This Day in History

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Fair enough.
Comments and corrections are welcomed.


That tidbit came from ‘HistoryNet’. https://www.historynet.com/today-in-history

Further research indicates that many/most historical accounts list September 7, as the start of the ‘Blitz’.

According to the Imperial War Museums:
“...The Blitz began on 7 September, 'Black Saturday', when German bombers attacked London, leaving 430 dead and 1,600 injured...”
➥ https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-blitz-around-britain

According to the BBC:
“.. and on 7 September 1940 they embarked on a sustained eight-month bombing campaign, targeting all the UK's major cities...”
➥ https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33314462

If they had said it was the first time the Luftwaffe had attacked London and the home counties that would be OK - but they didn't - they said "Great Britain'.

No wonder we(e?) Scots want out of Great Britain so we can leave the Little Englanders to get on with whatever it is they want to get on with.

[GordMay]

August 9

0048 BCE: During the Roman Civil War of 49–45 bce, Julius Caesar's troops decisively defeated the army of Pompey, at the Battle of Pharsalus, causing Pompey to flee to Egypt, where he was subsequently murdered.

1173: In Pisa, Italy, construction began on a bell tower that became internationally famous as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It takes two centuries to complete.

1483: Opening of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.

1790: Robert Gray's “Columbia Rediviva” returns to Boston, after 3 year journey, 1st American ship to circumnavigate the Globe.

1842: US-Canada border defined by Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

1854: Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” is published.

1898: Rudolf Diesel of Germany obtains patent #608,845, for his internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine.

1937: “Ranger” (US) easily beats “Endeavour II” (England) in race 4, to wrap up the 17th America's Cup yachting series, 4-0; it's the final competition for 21 years.

1945: Atomic bomb [‘Fat Man’] dropped on Nagasaki.

1969: Charles Manson cult kills five, including actress Sharon Tate

2020: New Zealand marks 100 days without community transmission of COVID-19.

2021: Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis, the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report.
IPCC Press Conference ➥

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z149vLKn9d8

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by GordMay

1898: Rudolf Diesel of Germany obtains patent #608,845, for his internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine.

That's US patent 608,845. See attached.

I'll delete the attachment within 24 hours.

[GordMay]

August 10

0610: In Islam, the traditional date of the Laylat al-Qadr, when Muhammad began to receive the Qur'an.

1500: Portuguese sea captain Diego Diaz is first European to sight Madagascar.

1628: Swedish warship “Vasa” sinks, on her maiden voyage, in Stockholm, killing perhaps 30, of approximately 150 people..

1675: King Charles II, and John Flamsteed, lay the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London.

1776: American Revolutionary War: word of the United States Declaration of Independence reaches London.

1793: Louvre Museum opened, as ‘The Museum Central des Arts’, by the French revolutionary government, as a public museum in Paris.

1831: Hurricane hits Barbados; about 1,500 die.

1846: Smithsonian Institution created, after a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America, from an obscure English scientist [James Smithson].

1897: German chemist Felix Hoffman first synthesizes acetylsalicylic acid, which would later be patened by his company Bayer, under the name "Aspirin".

1945: Japan announces willingness to surrender to Allies, provided Emperor Hirohito's status remains unchanged.

1954: At Massena, New York, the groundbreaking ceremony for the St. Lawrence Seaway is held.

1961: UK applies for membership of the European Common Market.

1977: US & Panama sign Panama Canal Zone accord.
1977: Postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested, and charged with being the “Son of Sam,” the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year, killing six young people, and wounding seven others, with a .44-caliber revolver. He later confessed, and was sentenced to 365 years in prison.

1994: Last British troops leave Hong Kong (been there since Sept 1841).

2003: The United Kingdom records its first ever temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. At Brogdale, in Kent, a temperature of 101.3F was recorded, the highest ever recorded temperature in the country, since records began in 1875. Throughout August the intense heat wave scorched Europe, claiming more than 35,000 lives.
2015: Google announces its restructure as Alphabet, a holding company with Google, YouTube, Android and Chrome as subsidiaries.

