This Day in History

[GordMay]

August 19

1692: Five people including one woman (Martha Carrier) and four men (John Willard, Reverend George Burroughs, George Jacobs, Sr. and John Proctor, are hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, after being convicted of the crime of witchcraft. Fourteen more people are executed, that year, and 150 others are imprisoned.

1812: During the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy frigate “Constitution”, commanded by Captain Isaac Hull, defeats the British frigate “Guerrière”, in a furious engagement, off the coast of Nova Scotia. Witnesses claimed that the British shot merely bounced off the Constitution‘s sides, as if the ship were made of iron rather than wood. By the war’s end, “Old Ironsides” destroyed or captured seven more British ships.

1929: One thousand single, young men from California, have immigrated to the Portuguese colony of Angola, in West Africa.

1934: Some 90 percent of German voters approved a referendum, combining the positions of chancellor and president, into the position of the Fuehrer, that made Adolf Hitler “Führer und Reichskanzler” (“leader and chancellor”), and the official successor to President von Hindenburg.

1942: A raid on Dieppe, France, by British and Canadian commandos, is repulsed by the German Army.

1953: The Iranian military, with the support and financial assistance of the United States and Brittish governments, overthrows the government of Premier Mohammad Mosaddeq. and reinstates the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlevi.

1958: Production of the luxury Packard automobiles is ended, shortly after Packard is merged with Studebaker.

1994: American theoretical physical chemist Linus Pauling, the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes (Chemistry, 1954; Peace, 1962), died at age 93.

2004: The search engine company 'Google Inc.' raised $1.66 billion. in its initial public offering; in an unusual move, the shares were sold in a public auction, intended to put the average investor on an equal footing with financial industry professionals. With an initial price of $85; the stock ended the day at $100.34 with more than 22 million shares traded.

2010: Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ ends; the last US combat brigade, 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, leaves the country. Six brigades remain to train Iraqi troops.

[GordMay]

August 19, 2005: A series of thunderstorms spawn three tornadoes, and cause flash floods in Southern Ontario.

The 'Southern Ontario tornado outbreak of 2005' caused extensive flooding in Toronto and surrounding areas, with losses exceeding $500 million, Canadian dollars, the highest ever in the province.

It started early on Friday, the 19th, as a low-pressure system over Michigan, with a cold front nearby. The same disturbance caused a tornado outbreak over Wisconsin the day before.

The system caused widespread thunderstorms. The first one popped up near Stratford and spanned to Georgian Bay. The second storm was right behind, near the shores of Lake Huron. These storms formed into dozens of cells, two of them turning into tornadic supercells.

The major storm, called the "Toronto Supercell", spawned a tornado near Milverton. The next tornado touched down in Salem and travelled to Lake Belwood. The storm morphed and started to produce winds of 100 km/h, golf ball-sized hail, and extreme rain, which subsequently caused flooding.

The final severe storm developed near Stratford, spawning an F1 tornado with wind reaching 150 km/h.

The twisters uprooted trees, destroyed homes, downed power lines, and threw vehicles. Around 10,000 people were left without power, but there weren't deaths or injuries reported.

When the storm came close to the Greater Toronto Area, a tornado warning was issued, but the storm changed its characteristics. Wind gusts of well over 100 km/h (62 mph) blew through this densely populated centre. It was accompanied by golf ball-sized hail and heavy rain, flooding many parts of the city.

A total of 103 millimetres (4.1 inches) of rain fell in one hour in North York, double the amount left in that area by Hurricane Hazel, back in 1954. Thornhill, just north of Toronto, received a staggering 175 millimetres (7 inches) of rain in less than 1 hour.

A fourth tornado was reported in the City of Toronto city, but it was never confirmed by the Meteorological Service of Canada.

[El Pinguino]

Small point of order.
'This Day in History'??
If it happened after 1960 it is not 'history' - it is 'current events'.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Small point of order.
'This Day in History'??
If it happened after 1960 it is not 'history' - it is 'current events'.

