-Henri Dunant.

•On Aug. 23, 1926, the death of silent-screen idol Rudolph Valentino at the age of 31 sends his fans into a hysterical state of mass mourning. In his brief film career, the Italian-born actor established a reputation as the archetypal screen lover.

•On Aug. 27, 1941, Prince Fumimaro Konoye, prime minister of Japan, announces that he would like to enter into negotiations with President Roosevelt to prevent the Japanese conflict with China from expanding into world war. At war’s end, he was served with an arrest warrant by U.S. occupying forces for suspicion of war crimes.

•On Aug. 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African-American from Chicago, is brutally murdered in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman. An all-white jury deliberated for less than an hour before issuing a verdict of “not guilty,” explaining that they believed the state had failed to prove the identity of the body.

•On Aug. 26, 1979, Charles Boyer, the handsome hero of French and American films, takes his own life with an overdose of sleeping pills. His wife of 25 years, Pat Paterson, had died only two days earlier.