This Day in History

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August 25

1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, and the second most senior, is formed.

1543 – The first Europeans, and the first firearms, arrive in Japan.

1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.

1894 – Kitasato Shibasaburō discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.

1916 – The United States National Park Service is created.

1944 – World War II: Paris is liberated by the Allies.

1981 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Saturn.

1989 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the second to last planet in the Solar System at the time.

1991 – Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will become Linux.

1994 - Jimmy Buffett crashed his Grumman G-44 Widgeon seaplane on take-off in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Buffett swam away from the wreckage.

2012 – Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space, becoming the first man-made object to do so.

Births

1530 – Ivan the Terrible; 1819 – Allan Pinkerton (Pinkerton National Detective Agency); 1836 – Bret Harte; 1909 – Ruby Keeler, Michael Rennie ('Klaatu' in The Day The Earth Stood Still); 1916 – Van Johnson; 1917 – Mel Ferrer; 1918 – Leonard Bernstein♪ ♫; 1919 – George Wallace; 1921 – Monty Hall; 1927 – Althea Gibson; 1930 – Sean Connery (woman slapper); 1931 – Regis Philbin; 1933 – Patrick F. McManus; 1933 – Tom Skerritt; 1938 – David Canary (All My Children, Bonanza); 1937 – Virginia Wolff; 1939 – John Badham; 1943 – Harry Manfredini♪ ♫; 1944 – Anthony Heald (the old friend Hannibal Lecter was going to have for dinner at the end of The Silence of the Lambs); 1949 – John Savage (The Deer Hunter), Gene Simmons(KISS); 1950 – Willy DeVille♪ ♫(Mink DeVille); 1951 – Rob Halford♪ ♫(Judas Priest, Fight); 1954 – Elvis Costello♪ ♫; 1958 – Tim Burton; 1961 – Billy Ray Cyrus♪ ♫; 1962 – Vivian Campbell; 1964 – Blair Underwood; 1968 – Rachael Ray; 1970 – Jo Dee Messina♪ ♫; 1976 – Alexander Skarsgård ('Tarzan' in The Legend of Tarzan, son of actor Stellen Skarsgård); 1987 – Blake Lively (Gossip Girl)

Deaths

79 – Pliny the Elder; 1819 – James Watt; 1822 – William Herschel; 1867 – Michael Faraday; 1900 – Friedrich Nietzsche; 1908 – Henri Becquerel; 1945 – John Birch (John Birch Society); 1956 – Alfred Kinsey; 1967 – Paul Muni; 1984 – Truman Capote; 1988 – Art Rooney (founded the Pittsburgh Steelers); 2000 – Frederick C. Bock (namesake of Bockscar, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan), Allen Woody(Allman Bros); 2001 – Aaliyah♪ ♫; 2009 – Ted Kennedy; 2012 – Neil Armstrong

[Gravdigr]

August 26

Today is Women's Equality Day in the United States.

1346 – Hundred Years' War: The military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armoured knights is established at the Battle of Crécy.

1498 – Michelangelo is commissioned to carve the Pietà.

1768 – Captain James Cook sets sail from England on board HMS Endeavour.

1791 – John Fitch is granted a United States patent for the steamboat.

1883 – The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa begins its final, paroxysmal, stage.

1920 – The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote.

1970 – The then-new feminist movement, led by Betty Friedan, leads a nationwide Women's Strike for Equality.

1980 – John Birges plants a bomb at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, United States. The FBI inadvertently detonated the bomb during disarming.

1987 - Sonny Bono, who once said that he never voted until he was 53, announced that he was running for mayor of Palm Springs, California. He won the election in 1988 and went on to win a seat in Congress in 1996.

1999 – Russia begins the Second Chechen War in response to the Invasion of Dagestan by the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade.

2004 - Singer Laura Branigan died of a brain aneurysm. She had had a 1982 US No.2 & UK No.6 single with ‘Gloria’ and a 1984 US No.4 & UK No.5 with ‘Self Control’. She had also played Janis Joplin in the US musical Love, Janis.