Your definitions of ‘history’ and ‘current events’ aren’t shared by scholars; history being past events, and current events being those happening now.
But, your [repeated] comments seems [to me] to be more a complaint, than a 'point of order.
What is your objection to recent/modern history, occurring after 1960?

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Your definitions of ‘history’ and ‘current events’ aren’t shared by scholars; history being past events, and current events being those happening now.
But, your [repeated] comments seems [to me] to be more a complaint, than a 'point of order.
What is your objection to recent/modern history, occurring after 1960?

Sorry, lame attempt at humour, 'pologies.

Just that if I recall seeing it on TV when it happened it doesn't seem 'historic'.
When I was at school history - as I recall - stopped in about 1930 which was either when the teachers first read about current events or maybe that was when our text books were printed.

'Frinstance I knew nothing of the Spanish Civil War until I traveled to Spain shortly after leaving school. Possibly it was too recent to be viewed objectively.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Sorry, lame attempt at humour, 'pologies.

Just that if I recall seeing it on TV when it happened it doesn't seem 'historic'.
When I was at school history - as I recall - stopped in about 1930 which was either when the teachers first read about current events or maybe that was when our text books were printed.

'Frinstance I knew nothing of the Spanish Civil War until I traveled to Spain shortly after leaving school. Possibly it was too recent to be viewed objectively.

Then, you might enjoy [if you haven't already]:

1066 and All That: A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates

Which is a tongue-in-cheek reworking of the history of England. Written as a parody of the style of history teaching in English schools at the time, it purports to contain "all the History you can remember", and, in sixty-two chapters, covers the history of England from Roman times through 1066 "and all that", up to the end of World War I, at which time America was clearly Top Nation, and history came to an end.

[DUNCANMAC]

Thank you for doing this. It should be required reading for everyone.
Imagine a world where we all actually learned from the past.

[GordMay]

August 20

0002: Venus and Jupiter in conjunction - possible astrological explanation for Star of Bethlehem.

1619: ‘20 and odd’ Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia [at Point Comfort/Hampton Roads], aboard “White Lion”, and are then bought by English colonists. The arrival, at Point Comfort, marked a new chapter in the 2-1/2 century history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which began in the early 1500s, and continued into the mid-1800s.

1741: Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering, commissioned by Peter the Great of Russia, to find land connecting Asia and North America, encountered Alaska.

1908: The American ‘Great White Fleet’ arrives in Sydney, Australia. 221 American sailors desert to remain in Australia

1940: Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky assassinated [with an alpine ax to the back of the head] by a Stalinist agent, in Mexico.

1940: Radar is used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain. Also on this day, in a radio broadcast, Winston Churchill makes his famous homage to the Royal Air Force: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

1968: Some 650,000 Warsaw Pact [Soviet] troops invade Czechoslovakia, to put an end to the ‘Prague Spring’.

1974: US Vice President Gerald Ford, who had replaced Spiro Agnew, assumes the Office of the President, after Richard Nixon resigns; Ford names Nelson Rockefeller as VP.

1980: Reinhold Messner, of Italy, is 1st to solo ascent Mt Everest.

1989: Dredger "Bow Belle" collides with pleasure boat "Marchioness", on the River Thames in central London; the "Marchioness" sinks in 30 seconds, drowning 51.

[GordMay]

August 21

1264: Kublai Khan accepts the surrender of his younger brothe,r Ariq Böke, at Xanadu, at the end of the Mongol civil war.

1911: Theft, by Vincenzo Perugia, of da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’, from the Louvre, is discovered. Recovered in 1913.

1944: The Dumbarton Oaks conference, which lays the foundation for the establishment of the United Nations, is held in Washington, D.C.

1959: Hawaii becomes 50th U.S. state.

1968: Warsaw Pact forces complete their invasion of Czechoslovakia, by arresting the Czech leader, Alexander Dubček, and forcing him to sign the Moscow Protocols.

