1519 ~ Ferdinand Magellan's 5 ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe.

1675 ~ Foundation stone set of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

1846 ~ The Smithsonian Institution was chartered following a $500,000 donation by scientist Joseph Smithson.

1885 ~ America's first commercially operated electric streetcar began operation in Baltimore.

1896 ~ Death of Otto Lilienthal, Aviation Pioneer.

1945 ~ Death of Robert Goddard, Rocket Scientist.

1985 ~ Michael Jackson purchased ATV Music (all the Beatle songs) for $47 million.

1990 ~ The Magellan space probe arrived at Venus.

1995 ~ Norma McCorvey, '”Jane Roe” in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which legalized abortion, announced she had joined the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

2003 ~ The highest temperature ever recorded in England, 38.5°C, recorded in Kent.

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3114 B.C. ~ Beginning of our current era in the Maya Long Count Calendar.

480 B.C. ~ Persians under Xerxes defeated Spartans under King Leonidas in the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartans fight to the last man.

The Battle of Thermopylae has served as an example to officers and soldiers alike of what courage and self-sacrifice could achieve. It is still remembered, almost 2,500 years later, as a classic example of virtue.

1253 ~ Death of Saint Clare of Assisi, Patron Saint of television.

1905 ~ Birthday of Erwin Chargaff, biochemist.

1919 ~ Death of Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist & Philanthropist.

1929 ~ Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs.

1943 ~ Birthday of Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani general & President.

1950 ~ Birthday of Steve Wozniak, Computer Pioneer.

1984 ~ U.S. President Reagan joked during a voice test for a paid political radio address that he had ''signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.''

2003 ~ NATO took over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe.

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30 BC Cleoptara, Queen of Egypt and former wife to Julius Caesar,
commits suicide by means of venomous snakebite to the
mammary gland.
1676 Wampanoag chieftain Metacom (or "Philip") is killed in a swamp
near Mount Hope. Thus ends King Philip's War, the first war
between Indians and European settlers.
1869 In San Francisco, Emperor Norton I issues a stern edict
outlawing both the Republican and Democratic political parties.
Violators face a prison term of five-to-ten years.
1951 Dr. Jean Vieu discovers two patients stricken with abdominal
pain and grotesque hallucinations in Pont St. Esprit, France.
They are just the first of more than 230 afflicted townspeople,
thanks to bread tainted with ergot.
1985 30 minutes after takeoff, JAL flight 123 loses all hydraulic
pressure, rendering the controls inoperable. The crew attempts
a return to Tokyo-Haneda airport by adjusting power to the
engines, but the 747 crashes into a mountain ridge near Mt.
Osutaka. When rescue workers arrive the following morning, they
find 4 survivors and 520 dead.

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I intend to live forever - so far, so good

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

The only substitute for good manners is fast reflexes.

1851 ~ Isaac Singer was granted a patent for his sewing machine.

1859 ~ Birthday of Katherine Lee Bates, Poet (America the Beautiful).

1887 ~ Birthday of Erwin Schrödinger, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933.

1927 ~ Birthday of Mstislav Rostropovich, Cellist.

1928 ~ Death of Leos Janacek, Czech Composer.

1953 ~ The Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

1960 ~ The first communications satellite, Echo I, was launched.

1964 ~ Death of Ian Fleming, Novelist.

1981 ~ The IBM PC was introduced.

2002 ~ Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea.

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1521 ~ Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City) fell to conquistador Hernán Cortés.

1860 ~ Birthday of Annie Oakley, Sharpshooter.

1899 ~ Birthday of Alfred Hitchcock, Director.

1942 ~ Walt Disney's animated cartoon Bambi premiered.

1946 ~ Death of H. G. Wells, Writer.

1948 ~ Birthday of Kathleen Battle, Opera Singer.

1961 ~ The Berlin Wall began to be built.

1966 ~ Beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution.

1997 ~ The popular, controversial animated series South Park debuted.

2003 ~ Libya agreed to set up a $2.7 billion fund for families of 270 people killed in the 1988 Pan Am bombing.

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Eudaimonia

1862 ~ Birthday of Ernest Thayer, Poet (Casey at the Bat).