2015 – Two U.S. journalists are shot and killed by a disgruntled former coworker while conducting a live report in Moneta, Virginia.

Births

1676 – Robert Walpole; 1740 – Joseph-Michel Montgolfier; 1743 – Antoine Lavoisier; 1845 – Mary Ann Nichols (victim of Jack The Ripper); 1898 – Peggy Guggenheim; 1909 – Jim Davis ('Jock Ewing' on Dallas); 1910 – Mother Teresa; 1935 – Geraldine Ferraro; 1940 – Don LaFontaine (voice-over artist); 1944 – Maureen Tucker(The Velvet Underground); 1945 – Tom Ridge (1st Secretary of Homeland Security); 1949 – Leon Redbone♪ ♫; 1952 – Michael Jeter; 1952 – Will Shortz (crossword puzzle creator); 1960 – Branford Marsalis♪ ♫; 1966 – Shirley Manson♪ ♫(Garbage); 1970 – Melissa McCarthy (Mike & Molly); 1980 – Macaulay Culkin, Chris Pine; 1985 – Brian Kelley♪ ♫(Florida-Georgia Line)

Deaths

1930 – Lon Chaney; 1974 – Charles Lindbergh; 1977 – H. A. Rey (created Curious George); 1978 – Charles Boyer; 1980 – Tex Avery (created the characters of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Droopy, Screwy Squirrel, and developed Porky Pig, & Chilly Willy); 1986 – Ted Knight; 2004 – Laura Branigan (Gloria); 2009 – Dominick Dunne

[Gravdigr]

August 27

1776 – Battle of Long Island: In what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe defeat Americans under General George Washington.

1832 – Black Hawk, leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrenders to U.S. authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.

1859 – Edwin Drake successfully drilled for oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, resulting in the Pennsylvania oil rush, the first oil boom in the United States.

1881 – The Georgia hurricane makes landfall near Savannah, Georgia, resulting in an estimated 700 deaths.

1883 – Eruption of Krakatoa: Four enormous explosions destroy the island of Krakatoa and cause years of climate change.

1893 – The Sea Islands hurricane strikes the United States near Savannah, Georgia, killing an estimated 1,000-2,000 people.

1896 – Anglo-Zanzibar War: The shortest war in world history (09:00 to 09:45), between the United Kingdom and Zanzibar.

1918 – Mexican Revolution: Battle of Ambos Nogales: U.S. Army forces skirmish against Mexican Carrancistas and their German advisors on the Mexican-American border in Arizona, in the only battle of World War I fought on American soil.

1939 – First flight of the turbojet-powered Heinkel He 178, the world's first jet aircraft.

1942 – First day of the Sarny Massacre.

1962 – The Mariner 2 unmanned space mission is launched to Venus by NASA.

1967 - British music entrepreneur and the manager of The Beatles, Brian Epstein was found dead, locked in a bedroom at his London home. A coroner's inquest concluded that Epstein died from an overdose of the sleeping pill Carbitrol.

1979 – A Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb kills British retired admiral Lord Mountbatten and three others while they are boating on holiday in Sligo, Republic of Ireland. Shortly after, 18 British Army soldiers are killed in an ambush near Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland.

1980 – A massive bomb planted by extortionist John Birges explodes at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada after a failed disarming attempt by the FBI. Although the hotel is damaged, no one is injured.

1990 - Stevie Ray Vaughan was killed when the helicopter he was flying in, hit a man-made ski slope while trying to navigate through dense fog. Vaughan had played a show at Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, Wisconsin with Robert Cray & His Memphis Horns, and Eric Clapton. Vaughan was informed by a member of Clapton's crew that three seats were open on a helicopter returning to Chicago with Clapton's crew, it turned out there was only one seat left; Vaughan requested it from his older brother, Jimmie, who obliged. Three members of Eric Clapton's entourage were also killed.

