July 10th
 

1839 ~ Birthday of Adolphus Busch, German-born Brewer.

1856 ~ Birthday of Nikola Tesla, Croatian physicist.

1895 ~ Birthday of Carl Orff, German Composer.

1940 ~ The Luftwaffe began the Battle of Britain.

1962 ~ The world's first active communications satellite, Telstar, and first privately sponsored space launch.

1979 ~ Death of Arthur Fiedler, American Conductor.

1985 ~ The Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior was sunk in Auckland Harbor by French agents.

1997 ~ Scientists report their DNA analysis findings from a Neandertal skeleton which support the Out of Africa hypothesis of human evolution.

2002 ~ At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting The Massacre of the Innocents was sold for $76.2 million.

2003 ~ Death of Lord Shawcross, U.K. chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials.

July 11th
 

1798 ~ The U.S. Marine Corps was re-created by an act of Congress.

1857 ~ Birthday of Alfred Binet, French Psychologist.

1859 ~ Charles Dickens' "A Tale Of Two Cities" was published.

1899 ~ Birthday of E. B. White, American Writer. (Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, The Trumpet of the Swan.)

1914 ~ Babe Ruth made his major league debut with the Boston Red Sox.

1937 ~ Death of George Gershwin, American Composer.

1971 ~ Death of John W. Campbell, Writer & Editor.

1979 ~ Skylab deorbited.

1989 ~ Death of Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor.

1995 ~ Bosnian Serbs capture the city of Srebrenica.

July 12th
 

1536 ~ Death of Erasmus, Dutch Writer & Philosopher.

1690 ~ William of Orange's army won the Battle of the Boyne.

1730 ~ Birthday of Josiah Wedgwood, English Potter.

1773 ~ Death of Johann Joachim Quantz, German Flutist & Composer.

1817 ~ Birthday of Henry David Thoreau, American Writer & Philosopher.

1862 ~ Medal of Honor authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1933 ~ U.S. Congress passes the first federal minimum wage law in the U.S.

1943 ~ Turning point of CITADEL (Battle of Kursk).

1984 ~ Walter Mondale named Geraldine Ferraro his Vice Presidential running mate.

1990~ Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party.

July 13th
 

100 BC ~ Birthday of Julius Caesar, Soldier & Politician.

1793 ~ French revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat was stabbed to death in his bath by Charlotte Corday, who was executed four days later.

1837 ~ Queen Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace – the first monarch to live there.

1908 ~ Women first included in modern Olympic competition.

1951 ~ Death of Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian Composer.

1955 ~ Ruth Ellis became the last woman in England to be executed.

1960 ~ John F. Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at the party's convention in Los Angeles.

1977 ~ A 25-hour blackout hit New York City.

1982 ~ Montreal was host to the first baseball All-Star Game outside the U.S.

1985 ~ Live Aid, an international rock concert in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney, Australia, was held to raise money for Africa's starving people.

July 14th
 

1789 ~ Citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille. Generally recognized as the beginning of the French Revolution.

1798 ~ The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. government.

1862 ~ Birthday of Gustav Klimt, Austrian Painter & Graphic Artist.

1881 ~ Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

1887 ~ Death of Alfred Krupp, German munitions manufacturer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Woody Guthrie, American folk singer.

1913 ~ Birthday of Gerald Ford, U.S. President.

1933 ~ Gleichschaltung: All German political parties except the Nazi Party were outlawed.

1965 ~ Mariner 4 flyby of Mars took the first close-up photos of another planet.

2000 ~ A Florida jury ordered five major tobacco companies to pay smokers $145 billion in punitive damages. (The verdict was later overturned by the Florida Supreme Court.).

July 15th
 

1099 ~ The Crusaders of the First Crusade took Jerusalem.

1606 ~ Birthday of Rembrandt Van Rijn, Dutch artist.

1796 ~ Birthday of Thomas Bulfinch, American Mythologist.

1799 ~ French Captain Pierre Bouchard found the Rosetta Stone.

1870 ~ Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1918 ~ WWI: Second Battle of the Marne began.

1926 ~ Birthday of Leopoldo Galtieri, Argentine Dictator.

1954 ~ First flight of the Boeing 707, the first American jet passenger airliner.

1995 ~ Bosnian Serbs force Muslims out of Srebrenica.

2002 ~ John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban", pleaded guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

July 16th
 

622 ~ Start of the Islamic calendar.

1790 ~ The District of Columbia was established as the seat of the U.S. Federal Government.

1872 ~ Birthday of Roald Amundsen, the Norwegian explorer who led the expedition which was the first to reach the South Pole.

