June 17 » The United States Navy Hospital Corps is established.
July 4 » En route from New York to Le Havre, the SS La Bourgogne collides with another ship and sinks off the coast of Sable Island, with the loss of 549 lives.
July 8 » The death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, releases Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.
August 24 » Count Muravyov, Foreign Minister of Russia presents a rescript that convoked the First Hague Peace Conference.
August 29 » The Goodyear tire company is founded.
November 10 » Beginning of the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in United States history.
Day of death August 20, 1978
The temperature on August 20, 1978 was between 12.2 °C and 26.8 °C and averaged 18.5 °C. There was 11.5 hours of sunshine (80%). The partly clouded was. The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the south-southeast. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
January 1 » Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747, crashes into the Arabian Sea, due to instrument failure, spatial disorientation, and pilot error, off the coast of Bombay, India, killing all 213 people on board.
February 24 » The Yuba County Five disappear in California. Four of their bodies are found four months later.
March 16 » Supertanker Amoco Cadiz splits in two after running aground on the Portsall Rocks, three miles off the coast of Brittany, resulting in the largest oil spill in history at that time.
April 17 » Mir Akbar Khyber is assassinated, provoking a communist coup d'état in Afghanistan.
December 11 » The Lufthansa heist is committed by a group led by Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke. It was the largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil, at that time.
December 15 » U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People's Republic of China and sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Kerri Wiggins, "Wiggins-Mergenthaler Family Tree", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/wiggins-mergenthaler-family-tree/P2960.php : accessed May 13, 2025), "Ida Maria Constantina Olsson (1898-1978)".
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