• Today is Friday, Aug. 17, the 230th day of 2012. There are 136 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On Aug. 17, 1982, the first commercially produced compact discs, a recording of ABBA's "The Visitors," were pressed at a Philips factory near Hanover, West Germany.
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• On this date:
• In 1807, Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat began heading up the Hudson River on its successful round trip between New York and Albany.
• In 1912, the second movie inspired by the Titanic disaster, a German production titled "In Nacht und Eis" (In Night and Ice), was released. (Unlike the first, "Saved From the Titanic," ''In Nacht und Eis" still exists.)
• In 1915, a mob in Cobb County, Ga., lynched Jewish businessman Leo Frank, whose death sentence for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan had been commuted to life imprisonment. (Frank, who'd maintained his innocence, was pardoned by the state of Georgia in 1986.)
• In 1942, during World War II, U.S. 8th Air Force bombers attacked German forces in Rouen, France. U.S. Marines raided a Japanese seaplane base on Makin Island.
• In 1943, the Allied conquest of Sicily was completed as U.S. and British forces entered Messina.
• In 1960, the newly renamed Beatles (formerly the Silver Beetles) began their first gig in Hamburg, West Germany, at the Indra Club. The West African country of Gabon became independent of France.
• In 1961, the United States and 19 Latin American countries signed the Charter of Punta del Este in Uruguay, creating the Alliance for Progress aimed at promoting economic growth and social justice.
• In 1962, East German border guards shot and killed 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who had attempted to cross the Berlin Wall into the western sector.

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