1918 ~ IAt Ekaterinburg, Russia, Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II and his family.

1945 ~ Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Harry Truman Josef Stalin meet at Potsdam.

1945 ~ The U.S. detonated the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1948 ~ Birthday of Pinchas Zukerman, Israeli Violinist.

1969 ~ Apollo 11 was launched from Cape Kennedy to become the first manned mission to land on the moon.

1981 ~ Death of Harry Chapin, American Singer & Songwriter.

1989 ~ Death of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian Conductor.

It's funny that the day of the start of the Islamic calendar was the day we nearly burned the atmosphere beyond breathing with the Trinity shot.

July 17th
 

1790 ~ Death of Adam Smith, Scottish Economist.

1899 ~ Birthday of James Cagney, Actor.

1935 ~ Birthday of Donald Sutherland, Actor.

1947 ~ Birthday of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (formerly Parker Bowles), former British royal mistress and now wife of Prince Charles.

1955 ~ Disneyland opened in Anaheim, Calif.

1961 ~ Death of Baseball hall-of-famer Ty Cobb.

1962 ~ Tha nuclear test shot Little Feller I became the last American atmospheric detonation at the Nevada Test Site.

1975 ~ An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

1979 ~ Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled into exile in Miami.

2003 ~ Death of Dr. David Kelly, U.N. Weapons Inspector.

July 18th
 

1817 ~ Death of Jane Austen, English Novelist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian Politician & Traitor.

1909 ~ Birthday of Andrei Gromyko, Soviet Diplomat & President.

1918 ~ Birthday of Nelson Mandela, former President of SA, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1993.

1922 ~ Birthday of Thomas Kuhn, Philosopher of Science.

1925 ~ Adolf Hitler’s "Mein Kampf" was published.

1927 ~ Birthday of Kurt Masur, Conductor.

1942 ~ The Messerschmitt Me-262 was test flown using only its jets for the first time.

1969 ~ After a party, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a wooden bridge into, into a pond, and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, died.

2001 ~ In Baltimore, Maryland, a 60-car train derailment occurred in a tunnel, sparking a fire that lasted days and virtually shut down downtown.

2005 ~ Eric Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer.

Quisling, a word no longer uttered.

July 19th
 

1374 ~ Death of Petrarch, Italian Poet & early Humanist.

1692 ~ Five women were hanged following the Salem Witch Trials for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

1834 ~ Birthday of Edgar Degas, Impressionist Painter.

1848 ~ America’s first women's rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, N.Y. and "Bloomers" were introduced.

1870 ~ The Franco-Prussian war began.

1898 ~ Birthday of Herbert Marcuse, Communist Philosopher.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in Europe.

1947 ~ Death of Aung San, Burmese nationalist. Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, is now the leader of the Burmese opposition to the current military regime.

1996 ~ Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic was forced out of office.

2003 ~ Death of Bill Bright, evangelist, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

July 20th
 

1933 ~ In London, 500,000 marched against anti-Semitism.

1938 ~ Birthday of Dame Diana Rigg, Actress (The Avengers, In This House of Brede).

1938 ~ Birthday of Natalie Wood, Actress (Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story).

1944 ~ Adolf Hitler slightly wounded when a bomb exploded at his Rastenburg headquarters.

1946 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives voted 265-79 to put control of atomic energy in the hands of a civilian body, the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than leave the military in control.

1960 ~ Ceylon elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first female head of government.

1969 ~ Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon.

1974 ~ Turkey invaded Cyprus.

1999 ~ After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was lifted to the surface.

2004 ~ The UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel tear down the barrier it was building to seal off the West Bank.

July 21st
 

1796 ~ Death of Robert Burns, Scottish Poet.

1899 ~ Birthday of Ernest Hemingway, American Author.

1861 ~ First Battle of Bull Run - the first major battle of the American Civil War began.

1911 ~ Birthday of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian Communications Theorist.

1920 ~ Birthday of Isaac Stern, Ukrainian born Violinist.

1925 ~ In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1948 ~ Birthday of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English Singer.

1954 ~ France surrendered North Vietnam to the Viet Minh.

1970 ~ The Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed at the end of eleven years of construction

1994 ~ Tony Blair was declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party.

July 22nd
 

1822 ~ Birthday of Br. Gregor Mendel, Austrian Geneticist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Gustav Hertz, German Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1925.

1898 ~ Birthday of Alexander Calder, American Artist.

1934 ~ John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents in Chicago.

1946 ~ Ninety people died when the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, headquarters of the British administration.

1967 ~ Death of Carl Sandburg, Poet.

1977 ~ Deng Xiaoping, returned to Chinese Government.