1880 ~ After 632 years, Cologne Cathedral was completed.

1945 ~ Japan surrendered, ending World War II.

1947 ~ Pakistan & India gained independence from the UK at midnight, Pakistan commemorating the event on August 14 and India on August 15.

1951 ~ Death of William Randolph Hearst, newspaper magnate.

1971 ~ Rod Stewart released Maggie May.

1980 ~ Workers went on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, in a job action that resulted in the creation of the Solidarity labor movement.

1988 ~ Death of Enzo Ferrari, Automobile Designer.

1994 ~ Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, was captured.

2003 ~ A blackout hit the northeastern U.S. and part of Canada; 50 million people lost power.

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Eudaimonia

778 ~ The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, in which Roland was killed.

1769 ~ Birthday of Napoleon Bonaparte, general and politician.

1877 ~ Thomas Edison made the first-ever recording - "Mary Had a Little Lamb".

1890 ~ Birthday of Jacques Ibert, French Composer.

1945 ~ The Allies proclaimed V-J Day, one day after Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally.

1948 ~ Republic of Korea established south of 38th Parallel.

1951 ~ Death of Artur Schnabel, Pianist.

1967 ~ Death of René Magritte, Surrealist painter.

1969 ~ First day of Woodstock Music and Art Festival.

I was able to talk my cousin out of going to this. She had called me a month or so earlier and said she could get a couple of tickets if we wanted to go. It was inconvenient to get to, and when I said so, she agreed, and so….

1998 ~ A car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killed 29 people and injured 370. It was the single deadliest act of violence in 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

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Eudaimonia

1858 ~ U.S. President Buchanan inaugurated the new transatlantic telegraph cable by exchanging greetings with Queen Victoria.

1888 ~ Birthday of Lawrence of Arabia.

1896 ~ Gold was discovered in the Klondike.

1899 ~ Death of Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, chemist.

1930 ~ First color sound cartoon, called Fiddlesticks, was made by Ub Iwerks.

1948 ~ Death of Babe Ruth, baseball player.

1960 ~ Cyprus gained its independence from the UK.

1962 ~ The Beatles fired Pete Best and replaced him with Ringo Starr.

1977 ~ Death of Elvis Presley, Singer, Actor.

2003 ~ Death of Idi Amin, Ugandan dictator.

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Eudaimonia

1601 ~ Birthday of Pierre de Fermat, Mathematician.

1786 ~ Birthday of Davy Crockett, Frontiersman, Soldier.

1807 ~ Robert Fulton's steamboat left New York City for Albany, New York, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.

1863 ~ In Charleston, South Carolina, Union batteries and ships bombard Confederate-held Fort Sumter.

1882 ~ Birthday of Samuel Goldwyn, Hollywood producer.

1911 ~ Birthday of Mikhail Botvinnik, World Chess Champion.

1962 ~ East German border guards shot and mortally wounded 18-year-old Peter Fechter, who had attempted to cross over the Berlin Wall into the western sector.

1970 ~ Venera 7 was launched. It became the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet, Venus.

1980 ~ Azaria Chamberlain disappeared, likely taken by a dingo, leading to what was then the most publicised trial in Australian history and one of the more famous wrongful conviction when her parents were found guilty of murder.

1998 ~ US President Bill Clinton admitted in taped testimony that he had an "improper physical relationship" with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. On the same day he admitted before the nation that he "misled people" about his relationship.

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Eudaimonia

1227 ~ Death of Genghis Khan, Mongol leader.

1587 ~ Birthday of Virginia Dare; the first English child born in the Americas.

1750 ~ Birthday of Antonio Salieri, Composer.

1774 ~ Birthday of Meriwether Lewis, Explorer.

1877 ~ Asaph Hall discovered Phobos, the moon of Pluto.

1920 ~ 19th Amendment to US constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women's right to vote.

1958 ~ Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita was published in the U.S.

1963 ~ James Meredith became the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi.

1969 ~ Jimi Hendrix played the unofficial last day of Woodstock.

1991 ~ Downfall of the Soviet Union: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was put under house arrest while he was vacationing in the Crimea.

