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19201776 Club

Four pro football clubs meet in a Canton car showroom and agree to stop raiding each other's rosters

The Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles lay the first plank of what becomes the NFL.

Professional football in 1920 had no rules stopping teams from poaching each other's players, and no shared schedule. On August 20, 1920, representatives of the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles gathered at the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, Ohio, and formed the American Professional Football Conference. Their stated goal, printed in the Canton Evening Repository, was to raise the standard of the game, end bidding wars for players, and coordinate schedules. It was a small meeting in a car dealership, and it was the first step toward the NFL…

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More from August 20
1948

Washington expels the Soviet consul who wouldn't produce Oksana Kasenkina

Eight days after she jumped from his consulate's third-floor window, Jacob Lomakin is handed his passport home.
2020

Biden accepts the nomination alone in a Delaware ballroom, no crowd, no roar

A pandemic convention ends with the nominee speaking to a camera instead of a stadium.
1998

Thirteen Tomahawks hit a Khartoum medicine factory; Washington says it made nerve gas

The strike came thirteen days after the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, and the target was a plant that made most of Sudan's antibiotics.
19621776 Club
A faulty gauge triggered a reactor shutdown before she even reached Georgia.
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Read the full August 20 edition →Everything that happened on August 20 →
More from The World Wars
1945

The Enola Gay drops the first atomic bomb used in war on Hiroshima

Three-quarters of the city is gone within seconds; the pilot named the plane for his mother.
1929

A German airship lifts off from New Jersey to fly around the world

Hearst money bought the trip; a New Jersey field bought its start and finish.
1942

In the dark off Guadalcanal, Mikawa's cruisers sink four Allied warships in under an hour

Then, fearing carriers that had already left, the Japanese admiral turns north and leaves the invasion transports untouched.
1944

Bambi's loan runs out; the Forest Service names a bear of its own

Disney's Bambi was only on loan for a year. When the deal ran out, the Forest Service needed a mascot of its own.
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