2019: Typhoon ‘Lekima’ makes landfall in Zhejiang province, China, killing at least 32, with one million evacuated.

2020: Global COVID-19 cases pass 20 million, and is accelerating, 1st 10 million took almost 6 months, 2nd 10 million took just 43 days.

[GordMay]

August 11

3114 BCE: The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Mayans, begins.

0480 BCE: Greco-Persian Wars: Battle of Artemisium - Persian naval victory over the Greeks, in an engagement fought off north coast of Euboea.

1772: Explosive eruption blows 4,000' off Papandayan Java, kills 3,000.

1786: Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang, in Malaysia.

1896: Harvey Hubbell patents electric light bulb socket, with a pull chain.

1929: In a game against the Cleveland Indians, Babe Ruth, of the New York Yankees hit his 500th career home run [off Willis Hudlin], becoming the first baseball player to reach that milestone.

1942: The German submarine “U-73" attacks a Malta-bound British convoy, and sinks HMS “Eagle”, one of the world's first aircraft carriers.
1942: American actress Hedy Lamarr, and composer George Antheil, received a patent, for an electronic device, that minimized the jamming of radio signals; it later became a component of satellite and cellular phone technology.

1956: American abstract expressionist painter, Jackson Pollock killed in automobile accident.

1965: A small clash between the California Highway Patrol, and two black youths, sets off six days of rioting, in the Watts area of Los Angeles, resulting in the deaths of 34 people.

1972: Last U.S. ground combat unit, Third Battalion, Twenty-First Infantry, at Da Nang, departs South Vietnam.

1975: US vetoes proposed admission of North & South Vietnam to UN.

1978: Legionnaire's disease bacteria isolated, at CDC, in Atlanta.

1984: During a radio voice test, US President Reagan jokes he "signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in 5 minutes."

1988: Al-Qaeda formed, at a meeting between Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Dr Fadl, in Peshawar, Pakistan.

2014: American comedian and actor Robin Williams, who was known for his manic stand-up routines, and his diverse film performances, died by suicide.

2016: A Greenland shark is declared oldest vertebrate animal in the world, by international team of scientists. Radiocarbon dating of 28 Greenland sharks' lens nuclei, revealed a maximum life span of at least 272 years, according to the study, published August 11 in the journal Science.
➥ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6300/702

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GordMay

August 11



1896: Harvey Hubbell patents electric light bulb socket, with a pull chain.

I've been in quite modern english bathrooms that still had that system . Something to do with with wall switches putting you at risk of blowing your wet socks off.

[GordMay]

August 12

0030 BCE: Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt, and lover of Julius Caesar, and Mark Antony, takes her life, following the defeat of her forces against Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome.

0003: Venus-Jupiter in conjunction - Star of Bethlehem.

1099: At the Battle of Ascalon, 1,000 Crusaders, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, route an Egyptian relief column heading for Jerusalem, which had already fallen to the Crusaders.

1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in the Canary Islands, on his first voyage to the New World.

1762: The British capture Cuba from Spain after a two month siege.

1791: Black slaves, on the island of Santo Domingomingo, rise up against their white masters.

1851: Isaac Merrit Singer patented his sewing machine and formed I.M. Singer & Company to market the product.

1865: Joseph Lister performs 1st antiseptic surgery.

1883: The last known quagga, a type of zebra, native to South Africa, died in the Amsterdam zoo.

1887: Austrian theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger [of 'cat' fame], who shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics, for his contributions to the wave theory of matter, and to other fundamentals of quantum mechanics, was born in Vienna.

1896: Gold is discovered near Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. After word reaches the United States in June of 1897, thousands of Americans head to the Klondike to seek their fortunes.

