Today is Wednesday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2026. (The attacker, James Alex Fields, was sentenced to life in prison on 29 federal hate crime charges, and life plus 419 years on state charges.) In 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened. In 1944, during World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England. In 1960, the first balloon communications satellite — the Echo 1 — was launched by the United States from Cape Canaveral.