1992 ~ Pablo Escobar, fearing extradition to the U.S., escaped from his luxury prison.

1998 ~ Death of Alan Shepard, Astronaut.

2003 ~ Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed when U.S. forces stormed a villa in Mosul, Iraq.

July 23rd
 

1757 ~ Death of Domenico Scarlatti, Italian Composer.

1892 ~ Birthday of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia.

1914 ~ Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

1942 ~ The Treblinka extermination camp opened.

1952 ~ Egyptian military officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew King Farouk I.

1962 ~ Telstar relayed the first live trans-Atlantic television signal.

1972 ~ The U.S. launched Landsat 1, first Earth-resources satellite.

1982 ~ The International Whaling Commission voted a moratorium on commercial whaling by 1985-86.

1984 ~ Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign her title, because of nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine.

1986 ~ Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

July 24th
 

1783 ~ Birthday of Simón Bolívar, South American liberator.

1802 ~ Birthday of Alexandre Dumas, French writer. (The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers)

1898 ~ Birthday of Amelia Earhart, American Aviatrix.

1943 ~ The RAF Bomber Command bombed Hamburg by night, USAAF 8th Air Force Bomber Command by day. By the end of the operation, 9,000 tons of explosive & incendiary bombs created a firestorm which killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1959 ~ Khrushchev and Nixon have war of words in the “Kitchen Debate”.

1967 ~ During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declared in Montreal "Vive le Québec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

1969 ~ The Apollo 11 astronauts, two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon, splashed down safely in the Pacific.

1974 ~ Death of James Chadwick, English physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1935.

1980 ~ Death of Peter Sellers, Actor.

2005 ~ Lance Armstrong closed out his cycling career with a seventh consecutive Tour de France victory.

Didn't Dumas write that movie, you know the one . . . . .

July 25th
 

1797 ~ Horatio Nelson lost more than 300 men and his right arm during the failed conquest attempt of Tenerife Island.

1834 ~ Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet. (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner & Kubla Khan )

1907 ~ Korea became a protectorate of Japan.

1909 ~ Louis Bleriot made the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine. Calais to Dover in 37 minutes.

1917 ~ Sir Thomas Whyte introduced the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1848 ~ Birthday of Arthur Balfour, UK PM, remembered for issuing the British declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1956 ~ 51 people died when the Italian liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm.

1978 ~ Louise Brown, the first baby conceived by in-vitro fertilization, was born in Oldham, England.

1984 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.

2000 ~ An Air France Concorde crashed just after takeoff from Paris, killing 113.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,

Where Alf the sacred river ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

God I love that poem.

^^^ Yessir! That is a fine piece of verse. :)

July 26th
 

1822 ~ Simón Bolívar and José de San Martín met in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

1856 ~ Birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Author, Playwright, awarded t he Nobel Prize in Literature 1925.

1875 ~ Birthday of Carl Jung, Swiss Psychiatrist.

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft engineer and designer.

1928 ~ Birthday of Stanley Kubrick, Movie Director.

1941 ~ In response to the Japanese occupation of French Indo-China, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the seizure of all Japanese assets in the U.S.

1943 ~ Birthday of Mick Jagger, English Musician. (Rolling Stones)

1947 ~ U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

1956 ~ Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.

1991 ~ Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, was arrested for allegedly masturbating at a Sarasota, Florida adult theatre.

Willi Messerschmitt was one of the leading lights of his time in aviation.

July 27th
 

1844 ~ Death of John Dalton, English Chemist.

1904 ~ Birthday of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1921 ~ Researchers at the University of Toronto led by biochemist Frederick Banting announced the discovery of the hormone insulin. He shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this.

1946 ~ Death of Gertrude Stein, American Writer & Cult Figure.

1949 ~ Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.

1953 ~ The Korean War stopped. The U.S., People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea signed an armistice agreement.

1974 ~ The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted to recommend the first article of impeachment against President Nixon: Obstruction of Justice.

1980 ~ Death of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

1990 ~ Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union.

2003 ~ Death of Bob Hope, English-born Entertainer.

July 28th
 

1741 ~ Death of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

1750 ~ Death of Johann Sebastian Bach, German Composer.

1794 ~ Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to the guillotine.

1866 ~ Birthday of Beatrix Potter, English Author. (The Tale of Peter Rabbit)

1904 ~ Birthday of Pavel Cherenkov, Soviet Physicist, awarded one third the Nobel Prize in Physics 1958.

1914 ~ World War I began as Austria declared war on Serbia.

1973 ~ Watkins Glen, NY concert attended by 600,000 to see The Band, The Allman Brothers Band, and the Grateful Dead.

