On this day: August 15
The Panama Canal opens for business, "The Wizard of Oz" comes to Hollywood, World War II comes to an end and "3 days of peace & music" starts up in Bethel, N.Y., all on this day.
1914: While Frank Lloyd Wright is working in Chicago, Julian Carlton, a male servant from Barbados who had been hired several months earlier, sets fire to the living quarters of the architect's Wisconsin home, Taliesin, murders seven people and burns the living quarters to the ground. The dead include Wright's lover, Mamah Borthwick Cheney; her two children; a gardener; a draftsman named Emil Brodelle; a workman; and another workman's son. Carlton swallows muriatic acid immediately following the attack in an attempt to kill himself, but dies from starvation in jail seven weeks after the incident.