1992 - John Lennon's handwritten lyrics to The Beatles song 'A Day In The Life' from Sgt. Pepper sold in an auction at Sotheby's London for $100,000 (£56,600). The lyrics were put up for sale again in March 2006 by Bonhams in New York. Sealed bids were opened on 7 March 2006 and offers started at about $2 million. The lyric sheet was auctioned again by Sotheby's in June 2010 when it was purchased by an anonymous American buyer who paid $1,200,000 (£810,000).

2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles (55,758,005 km) distant.

2006 – Comair Flight 5191 crashes on takeoff from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky bound for Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta. Of the passengers and crew, 49 of 50 are confirmed dead.

2011 – Hurricane Irene strikes the United States east coast, killing 47 and causing an estimated $15.6 billion in damage.

Births

1809 – Hannibal Hamlin (15th VPOTUS); 1865 – Charles G. Dawes (30th VPOTUS); 1874 – Carl Bosch (Haber–Bosch process, "On average, one-half of the nitrogen in a human body comes from synthetically fixed sources, the product of a Haber–Bosch plant."); 1877 – Charles Rolls (yeah, that Rolls); 1890 – Man Ray; 1896 – Léon Theremin (invented the Theremin); 1899 – C. S. Forester (wrote The African Queen, Horatio Hornblower series of novels); 1906 – Ed Gein; 1908 – Lyndon B. Johnson (36th POTUS); 1916 – Martha Raye; 1929 – Ira Levin♪ ♫; 1939 – William Least Heat-Moon; 1942 – Daryl Dragon(the captain from Capt. & Tennille); 1943 – Tuesday Weld; 1947 – Barbara Bach; 1949 – Jeff Cook(Alabama); 1950 – Charles Fleischer (voiced Roger Rabbit); 1952 – Paul 'PeeWee Herman' Reubens; 1953 – Alex Lifeson(Rush), Peter Stormare ('Slippery Pete' from Seinfeld; The Big Lebowski, one of my favorite villain actors); 1956 – Glen Matlock(Sex Pistols); 1957 – Bernhard Langer; 1959 – Downtown Julie Brown (former MTV vj); 1961 – Tom Ford; 1969 – Chandra Wilson (Grey's Anatomy); 1970 – Tony Kanal(No Doubt); 1973 – Cory Bowles (Trailer Park Boys); 1976 – Sarah Chalke (Scrubs); 1979 – Aaron 'Bitch!' Paul (Breaking Bad); 1988 – Alexa PenaVega

Deaths

1576 – Titian; 1963 – W. E. B. Du Bois; 1964 – Gracie Allen; 1967 – Brian Epstein (managed The Beatles); 1975 – Haile Selassie; 1979 – Louis Mountbatten; 1980 – Douglas Kenney (co-founded National Lampoon); 1990 – Stevie Ray Vaughan; 1996 – Greg Morris (Mission: Impossible)

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August 28

There are 125 days remaining in 2016.

There are 118 days til Christmas.

1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay.

1789 – William Herschel discovers a new moon of Saturn: Enceladus.

1830 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's new steam locomotive, Tom Thumb, races a horse-drawn car, presaging steam's role in US railroads. The horse won the race.

1845 – The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.

1859 – A massive solar storm began, causing a coronal mass ejection to strike the Earth's magnetosphere that generated aurorae that were visible in the middle latitudes. Known as the Carrington Event.

1862 – American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas. The battle ends on August 30.

1898 – Caleb Bradham invents the carbonated soft drink that will later be called "Pepsi-Cola".

1937 – Toyota Motors, now the world's largest automobile manufacturer, was spun off from Toyota Industries as an independent company.

1955 – Black teenager Emmett Till is brutally murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent Civil Rights Movement.

1957 – U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond begins a filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on the Civil Rights Act of 1957; he stopped speaking 24 hours and 18 minutes later, the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator.

1963 – March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his I Have a Dream speech.