1898: Armistice ends the Spanish-American War, after three months, and 22 days of hostilities. Spain formally agrees to a peace protocol, on U.S. terms: the cession of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Manila in the Philippines to the United States, pending a final peace treaty.
1898: Hawaii is formally annexed to US.

1908: Henry Ford's first Model T rolls off the assembly line.

1930: Clarence Birdseye is granted a patent, for method for quick freezing food (patent US 1773079 A).

1953: Ann Davison arrives in Miami, in her 23 foot boat “Felicity Ann”, becoming the 1st woman to sail solo across the Atlantic.

1960: Echo 1, 1st communications satellite, is launched by NASA.

1961: East Germany began construction of the Berlin Wall, which served as a symbol of the Cold War, separating East Berlin from West Berlin, until 1989.

1981: IBM introduces its first personal computer [IBM 5150 PC], with a price tag of $1,565.
➥ https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhi...c25_birth.html

1985: Highest in-flight death toll, as 520 die, when Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Mount Takamagahara.

1990: The most complete and best-preserved skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex was found on South Dakota's Cheyenne River Sioux reservation, and it was nicknamed ‘Sue’, after Susan Hendrickson, the paleontologist who discovered the dinosaur fossil.

1992: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, creating the world's wealthiest trade bloc.

2000: Russian Oscar class sub, the “Kursk” [K-141] sinks, in Barent’s sea, with 118 onboard.

2017: "Unite the Right" march in Charlottesville, rallying against removal of a Confederate statue, Virginia turns violent, when car rams protesters killing 1, injuring 19. “there is blame on both sides”, “You had some very bad people in that group", "But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides”.

[GordMay]

August 13

1521: After a three-month siege, Spanish forces, under Hernán Cortés, capture Tenochtitlán [now Mexico City], the capital of the Aztec empire. Cortés’ men leveled the city, and captured Cuauhtémoc, the Aztec emperor.

1642: Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers Martian south polar cap.

1814: Anglo-Dutch Treaty: Cape of Good Hope formally ceded to the British and transporting of slaves prohibited.

1878: Kate Bionda, a restaurant owner, dies of yellow fever in Memphis, Tennessee, after a man who had escaped a quarantined steamboat visited her restaurant. The disease spread rapidly and the resulting epidemic emptied the city. The epidemic ended, with the first frost in October, but by that time, 20,000 people in the Southeast had died, and another 80,000 had survived infection.

1889: The first coin-operated telephone is patented by William Gray.

1898: US forces, under Admiral George Dewey, captures Manila, during Spanish–American War.

1910: British nurse Florence Nightingale, famous for her care of British soldiers, during the Crimean War, dies.

1913: Harry Brearley, of Sheffield, England, created a steel with with 12.8% chromium and 0.24% carbon, argued to be the first ever stainless steel.
➥ https://bssa.org.uk/bssa_articles/th...ainless-steel/

1919: Famed racehorse ‘Man o' War’ suffered the only defeat of his [21 start] career, at Sanford Memorial Stakes, at Saratoga Race Course.

1942: The 'Manhattan Project' commences, under the direction of US General Leslie Groves, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Its aim: to deliver an atomic bomb.
➥ https://www.atomicheritage.org/histo...hattan-project


1977: 1st test glide of space shuttle.

1981: Ronald Reagan signs the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), a package of tax and budget reductions, that set the tone for his administration’s supply-side economics [“trickle-down”] policy.

1996: Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 3.0.

2014: Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani is the first woman to win the Fields Medal in mathematics.

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Famed racehorse ‘Man o' War’ suffered the only defeat of his [21 start] career, at Sanford Memorial Stakes, at Saratoga Race Course.

An interesting side note, the name of the horse that defeated Man o' War was Upset.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by GordMay

August 13
1521: After a three-month siege, Spanish forces, under Hernán Cortés, capture Tenochtitlán [now Mexico City], the capital of the Aztec empire. Cortés’ men leveled the city, and captured Cuauhtémoc, the Aztec emperor. ...