1972: US orbiting astronomy observatory ‘Copernicus’ launched.

1986: An eruption of [± billion cubic yards] lethal carbon dioxide gas from Lake Nyos in Cameroon kills nearly 2,000 [1,746?] people [& thousands (3,500?) of livestock], and wipes out four villages.

1991: Conservative hardliner coup, in the Soviet Union, is crushed in three days, by popular resistance, led by Boris Yeltsin.

1992: US Marshals move in on Randy Weaver's cabin, in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, to apprehend him on firearms charges; an 11 day stand-off ensues.

1996: Netscape Browser 3.0 is released.

2007: Hurricane ‘Dea’n makes its first landfall in Costa Maya, Mexico, with winds at 165 mph. ‘Dean’ is the first storm, since Hurricane ‘Andrew’, to make landfall as a Category 5.

2015: Terrorist attack, on train between Amsterdam and Paris, thwarted by 4 passengers overpowering gunman.

2017: For the first time in nearly 40 years, the continental United States experienced a total solar eclipse, which was viewed from Oregon to South Carolina.
2017: Destroyer USS “John S McCain” collides with an oil tanker, near Singapore, leaving 10 missing, and 5 injured.

2018: Water-ice first detected on the Moon, by India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft (2008-9), in findings published by scientists.
➥ https://www.pnas.org/content/115/36/8907

[GordMay]

August 22

1485: Wars of the Roses ended [Battle of Bosworth Field], establishing the Tudor dynasty [Henry Tudor/Henry VII] on the English throne. Richard III is killed, the last English monarch to die in battle.

1770: James Cook's expedition lands on the east coast of Australia.

1812: Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt is the 1st European to rediscover the Nabataean city of Petra ["A Rose-Red City, Half as Old as Time"], in modern Jordan.

1851: America’s Cup [Hundred Guinea Cup]
The U.S.-built schooner, “America” bests a fleet of Britain’s finest ships in a race around England’s Isle of Wight [ 'America' beats 'Aurora' by 24 minutes]. The ornate silver trophy [Hundred Guinea Cup] won by the America was later donated to the New York Yacht Club on condition that it be forever placed in international competition. Today, the “America’s Cup” is the world’s oldest continually contested sporting trophy and represents the pinnacle of international sailing yacht competition.
➥ https://www.americascup.com/en/history

1864: International Red Cross founded, at First Geneva Convention
The Geneva Convention of 1864 for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick of Armies in the Field is adopted by 12 nations meeting in Geneva. The agreement, advocated by Swiss humanitarian Jean-Henri Dunant, called for nonpartisan care to the sick and wounded in times of war and provided for the neutrality of medical personnel. It also proposed the use of an international emblem to mark medical personnel and supplies. In honor of Dunant’s nationality, a red cross on a white background—the Swiss flag in reverse—was chosen. The organization became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross. In 1901, Dunant was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize.

1894: Mahatma Gandhi forms the Natal Indian Congress (NIC), in order to fight discrimination against Indian traders in Natal.

1952: The penal colony on Devil's Island is permanently closed.

1962: The NS “Savannah”, world's 1st nuclear-powered cargo ship, completes maiden voyage from Yorktown, Va, to Savannah, Ga.

1992: FBI HRT sniper, Lon Horiuchi, shoots and kills Vicki Weaver, during an 11-day siege, at her home, at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

2004: ‘The Scream’ (1893), a painting by Edvard Munch, was stolen from the Munch Museum, in Oslo, Norway; it was recovered two years later.