1963 – Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie are murdered in their Manhattan apartment, prompting the events that would lead to the passing of the Miranda Rights.

1964 – The Philadelphia race riot begins.

1968 – Riots in Chicago, Illinois, during the Democratic National Convention.

1988 – Ramstein air show disaster: Three aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collide and the wreckage falls into the crowd. Seventy-five are killed and 346 seriously injured.

1990 – Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province.

1993 – The Galileo spacecraft discovers a moon, later named Dactyl, around 243 Ida, the first known asteroid moon.

Births

1728 – John Stark (no relation to Ned, Arya, Sansa, Rob, Bran, or Rickon); 1749 – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust); 1774 – Elizabeth Ann Seton; 1831 – Lucy Webb Hayes (20th FLOTUS); 1899 – Charles Boyer; 1921 – Nancy Kulp ('Miss Hathaway' on The Beverly Hillbillies); 1925 – Billy Grammer, Donald O'Connor; 1929 – Roxie Roker(The Jeffersons, Lenny Kravitz's mother); 1930 – Ben Gazzara; 1942 – Sterling Morrison(The Velvet Underground); 1943 – David Soul; 1952 – Rita Dove; 1956 – Luis Guzmán; 1957 – Rick Rossovich (Top Gun); 1957 – Ai Weiwei; 1958 – Scott Hamilton; 1961 – Jennifer Coolidge('Stifler's Mom' in American Pie movie series, Two Broke Girls); 1965 – Amanda Tapping (Stargate SG-1), Shania Twain♪ ♫; 1969 – Jack Black♪ ♫; 1969 – Jason Priestley; 1982 – LeAnn Rimes♪ ♫; 1986 – Armie Hammer ('Illya Kuryakin' in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. 2013)

Deaths

1784 – Junípero Serra; 1903 – Frederick Law Olmsted; 1987 – John Huston; 1988 – Max Shulman (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis); 2007 – Hilly Kristal (founded CBGB); 2013 – Edmund B. Fitzgerald (namesake of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald)

[Gravdigr]

August 29

708 – Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).

1758 – The first American Indian reservation is established, at Indian Mills, New Jersey.

1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.

1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.

1842 – Signing of the Treaty of Nanking ends the First Opium War.

1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first mountain-climbing rack railway. It is still in operation.

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen.

1898 – The Goodyear tire company is founded.

1907 – The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers. The still-under-construction bridge would collapse again in 1916, the two disasters claiming a total of 88 lives.

1911 – Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans (the last "wild" Indian), emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.

1915 – US Navy salvage divers raise F-4, the first U.S. submarine sunk in an accident.

1922 – The first radio advertisement is broadcast on WEAF-AM in New York City.

1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1950 – Korean War: British troops arrive in Korea to bolster the US presence there.

1958 – United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1966 – The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

1977 - Three people were arrested in Memphis after trying to steal Elvis Presley's body. As a result, his remains would be later moved to Graceland.

1992 - U2 became only the second act ever (Billy Joel being the first) to play Yankee Stadium in New York City, during their sold out Zoo TV tour.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing an estimated 1,836 people and causing over $108 billion in damage.

77-year-old Fats Domino was rescued from the flooding in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina. He had earlier told his agent that he planned to remain in his home despite the order to evacuate.

2007 – 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident: Six US cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads are flown without proper authorization from Minot Air Force Base to Barksdale Air Force Base.

2009 - The Los Angeles coroner confirmed Michael Jackson's death was homicide, primarily caused by the powerful anaesthetic Propofol. The singer suffered a cardiac arrest at his Los Angeles home in June, aged 50. The report said Propofol and the sedative Lorazepam were the "primary drugs responsible for Jackson's death", but four other drugs were also found.