Forgotten anniversary: The birth of Western imperialism
Archaeology correspondent David Keys considers how historians and archaeologists are revealing the real story of Spain’s conquest of the Aztecs
More ➥ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-b1901435.html

[GordMay]

August 14

1281: During Kublai Khan's second Mongol invasion of Japan, his invading Chinese fleet of ±3,500 vessels disappears in a typhoon [‘kamikaze’, or divine wind], in Tsushima Strait, near Japan.

1498: Christopher Columbus landed at the mouth of the Orinoco River, in what is now Venezuela.

1559: Spanish explorer Tristan de Luna enters Pensacola Bay, Florida.

1642: Able Tasman's ships “Heemskerck” and “Zeehaen” depart out from Batavia.

1846: Author Henry David Thoreau jailed, for refusing to pay taxes.

1941: US President Franklin Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, issue the joint declaration, that later becomes known as the Atlantic Charter.

1945: Japan announces its unconditional surrender, in World War II.

1947: Pakistan became a sovereign state, bringing an end to British rule there.

1980: 17,000 workers go on strike, at the Lenin Shipyard, in Gdańsk, Poland, marking the beginning of the Solidarity movement.

1994: Venezuelan terrorist Illich Ramirez Sanchez, long known as Carlos the Jackal, is captured in Khartoum, Sudan, by French intelligence agents.

1997: Convicted Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, formally sentenced to death, by Oklahoma Court of Appeals.

2003: Blackout hits Central Canada & Northeast United States

2019: "It is raining plastic" survey published, plastic found in 90% of rain samples, taken in Colorado, by the US Department of the Interior, and US Geological Survey
➥ https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2019/1048/ofr20191048.pdf

[GordMay]

August 15

1534: St. Ignatius of Loyola led companions, who would become cofounders of the Jesuit order, to Montmartre, Paris, where the first Jesuits took their vows.

1620: Mayflower sets sail from Southampton, England, with 102 Pilgrims.

1635: 1st recorded north American hurricane hits the Plymouth Colony.

1911: Procter & Gamble unveils its ‘Crisco’ shortening.

1914: The American-built waterway, across the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, is inaugurated, with the passage of the U.S. vessel “Ancon”, a cargo and passenger ship.

1947: The Indian Independence Bill, which carves the independent nations of India [remains a dominion until 1950] and Pakistan out of the former Mogul Empire, comes into force, at the stroke of midnight, ending nearly 200 years of British rule.

1969: The Woodstock music festival opens, on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm, in White Lake, a hamlet some 50 miles from Woodstock, in the upstate New York town of Bethel. Early estimates of attendance increased from 50,000 to around 200,000, but by the time the gates opened on Friday, August 15, more than 400,000 people were clamoring to get in. Those without tickets simply walked through gaps in the fences, and the organizers were eventually forced to make the event free of charge.
➥

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRjQCvfcXn0

1998: Omagh bombing, in Northern Ireland, the worst terrorist incident of ‘The Troubles’, kills 29 people, and injures about 220.

2007: An 8.0-magnitude earthquake, off the Pacific coast, devastates Ica and various regions of Peru, killing 514, and injuring 1,090.

2008: Lee Berger and his nine-year-old son, Matthew, discover the two-million-year-old fossils of a new species of human ancestor (Australopithecus sediba), at Malapa Cave, South Africa.

2013: Scientists, at the Smithsonian, announced the discovery of the olinguito, “the first carnivore species to be discovered in the American continents in 35 years”; the small arboreal animals live in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador.

2017: Scientists genetic study of the apple reveal its origin was in Kazakhstan, published in ‘Nature Communications’.
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00336-7

[GordMay]

August 16

1812: During the War of 1812, American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit and his army, to the British, under General Issac Brock [and Leader of the Shawnee,
Tecumseh], without a fight.

1870: Fred Goldsmith demonstrates curve ball isn't an optical illusion.