1996 ~ The remains of a prehistoric man, Kennewick Man, was discovered near Kennewick, Washington.

1998 ~ Monica Lewinsky was given blanket immunity from prosecution in exchange for grand jury testimony in the investigation of her relationship with President Bill Clinton.

2004 ~ Death of Professor Francis Harry Compton Crick, OM FRS, awarded one third the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962.

July 29th
 

1856 ~ Death of Robert Schumann, Composer.

1890 ~ Death of Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter.

1905 ~ Birthday of Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General. Awarded the The Nobel Peace Prize 1961.

1907 ~ Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts movement with the first scout camp at Brownsea Island. Prince William has just opened the 21st World Scout Jamboree on Scouting’s 100th anniversary. :thumb:

1958 ~ The U.S. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1974 ~ Death of Mama Cass Elliot, Musician.

1975 ~ Death of James Blish, Science Fiction Writer.

1981 ~ Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, Prince of Wales.

1993 ~ The Israeli Supreme Court acquitted Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges.

1996 ~ The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act was struck down as too broad in U.S. federal court.

July 30th
 

1718 ~ Birthday of William Penn, English founder of the Province of Pennsylvania.

1729 ~ The city of Baltimore was founded.

1792 ~ The French national anthem ''La Marseillaise'' by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris.

1818 ~ Birthday of Emily Brontë, English Novelist.

1898 ~ Birthday of Henry Moore, Sculptor.

1941 ~ Birthday of Paul Anka, Singer and Composer.

1945 ~ World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sank the USS Indianapolis.

1966 ~ England won the first televised Football World Cup, beating Germany 4 to 2.

1975 ~ Former Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit.

2003 ~ The last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle manufactured in Mexico.

There is an excellent movie with Stacey Keach about this, how sharks took many of those in the water and no-one could mention the ship being overdue because of it's sensitive mission.

The Captain was unfairly "hung out to dry", even sadder for a navy person (LOL).

July 31st
 

1498 ~ Discovery of Trinidad by Christopher Columbus.

1556 ~ Death of Ignatius Loyola, Spanish priest, founder of the Jesuits.

1886 ~ Death of Franz Liszt, Hungarian Composer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Milton Friedman, awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, 1976.

1917 ~ The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) started in Flanders. With casualties from both sides exceeding 550,000, the name Passcheddaele has come to be used as a synonym for pointless slaughter.

"...I died in Hell
(they called it Passchendaele) my wound was slight
and I was hobbling back; and then a shell
burst slick upon the duckboards; so I fell
into the bottomless mud, and lost the light"

Siegfried Sassoon

1941 ~ Hermann Göring ordered SS general Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."

1964 ~ Ranger program: Ranger 7 sent back the first close-up photographs of the moon.

1965 ~ Birthday of J. K. Rowling, Author.

1991 ~ Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) signed in Moscow.

1999 ~ NASA intentionally crashed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.

August 1st
 

10 B.C. ~ Birthday of Claudius, Roman Emperor.

1774 ~ The element oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley.

1779 ~ Birthday of Birthday of Francis Scott Key, Composer of “The Star-Spangled Banner”.

1819 ~ Birthday of Herman Melville, Writer.

1834 ~ Slavery was abolished in the British Empire.

1932 ~ Birthday of Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League.

1936 ~ The Summer Olympic Games opened in Berlin.

1944 ~ Anne Frank made the last entry in her diary.

1957 ~ The United States and Canada formed the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

1977 ~ Death of Gary Powers, Spy Plane Pilot.

August 2nd
 

216 B.C. ~ Hannibal destroyed the double Consular Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Publius Terentius Varro in the Battle of Cannae.

1776 ~ Delegates to the Continental Congress began to sign the Declaration of Independence.

1876 ~ Death of James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, Gunfighter.

1921 ~ Death of Enrico Caruso, Italian Tenor.

1922 ~ Death of Alexander Graham Bell, Inventor.

1932 ~ Birthday of Peter O'Toole, Actor. (Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter).

1939 ~ Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.

1943 ~ PT-109, commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy rammed and sunk.

1976 ~ Death of Fritz Lang, Film Director.(Metropolis, M, Frau im Mond)

1990 ~ Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War.

August 3rd
 

1900 ~ Birthday of John T. Scopes, defendant in the “Monkey Trial”.

1904 ~ Birthday of Clifford D. Simak, Science Fiction Author.

1924 ~ Death of Joseph Conrad, Author. (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim)

1924 ~ Birthday of Leon Uris, American Writer. (Exodus, QB VII)

1943 ~ Gen. George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice.

