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The events of August 26 · Read the full edition → · More from August 26 →
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A van marked IBM delivers a bomb to Harvey's casino floor

The note inside says even its builder cannot disarm it without $3 million.

Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, was packed with late-summer gamblers on August 26, 1980, when men in a white van marked "IBM" wheeled a large steel box onto the second floor, posing as copier technicians. Inside was roughly 1,000 pounds of dynamite stolen from a Fresno construction site, rigged into what the FBI called the most complex improvised explosive device it had ever examined. A ransom note soon surfaced demanding $3 million and warning that no one, not even the bomb's own builder, could safely disarm it…

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More from August 26
1920

Colby signs the paper: women's suffrage is now the law of the land

No ceremony, no witnesses, just a secretary of state's signature at his home in Washington.
1791

Fitch gets his patent, but so does everyone else claiming the steamboat

The federal Patent Commission hands identical recognition to four rival inventors on the same afternoon.
1968

Democrats open in Chicago; protesters scale a Civil War statue in Grant Park

Police pull a demonstrator down and break his arm as chants of "kill the pigs" rise over the park.
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Gunfire follows the blast at the crowded evacuation gate, and every entrance to the airfield slams shut.
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Read the full August 26 edition →Everything that happened on August 26 →
More from Cold War America
1975

Stafford and Leonov shake hands through an open hatch; American and Soviet spacecraft dock in orbit

Soyuz 19 and the last Apollo ever built linked up at 16:19 UTC, two days after lifting off from opposite sides of the world.
1966

Young and Collins ride Agena's engine to 412 nautical miles; no human has flown higher

Gemini 10 docks with its target vehicle hours after liftoff from Cape Kennedy, with Collins set to walk outside and retrieve hardware from a second Agena still drifting in orbit.
1960

From out of the deep to target, perfect: Polaris fires from a submerged submarine

A second missile follows within two hours, both striking 1,100 miles downrange off Florida.
1969

Eagle touches down with about 50 seconds of fuel left; Armstrong radios "the Eagle has landed"

Alarms blared during descent as Mission Control watched the fuel gauge fall, and a spacecraft named for a bird settled into lunar dust.
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