2007: The Storm botnet, a botnet created [Russian Zhelatin Gang?] by the Storm Worm, sends out a record 57 million ‘spam’ e-mails, in one day.
➥ https://www.networkworld.com/article...he-world-.html

2019: Town of Bielefeld, in Germany, offers €1m prize, to anyone in who can prove the town doesn't exist, to disprove 25-year-old conspiracy theory.
➥ https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49432677

[GordMay]

August 23

0079: Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on feast day of Vulcan, Roman god of fire (goes on to destroy Pompeii) [approx date].
Pliny the Younger was seventeen, and staying with his famous uncle, Pliny the Elder, a naturalist, author and naval commander for the Roman fleet at Misenum, in the Bay of Naples. His account, written as a letter to the Roman historian Tacitus, 25 years later, made the eruption of Vesuvius famous, long after Pompeii was buried under debris and forgotten.

1305: Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn, beheaded, and quartered, for high treason by Edward I, in [Smithfield?] London.

1500: Governor Francisco De Bobadilla arrives in the [West] Indies, soon after arrests, and sends former Governor Christopher Columbus back to Spain, in chains.

1889: 1st ship-to-shore wireless message ("Sherman is sighted") received in the US, from Lightship No. 70 to a coastal receiving station, at Cliff House, in San Francisco.

1925: Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, are executed for murder.

1939: Germany, and Soviet Union sign [Molotov-Ribbentrop] non-aggression pact, dividing eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence, and freeing Adolf Hitler to invade Poland and Joseph Stalin to invade Finland..

1966: unar Orbiter 1 takes first photograph of Earth from the moon.

1973: A botched bank robbery in Stockholm, resulted in a hostage situation, and, over the course of a six-day standoff, the captives formed an unlikely bond with their captor, giving rise to the term ‘Stockholm syndrome’.

1977: Bryan Allen, piloting the "Gossamer Condor", wins the Kremer prize, for the first human-powered aircraft to fly a one-mile, figure-eight course.

1996: Osama bin Laden issues message entitled: "A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places".

1999: The first cases of an encephalitis outbreak are reported, in New York City. Seven people die from, what turns out to be, the first cases of West Nile virus, in the United States.

2005: Hurricane Katrina forms over the Bahamas, later becoming a category 5 hurricane.

2011: After rebel National Transitional Council forces captured his Bab al-Azizia compound, in Tripoli, Muammar al-Qaddafi's four-decade rule of Libya ended; although his whereabouts were initially unknown, he was discovered two months later, in the Libyan city of Surt, and killed.

[GordMay]

On Tuesday, Aug. 23, 2005, Hurricane Katrina formed in the Atlantic. It was a massive Category 5 storm, that caused more than 1,800 deaths. The storm started as a tropical depression, over the Bahamas.

On Aug. 8, a tropical wave travelled from the coast of Africa, westward, across the Atlantic Ocean. On Aug. 11, it started to organize and develop into a storm. On Aug. 13, the system was officially named Tropical Depression Ten.

While over the Bahamas, an upper-level trough weakened the storm, and so the tropical depression advisories were discontinued, on Aug. 14.

On Aug. 21, the system's low-level circulation centre continued to lose strength, and dissipated. But the depression's centre lagged just north of the Leeward Islands, and merged with a tropical wave from the African coast.

This convergence created a disturbance near Puerto Rico. On Aug. 22, the system continued to organize close to Turks and Caicos.

On Aug. 23, the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC) spotted the tropical depression, and announced advisories late that night.

On Aug. 24, the NHC named the storm Katrina. As the day progressed, Katrina strengthened, due to a high pressure over system, from the Gulf of Mexico. The storm then redirected toward Florida.

On Aug. 25, Katrina made landfall, between Hallandale Beach and Aventura, Florida. It then made a second landfall, on Aug. 29, near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, and a final landfall near the Louisiana–Mississippi border.

Katrina dissipated on Aug. 31, 2005, after causing $125 billion worth of damages. The National Hurricane Center states that 1,833 fatalities are directly, or indirectly, related to Hurricane Katrina, reporting that 1,577 people died in Louisiana, 238 in Mississippi, 14 in Florida, 2 in Georgia, and 2 in Alabama.