1948 ~ Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, publicly accused former State Department official Alger Hiss of having been part of a Communist underground.

1958 ~ The USS Nautilus traveled beneath the Arctic ice cap.

1972 ~ U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

1977 ~ Death of Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus.

2003 ~ The U.S. Anglican Church approved the appointment of an openly homosexual bishop.

August 4th
 

1704 ~ An Anglo-Dutch force seized the rock of Gibraltar.

1782 ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married to Constanze Weber.

1792 ~ Birthday of Percy Shelley, Poet.

1840 ~ Birthday of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sexologist.

1875 ~ Death of Hans Christian Andersen, Writer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician.

1914 ~ The UK declared war on Germany.

1964 ~ The bodies of three missing civil rights workers were found buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi.

1977 ~ President Carter signed legislation creating the U.S. Department of Energy.

1983 ~ New York Yankee Dave Winfield accidentally killed a seagull during a baseball game and was charged by police for his "act of cruelty to animals".

August 5th
 

1885 ~ The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid.

1895 ~ Death of Friedrich Engels, Socialist Philosopher.

1930 ~ Birthday of Neil Armstrong, Astronaut.

1962 ~ Death of Marilyn Monroe, Actress.

1963 ~ The U.S., UK, and U.S.S.R. signed a nuclear test ban treaty.

1966 ~ The album ''Revolver'' by the Beatles was released.

1973 ~ Arab gunmen opened fire and threw grenades into a passenger lounge at Athens airport.

1981 ~ The federal government began firing air traffic controllers who had gone on strike.

1984 ~ Death of Richard Burton, Actor.

2000 ~ Death of Sir Alec Guinness, Actor.

August 6th
 

1809 ~ Birthday of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet.

1881 ~ Birthday of Alexander Fleming, awarded he Nobel Prize in Medicine 1945.

1911 ~ Birthday of Lucille Ball, Actress, Comedienne.

1943 ~ Birthday of Jon Postel, creator of DNS.

1945 ~ A nuclear bomb codenamed Little Boy was dropped on the city of Hiroshima.

1961 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov spent a day in orbit.

1965 ~ U.S. release of the Beatles’ album "Help!".

1990 ~ The UN Security Council ordered a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee released his idea for the "World Wide Web".

1991 ~ Death of Harry Reasoner, Reporter.

August 7th
 

1560 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Bathory, serial killer.

1867 ~ Birthday of Mata Hari (Margaretha Zelle), spy.

1942 ~ Birthday of Garrison Keillor, radio host.

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft "Kon-Tiki", arrived at the Tuamotu Islands after a 101 day 4,300 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean, proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1957 ~ Death of Oliver Hardy, Comedian & Actor.

1960 ~ Côte d'Ivoire becomes independent.

1964 ~ U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson broad powers to deal with reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.

1974 ~ French stuntman Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.

1998 ~ Bombing of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya that killed 224 people and injured over 4,500.

2004 ~ Death of Red Adair, American oil well firefighter.

Red Adair? What did Ginger Rogers say?

August 8th
 

1844 ~ Brigham Young was chosen to lead the Mormons following the killing of Joseph Smith.

1879 ~ Birthday of Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolutionary.

1902 ~ Birthday of P.A.M. Dirac, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933.

1937 ~ Birthday of Dustin Hoffman, Actor (The Graduate, Tootsie, Kramer vs. Kramer).

1945 ~ The U.S. ratified the United Nations Charter.

1963 ~ Britain's ''Great Train Robbery'' took place when thieves made off with 2.6 million pounds in banknotes.

1966 ~ The Beatles' released “Revolver”

1974 ~ U.S. President Nixon announced his resignation effective August 9.

1988 ~ U.N. Secretary-General Cuellar announced a cease-fire between Iran and Iraq.

1996 ~ Death of Frank A Whittle, inventor of the Jet engine.

August 9th
 

1173 ~ Construction of the (Leaning) Tower of Pisa began. It took two centuries to complete.

1483 ~ Opening of the Sistine Chapel.

1896 ~ Birthday of Jean Piaget, Child Psychologist.

1936 ~ Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the Berlin Olympics as the United States took first place in the 400-meter relay.

1945 ~ A nuclear bomb codenamed Fat Man was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.

1969 ~ Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murdered five people including Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring and, Abigail Folger.

1975 ~ Death of Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer.

1986 ~ Final live performance of Queen.

1986 ~ The Headington Shark was erected in Oxford.

1995 ~ Death of Jerry Garcia, guitarist: Grateful Dead.

Piaget was flavour of the month when I was at Teachers College in the early 70s.