Births

1632 – John Locke (not the one on Lost, this one was from a much bigger island); 1809 – Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.; 1876 – Charles F. Kettering (founded Delco Electronics); 1915 – Ingrid Bergman; 1917 – Isabel Sanford ('Weezy' on The Jeffersons); 1920 – Charlie 'Yardbird' Parker♪ ♫; 1922 – Richard Blackwell; 1923 – Richard Attenborough; 1924 – Dinah Washington♪ ♫; 1927 – Jimmy C. Newman♪ ♫; 1936 – John McCain; 1939 – Joel Schumacher; 1940 – James Brady, Gary Gabelich(driver of the rocket car The Blue Flame); 1941 – Robin Leach; 1945 – Harry S. Morgan (porn actor, director, producer), Chris Copping(Procol Harum); 1958 – Michael Jackson♪ ♫; 1959 – Rebecca De Mornay; 1959 – Chris Hadfield (Canuck astronaut); 1968 – Meshell Ndegeocello♪ ♫; 1971 – Carla Gugino

Deaths

1533 – Atahualpa; 1769 – Edmond Hoyle ("According To Hoyle"); 1877 – Brigham Young; 1930 – William Archibald Spooner (namesake of 'Spoonerism'); 1931 – David T. Abercrombie (co-founded Abercrombie & Fitch); 1946 – Adolphus Busch III; 1968 – Ulysses S. Grant III; 1971 – Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. (Leopold & Loeb); 1976 - Jimmy Reed♪ ♫; 1982 – Ingrid Bergman; 1987 – Archie Campbell (Hee Haw), Lee Marvin; 2007 – Richard Jewell (falsely accused Olympic Park Bombing suspect); 2011 – David "Honeyboy" Edwards♪ ♫; 2013 – Bruce C. Murray (co-founded The Planetary Society); 2015 – Wayne Dyer

[Gravdigr]

August 30

1791 – HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on the outer Great Barrier Reef the previous day.

1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre: Creek of the "Red Sticks" faction kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.

1835 – Melbourne, Australia is founded.

1836 – The city of Houston, Texas is founded by brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen.

1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces.

1949 - Hank Williams went into Herzog Studio in Cincinnati to record 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry'. Williams wrote the song originally intending that the words be spoken, rather than sung. The song about loneliness was largely inspired by his troubled relationship with wife Audrey Sheppard.

1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.

1963 – The Moscow–Washington hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation.

1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.

1992 – The 11-day Ruby Ridge standoff ends with Randy Weaver surrendering to federal authorities.

1995 - Carly Simon and James Taylor performed live together in front of 10,000 fans on Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. It was the first time they appeared live on the same stage since 1979.

2003 – While being towed across the Barents Sea, the de-commissioned Russian submarine K-159 sinks, taking nine of her crew and 800 kg of spent nuclear fuel with her.

Births

1797 – Mary Shelley; 1896 – Raymond Massey; 1906 – Joan Blondell; 1908 – Fred MacMurray; 1912 – Nancy Wake (genuine badass); 1918 – Ted Williams; 1919 – Kitty Wells♪ ♫; 1926 – Daryl Gates; 1927 – Bill Daily (I Dream Of Jeannie); 1930 – Warren Buffett ($$$); 1935 – John Phillips♪ ♫(The Mamas & The Papas); 1937 – Bruce McLaren; 1941 – Ben Jones ('Cooter' on The Dukes of Hazzard); 1943 – Robert Crumb (created Fritz The Cat); 1948 – Lewis Black; 1950 – Antony Gormley (sculptor Angel of the North); 1951 – Timothy Bottoms; 1954 – David Paymer; 1956 – Frank Conniff (MST3K); 1963 – Michael Chiklis (The Shield, Fantastic Four), Paul Oakenfold♪ ♫(dj); 1972 – Cameron Diaz; 1973 – Lisa Ling; 1982 – Andy Roddick

Deaths

1879 – John Bell Hood; 1938 – Max Factor, Sr.; 1961 – Charles Coburn; 1968 – William Talman ('District Attorney Burger' on Perry Mason); 1979 – Jean Seberg; 1993 – Richard Jordan; 1995 – Sterling Morrison(The Velvet Underground); 2003 – Charles Bronson; 2006 – Glenn Ford; 2015 – Wes Craven

[Gravdigr]

August 31

Today is National Trail Mix Day in the United States.