However, like many post-Katrina efforts, the project to count the dead was hampered by natural and institutional obstacles, and we may never be certain. What are known as indirect deaths are the most confounding to the count. Direct deaths are those that occur from drowning, or an injury sustained during the storm, or post-storm flooding; while indirect deaths occur from some other cause that might be linked to the storm, such as an inability to access medical care, to treat an illness.

More ➥ https://www.worldvision.org/disaster...-katrina-facts

[GordMay]

August 24

0079: After centuries of dormancy, Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy, devastating the prosperous Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, Stabiae, and other smaller settlements, and killing thousands. The cities, buried under a thick layer of volcanic material and mud, were never rebuilt, and largely forgotten in the course of history. In the 18th century, Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered, and excavated, providing an unprecedented archaeological record of the everyday life of an ancient civilization, startlingly preserved in sudden death.
According to Pliny the Younger’s account, the eruption lasted 18 hours. Pompeii was buried under 14 to 17 feet of ash and pumice, and the nearby seacoast was drastically changed. Herculaneum was buried under more than 60 feet of mud and volcanic material.
It now appears probable that the eruption happened 24 October 79 AD, and that Pliny's Letters had been mistranslated as some point.
Today, Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano on the European mainland. Its last eruption was in 1944, and its last major eruption was in 1631. Another eruption is expected in the near future, which could be devastating for the 700,000 people who live in the ‘death zones’, around Vesuvius.

0410: Alaric, chief of the Visigoths, led an army into Rome, an event that symbolizes the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

1215: Pope Innocent III declares the Magna Carta invalid.

1349: 6,000 Jews, blamed for the Bubonic Plague [‘Black Death’], are killed in Mainz, Germany.

1456: The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.

1542: In South America, Gonzalo Pizarro returns to the mouth of the Amazon River after having sailed the length of the great river as far as the Andes Mountains.

1572: King Charles IX of France, under the sway of his mother, Catherine de Medici, orders the assassination of Huguenot Protestant leaders in Paris, setting off an orgy of killing [‘Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre’], that results in the massacre of tens of thousands of Huguenots, all across France. An estimated 3,000 French Protestants were killed in Paris, and as many as 70,000, in all of France.

1814: During the War of 1812, between the United States and England, British troops, under General Robert Ross, enter Washington, D.C. and burn the White House [executive mansion], and Capital, in retaliation for the American attack on the city of York in Ontario, Canada, in June 1813.

1821: The Treaty of Córdoba was signed, giving Mexico its independence from Spain.

1831: John Henslow asks Charles Darwin to travel with him, on the HMS “Beagle”.

1833: HMS “Beagle” reaches Bahia Blanca, Argentina.

1875: Captain Matthew Webb, of Great Britain, becomes the first man to successfully swim the English Channel, without assistance. He swam the 39 miles from Dover’s Admiralty Pier, to Calaise, in 21 hours and 45 minutes [against the tide].

1894: US Congress passes the first graduated income tax law, which is declared unconstitutional the next year.

1932: American aviator Amelia Earhart took off from Los Angeles, and, when she landed in Newark, New Jersey, the following day, she became the first woman to complete a solo nonstop flight across the United States.

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] entered into force, following the signing of its treaty four months earlier.

1954: Congress passes the Communist Control Act, in response to the growing anticommunist hysteria in the United States.

1968: France becomes the world's fifth thermonuclear power, with a detonation on Mururoa Atoll, in the South Pacific.

1981: Mark David Chapman sentenced to 20 years to life, for murdering former Beatle, John Lennon.

1992: Hurricane Andrew makes landfall at Elliott Key, and later Homestead, in Florida. The Category 5 storm, which had already caused extensive damage in the Bahamas, caused $26.5 billion in US damages, caused 65 deaths, and felled 70,000 acres of trees in the Everglades.

1995: Microsoft debuts Windows 95.