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Eudaimonia

1871 ~ Birthday of Orville Wright, Aviator.

1902 ~ Birthday of Ogden Nash, Poet.

1921 ~ Birthday of Gene Roddenberry, creator of Start Trek

1934 ~ The creation of the position Führer approved in a German plebiscite.

1942 ~ About 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering about 50 percent casualties.

1960 ~ A tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage.

1977 ~ Death of Groucho Marx, Comedian & Actor.

1981 ~ Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi sent two Sukoi Su-22 fighter jets to intercept two U.S. F-14 Tomcats over the Gulf of Sidra. The American jets shot down the Libyan fighters.

1990 ~ Leonard Bernstein conducted his final concert, ending with Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony # 7.

1994 ~ Death of Linus Pauling, Scientist & Peace Activist.

He was a physical chemist, among the most influential chemists of the twentieth century, and one of the most important scientists of all time. He was one of the first quantum chemists, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 for his work describing the nature of chemical bonds. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his campaign against above-ground nuclear testing, becoming one of only two people to receive the Nobel Prize in more than one field, the other being Marie Curie.

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Eudaimonia

1882 ~ Piotr Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow.

1890 ~ Birthday of H. P. Lovecraft, Horror Writer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Jim Reeves, country and western singer.

1940 ~ UK PM Winston Churchill paid tribute to the RAF, saying, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

1941 ~ Birthday of Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia.

1968 ~ Warsaw Pact troops and tanks invaded Czechoslovakia to end the Prague Spring of political liberalization.

1991 ~ Downfall of the Soviet Union: Estonia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

1998 ~ The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec could not legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.

1998 ~ The U.S. launched cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2001 ~ Death of Sir Fred Hoyle, Astronomer, Science Fiction Writer.

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Eudaimonia

1858 ~ The first of seven debates between U.S. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas was held.

1872 ~ Birthday of Aubrey Beardsley, Illustrator.

1904 ~ Birthday of Count Basie, Bandleader.

1923 ~ Birthday of Shimon Peres, Prime Minister of Israel.

1936 ~ Birthday of Wilt Chamberlain, Basketball Hall of Famer.

1940 ~ Death of Leon Trotsky, exiled Russian revolutionary.

1959 ~ Hawaii was admitted as the 50th U.S. state.

1983 ~ Assassination of Benigno S. Aquino Jr., Philippine opposition leader.

1986 ~ Suffocating gas erupted from volcanic Lake Nyos in Cameroon, killing more than 1,700.

1991 ~ A hard-line coup against Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev collapsed in the face of a popular uprising led by Russian federation President Boris N. Yeltsin.

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Eudaimonia

1485 ~ King Richard III was killed in the Battle of Bosworth Field, ending the War of the Roses.

1770 ~ James Cook's expedition arrived on the east coast of Australia.

1851 ~ The schooner America outraced the Aurora off the English coast to win a trophy that became known as the America's Cup.

1862 ~ Birthday of Claude Debussy, Composer.

1893 ~ Birthday of Dorothy Parker, Writer & Wit.

1910 ~ Japan annexed Korea.

1920 ~ Birthday of Ray Bradbury, science fiction author and fantasy author (Fahrenheit 451).

1962 ~ The Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered ship, completed its maiden voyage.

1978 ~ Death of Jomo Kenyatta, first Prime Minister of Kenya.

2001 ~ For the Geeks among us, a sad day. The Trojan room coffee pot was switched off for the last time.

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Eudaimonia

1305 ~ Execution of William Wallace.

1754 ~ Birthday of King Louis XVI of France.

1829 ~ Birthday of Moritz Cantor, Mathematician.

1912 ~ Birthday of Gene Kelly, Dancer & Actor.

1927 ~ Italian-born anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed in Boston.

1951 ~ Birthday of Queen Noor of Jordan.

1962 ~ First live television connection between the United States and Europe, via the Telstar satellite.

1990 ~ Saddam Hussein appeared on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests”.

1990 ~ West Germany and East Germany announced that they would unite.

2000 ~ Richard Hatch won the $1 million prize in the first season finale of the reality show ''Survivor''.

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Eudaimonia