1422 – King Henry V of England dies of dysentery while in France. His son, Henry VI becomes King of England at the age of 9 months.

1803 – Meriwether Lewis and William Clark start their expedition to the west by leaving Pittsburgh at 11 in the morning.

1864 – During the American Civil War, Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launch an assault on Atlanta.

1888 – Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's confirmed victims.

1895 – German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his Navigable Balloon.

1897 – Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector.

1920 – The first radio news program is broadcast by 8MK in Detroit.

1943 – USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after a black person, is commissioned.

1968 – Garfield Sobers became the first batsman ever to hit six sixes in a single over of six consecutive balls in first-class cricket. It was a truly wicked bit of googly.

1990, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Wonder sang 'Amazing Grace' at a memorial service held for guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan who had been killed in a helicopter crash 4 days earlier.

1997 – Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul die in a car crash in Paris.

2005 – The 2005 Al-Aaimmah bridge stampede in Baghdad kills 1,199 people.

2006 – Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream, stolen on August 22, 2004, is recovered in a raid by Norwegian police.

Births

12 – Caligula; 1870 – Maria Montessori (Montessori schools); 1897 – Fredric March; 1903 – Arthur Godfrey; 1905 – Sanford Meisner; 1908 – William Saroyan; 1914 – Richard Basehart; 1920 – G. D. Spradlin; 1924 – Buddy Hackett; 1928 – James Coburn; 1931 – Noble Willingham; 1937 – Bobby Parker; 1939 – Jerry Allison(Buddy Holly & The Crickets); 1942 – Isao Aoki; 1945 – Van Morrison♪ ♫, Bob Welch(Fleetwood Mac); 1948 - Rudolf Schenker(The Scorpions); 1949 – Richard Gere; 1962 – Dee Bradley Baker (voice of 'Klaus', the goldfish, on American Dad); 1970 – Debbie Gibson; 1972 – Chris Tucker ("You got knocked the fuck out, man!")

Deaths

1422 – Henry V of England; 1867 – Charles Baudelaire; 1888 – Mary Ann Nichols (Jack The Ripper's first confirmed victim); 1948 – Billy Laughlin ('Froggy' on Our Gang); 1969 – Rocky Marciano; 1973 – John Ford; 1979 – Sally Rand; 1997 – Dodi Fayed, Diana, Princess of Wales; 2002 – Lionel Hampton; 2013 – David Frost; 2014 – Jimi Jamison♪ ♫(Survivor)

[Gravdigr]

Let's try this one more goddamn time, nothing like killing a fucking hour and a half twice.

September 1

Today is Random Acts of Kindness Day.

Today is Wattle Day in Australia, marking the first day of Spring.

717 – Siege of Constantinople: The Muslim armada with 1,800 ships, is defeated by the Byzantine navy through the use of Greek fire.

1532 – Lady Anne Boleyn is made Marquess of Pembroke by her fiancé, King Henry VIII of England.

1804 – Juno, one of the largest asteroids in the Main Belt, is discovered by the German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.

1836 – Narcissa Whitman, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.

1878 – Emma Nutt becomes the world's first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.

1894 – Over 400 people die in the Great Hinckley Fire, a forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota.

1914 – The last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.

1952 – The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway, is first published.

1969 – A coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power.

1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.

1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435.587 miles per hour (2,310.353 km/h).

1983 – Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board die, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald.

1985 – A joint American–French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

2004 – The Beslan school hostage crisis commences when armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia.

