August 5

It’s National Mustard Day and Work Like a Dog Day

ON THIS DAY…
0910 The last major Viking army to raid England is defeated at the Battle of Tettenhall by the allied forces of Mercia and Wessex, led by King Edward and Earl Aethelred
1100 Henry I crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey
1385 Scottish hero Sir William Wallace, who led the Scottish resistance to an English invasion in 1298, is captured near Glasgow; he will later be executed by the English for treason
1583 English explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert founds the first English colony in North America, near Saint John’s, Newfoundland; the colonists soon return to England, however
1620 The Mayflower departs Southampton, England on first attempt to reach North America
1695 The Scottish Parliament established a General Post Office
1858 The laying of the west end of the first transatlantic cable was completed when the ship Niagra anchored at the Newfoundland coast having laid 1,016 miles of cable
1861 The United States Army abolished flogging
1864 Giovanni Batista Donati made the first spectroscopic observations of a comet tail
1884 The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty is laid on Bedloe’s Island in New York Harbor
1885 Arthur Conan Doyle and Louisa Hawkins were married; they would remain so until her death in 1906
1912 The Progressive Party, also known as the Bull Moose Party, chooses former president Theodore Roosevelt, who led the group’s break from the Republican Party, as their presidential candidate
1914 A lighting ceremony was held for the first electric traffic lights used to control flow of different streams of traffic at the intersection of Euclid Ave. and E. 105th St. in Cleveland, OH
1921 The first radio broadcast of a baseball game occurred when KDKA-AM, Pittsburg broadcast the game; The Pirates beat the Phillies, 8-0
1956 Jack Cassidy and Shirley Jones were married; they would have three children together before divorcing in 1974
1957 American Bandstand debuted nationally on ABC-TV, hosted by former DJ, Dick Clark
1962 Nelson Mandela is jailed; he would not be released until 1990
1963 The United States, the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the United Kingdom sign a nuclear test ban treaty; 96 other nations sign the pact, but France declines
1967 Disneyland’s attraction “Adventure Thru Inner Space” opens in Tomorrowland; guests are transported through a microscope where they are shrunken down and sent off to explore the inside of an atom
1969 Mariner 7 flew past Mars
1972 Patty Duke and John Astin were married; they would have two children before divorcing in 1985

BORN:
1862 Joseph Carey Merrick (erroneously referred to as John Merrick) was a disfigured person; after a brief career as a professional “freak,” dubbed the “Elephant Man” because of a tusklike growth on his face, he became the best-known resident patient of London Hospital from 1886 until his death
1906 John Huston, actor and Academy Award-winning screenwriter and director (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, The Man Who Would Be King)
1906 Joan Hickson, actress (Doctor in the House (1954), Carry on Admiral, Heavens Above!, Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, and Miss Marple in a dozen movies)
1911 Robert Taylor, actor (Magnificent Obsession, Camille, A Yank at Oxford, Billy the Kid (1941), Bataan, Quo Vadis, Knights of the Round Table)
1930 Neil Armstrong, astronaut, was the first man to walk on the moon; he served as a Navy pilot during the Korean War, then joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (which became NASA), as a civilian test pilot and in 1962, he was the first civilian to enter the astronaut-training program where he gained experience as command pilot of the Gemini 8 mission, which accomplished the first physical joining of two orbiting spacecraft
1935 John Saxon, prolific actor (Death of a Gunfighter, Joe Kidd, Enter the Dragon, The Bees, The Electric Horseman, Battle Beyond the Stars, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Falcon Crest, From Dusk Till Dawn)
1939 Bob Clark, writer, director, producer (Porky’s, She-Man, Black Christmas, Murder by Decree, A Christmas Story, Rhinestone, From the Hip)
1946 Loni Anderson, actress (The Jayne Mansfield Story, WKRP in Cincinnati, Stroker Ace, All Dogs Go to Heaven, A Night at the Roxbury)
1956 Maureen McCormick, actress and singer best remembered as Marcia on The Brady Bunch
1966 Jonathan Silverman, actor (Weekend at Bernie’s, Death Becomes Her, The Single Guy)

DIED:
1955 Carmen Miranda, singer, dancer, actress, hat-maker (That Night in Rio, Springtime in the Rockies, Copacabana), dies of a heart attack at 46
1962 Marilyn Monroe, actress (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Bus Stop, The Misfits) is found dead at 36 of a barbiturate overdose at her home in Los Angeles
1984 Richard Burton, BAFTA Award-winning actor (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Robe, Becket, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Anne of the Thousand Days, Equus) dies of a cerebral haemorrhage at 58
1988 Ralph Meeker, actor (The Naked Spur, Kiss Me Deadly, Paths of Glory, The Dirty Dozen, I Walk the Line), dies at 67
1988 Colin Higgins, screenwriter, producer, director (Harold & Maude, Foul Play, Nine to Five, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Silver Streak), dies of AIDS at 47
2000 Sir Alec Guinness, Academy Award-winning actor (The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Lavender Hill Mob, Star Wars, Smiley’s People), dies at 86