1896: Gold first discovered in Klondike, found at Bonanza Creek in the Yukon, Canada, by George Carmack.

1934: US explorer William Beebe descends 3,028' (923 m) in Bathysphere.

1946: Direct Action Day: Widespread riots erupt in Calcutta, between Muslims and Hindus, over whether Pakistan should be a separate state, killing over 4,000, and leaving 100,000 homeless.

1948: George Herman “Babe” Ruth dies, from cancer, in New York City. He was 53.

1977: Elvis Presley dies, of a heart attack, brought on largely by drug abuse, at his Graceland Mansion, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 42.

1989: A solar flare from the Sun creates a geomagnetic storm that affects micro chips, leading to a halt of all trading on Toronto's stock market.
➥ https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/fe..._darkness.html

2003: Idi Amin died in Saudi Arabia.

2012: Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange is granted political asylum by Ecuador.

2018: Aretha Franklin died, at age 76.

[GordMay]

August 17

1807: The first serviceable steamboat, the “Clermont”, designed by American engineer Robert Fulton, embarked on its maiden voyage up the Hudson River.

1833: The first steam ship to cross the Atlantic, entirely on its own power, the Canadian ship “Royal William”, begins her journey, from Nova Scotia to The Isle of Wight.

1879: Ferdinand de Lesseps forms French Panama Canal Company.

1945: English author George Orwell published ‘Animal Farm’, an anti-utopian satire that became a classic.

1969: Hurricane Camille strikes US Gulf coast, and kills 259 people (mainly in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana).
➥ https://www.weather.gov/mob/camille
1969: The Woodstock Music & Art Fair draws to a close, after “Three Days of Peace and Music”.

1978: Ben L. Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman completed the first transatlantic balloon flight, in “Double Eagle II”.

1992: Hurricane ‘Andrew’ becomes a [named] tropical storm, south-east of Barbados in the Caribbean.

1998: US President Bill Clinton admits, in taped testimony, he had an "improper physical relationship", with intern Monica Lewinsky, and on the same day admits he "misled people" about the relationship.

1999: A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck, near İzmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people, and leaving some 500,000 homeless.

2012: Three members of Russian punk band ‘Pussy Riot’ are jailed for two years.
2012: Gay pride events are banned, for a century, in Moscow.

2017: Collision of two neutron stars witnessed, for the first time, first picked up by US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo).

[GordMay]

August 18

1227: Mongolian leader Genghis Khan [Temujin] dies, during a campaign against the Chinese kingdom of Xi Xia.

1686: Giovanni Cassini reports seeing a satellite orbiting Venus.

1868: French Astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium, in solar spectrum, during eclipse.

1920: 19th Amendment [Universal Sufferage] ratified, thanks to one vote [Tennessee State Rep. Harry T. Burn].

1960: 1st photograph bounced off a satellite, Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Richardson, Texas.

1974: “Luna 24", the USSR's final major lunar exploration mission, soft-lands on moon.

1983: Samantha Druce, age 12 years 119 days, becomes the youngest woman to swim English Channel.

1991: A group of hard-line communist leaders, unhappy with the drift toward the collapse of the Soviet Union, seize control of the government in Moscow, and place President Mikhail S. Gorbachev under house arrest.

2005: Dennis Rader is sentenced to 175 years in prison for the BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) serial killings, in Sedgwick County, Kansas.
2005: Massive power blackout hits the Indonesian island of Java, affecting almost 100 million people.

2016: New Zealand's 2017 America's Cup winning helmsman, Peter Burling, teams with Blair Tuke, to win the gold medal, in the 49er class sailing, at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics

2017: Civilian researchers, led by Paul Allen, re-discover the USS “Indianapolis”, 18,000 feet below the Pacific surface, 72 years after it was sunk by Japanese torpedoes.

2019: Iceland holds a funeral for the first glacier lost to climate change, at site of Okjökull glacier.
➥ https://www.sciencealert.com/iceland...climate-change