2006: Pluto [and Xena] was demoted from planet, to dwarf planet, after the International Astronomical Union approved a reclassification of the solar system. Xena was aptly renamed Eris, the Greek goddess of discord.
➥ https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...ition-demotion

2011: Amid health issues, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple [succeeded by Tim Cook], and he died less than two months later.

2015: Physicist Stephen Hawking presents a new theory on black holes, at a lecture at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.
➥ https://www.kth.se/en/aktuellt/nyhet...stery-1.586546

2019: US adventurer Victor Vescovo is the first person to visit the deepest point of every ocean when he reaches Molloy Hole, in the Arctic.
➥ https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49636756

[GordMay]

Charlie Watts, the longtime drummer, for The Rolling Stones, has died at age 80.
➥ https://twitter.com/PA/status/1430205421948710923

[GordMay]

August 25

0325: The Council of Nicaea [now İznik, Turkey], the first ecumenical council of the Christian church, called by the emperor Constantine I, brought to an end the controversy of Arianism, concluding that God the Father, was of equal status with God the Son, and establishing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

1515: Conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founds Havana, in modern day Cuba, on the southern coast of the island. Moved to its current location in 1519.

1530: Ivan IV (the Terrible), grand prince of Moscow, and first tsar of Russia, was born.

1609: Galileo Galilei demonstrates his 1st telescope to Venetian lawmakers.

1768: Captain James Cook departs from Plymouth, England, on his first voyage, on board the “Endeavour”, bound for the Pacific Ocean.

1835: The first, in a series of six articles, announcing the supposed discovery of life on the moon, by John Herschel, appears in the New York Sun newspaper. Known collectively as “The Great Moon Hoax,” the articles were supposedly reprinted from the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The Sun never retracted the story.
➥ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smith...ime-180955761/

1894: Japanese scientist Shibasaburo Kitasato discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet.

1900: German Classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most influential of all modern thinkers, died at age 55.

1915: Hurricane kills 275 in Galveston, Texas with $50 million damage.
➥ Hurricanes: Science and Society: 1915- Galveston Hurricane

1944: Paris is liberated, after four years of Nazi occupation, as the Free French 2nd Armoured Division, under General Jacques-Philippe Leclerc, entered the city.

1948: The US House Un-American Activities Committee holds first-ever televised congressional hearing.

1958: Momofuku Ando, of Nissin Foods, markets the first package of precooked instant noodles [Chikin Ramen].

1979: The storm that will become Hurricane ‘David, forms, near Cape Verde, off the African coast, in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. It would go on to devastate the island of Dominica [August 29], and then the Dominican Republic [Aug 30], killing over 1,500 people, and leaving 10s of thousands homeless.

1985: Samantha Smith, the 13-year-old ‘ambassador’ to the Soviet Union, dies in a plane crash. The fifth-grader was best known for writing to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, in 1982, and visiting the Soviet Union, as Andropov’s guest, in 1983. She said that she was “worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to have a war or not?” Andropov assured Smith that he did not want a nuclear war with the United States, or any other country. Calling Smith a “courageous and honest” little girl. The two never, actually, met.
➥ https://www.samanthasmith.info/index.php/foundation

1991: ‘Linux’ is born, when Linus Torvalds sends off an email, announcing his project to create a new computer operating system.

2006: ‘Hyperion’, the world's tallest living tree, a Redwood standing 115.55 m (379.1 ft), discovered by naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylo,r in Redwood National and State Parks, California.

2012: U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong,who was the first person to set foot on the Moon, an event he described as “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”, died at age 82.

2017: Category 4 Hurricane ‘Harvey’ makes landfall in Texas, northeast of Corpus Christi, with 130 m.p.h. winds.

2018: American politician John McCain, who developed a reputation as a political maverick, while serving in Congress for some 35 years, and during his failed bid for the presidency in 2008, died at age 81.

2020: WHO announces that Africa has eradicated polio [defined as four years since last case].