Births

1653 – Johann Pachelbel; 1854 – Engelbert Humperdinck; 1866 – James J. Corbett; 1875 – Edgar Rice Burroughs; 1920 – Richard Farnsworth; 1922 – Yvonne De Carlol; 1923 – Rocky Marciano; 1928 – George Maharis; 1931 – Boxcar Willie; 1933 – Ann Richards; 1933 – Conway Twitty; 1937 – Al Geiberger; 1938 – Alan Dershowitz; 1939 – Lily Tomlin; 1946 – Barry Gibb; 1950 – Phil McGraw; 1970 – Padma Lakshmi

Deaths

1557 – Jacques Cartier; 1838 – William Clark; 1989 – A. Bartlett Giamatti; 2005 – R. L. Burnside; 2008 – Jerry Reed; 2012 – Hal David

[glatt]

[Thanks for always posting these.]

Wattle day?

They needed this.

[Gravdigr]

That second effort was somewhat condensed from the first one.

And you're welcome.

Additions and corrections are always welcome. And encouraged.

[Gravdigr]

September 2

Today is Victory Over Japan Day (V-J Day) in the United States, marking the end of World War II.

1666 – The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings, including St Paul's Cathedral, and the homes of 70,000 of the city's 80,000 citizens.

1752 – Great Britain adopts the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe.

1789 – The United States Department of the Treasury is founded.

1806 – A massive landslide destroys the town of Goldau, Switzerland, killing 457.

1859 – A solar super storm affects electrical telegraph service.

1864 – American Civil War: Union forces enter Atlanta, a day after the Confederate defenders flee the city, ending the Atlanta Campaign.

1870 – Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan: Prussian forces take Napoleon III of France and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner.

1901 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, "Speak softly and carry a big stick" at the Minnesota State Fair.

1912 – Arthur Rose Eldred is awarded the first Eagle Scout award of the Boy Scouts of America.

1945 – World War II: Combat ends in the Pacific Theater: The Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed by Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

1963 – CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television's first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.

1984 – Seven people are shot and killed and 12 wounded in the Milperra massacre, a shootout between the rival motorcycle gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in Sydney, Australia.

1987 – In Moscow, the trial begins for 19-year-old pilot Mathias Rust, who flew his Cessna airplane into Red Square in May.

Births

1661 – Georg Böhm; 1675 – William Somervile; 1850 – Albert Spalding (co-founded the Spalding Sporting Goods Company); 1901 – Adolph Rupp (coached the University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball team for 42 years, namesake of Rupp Arena); 1911 – William F. Harrah (founded Caesars Entertainment Corporation); 1914 – Tom Glazer♪ ♫; 1915 – Meinhardt Raabe (Munchkin); 1917 – Cleveland Amory; 1925 – Hugo Montenegro♪ ♫; 1929 – Hal Ashby; 1934 – Grady Nutt (minister & humorist, Hee Haw); 1935 – D. Wayne Lukas (horse trainer); 1937 – Peter Ueberroth; 1938 – Mary Jo Catlett; 1946 – Billy Preston♪ ♫; 1946 – Dan White (Harvey Milk's & George Moscone's assassin); 1948 – Terry Bradshaw, Christa McAuliffe; 1951 – Michael Gray ('Billy Batson' on Shazam!), Mark Harmon ('Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs' on NCIS); 1952 – Jimmy Connors; 1957 – Steve Porcaro(Toto); 1964 – Keanu Reeves; 1965 – Lennox Lewis; 1966 – Salma Hayek

Deaths

1910 – Henri Rousseau; 1964 – Alvin C. York; 1969 – Ho Chi Minh; 1973 – J. R. R. Tolkien; 1978 – Fred G. Meyer (founded Fred Meyer); 2005 – Bob Denver (Gilligan's Island)

[Clodfobble]

rival motorcycle gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in Sydney, Australia.

Now I am laughing as I try to pronounce "bandidos" and "comancheros" with an Australian accent.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

Now I am laughing as I try to pronounce "bandidos" and "comancheros" with an Australian accent.

Awesome! It didn't even occur to me to try that.

[Gravdigr]

Cawmuncheeros

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

September 2

1752 – Great Britain adopts the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe.

It really doesn't do to rush into these things, you know.