August 7
It’s Chinese Valentine’s Day/Daughter’s Day and National Lighthouse Day and National Kids Day and American Families Day
ON THIS DAY…
1782 George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart
1804 William Blake writes, “Money flies from me. Profit never ventures upon my threshold.” (I know exactly what he means.)
1807 Robert Fulton’s North River Steam Boat (also known as the Clermont) began chugging its way up New York’s Hudson River on its successful round-trip from New York City to Albany 150 miles apart in 32 hours
1886 Louis Hazeltine invented the neutrodyne circuit which making radio possible
1927 The Peace Bridge, a three-lane toll-bridge between Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada and Buffalo, NY, US was dedicated during ceremonies attended by the Prince of Wales (future King Edward VIII), Price Albert (future George VI), the prime ministers of Canada and Britain, and US Vice-President Charles Dawes
1934 The United States Court of Appeals rules that James Joyce’s novel Ulysses is not obscene and may be brought into the US
1942 United States Marines land at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, making the first assault of US troops on Japanese positions in the Pacific Ocean; US forces finally capture the island in February 1943
1944 IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I)
1947 In a recreation of a possible prehistoric migration, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl lands his balsa raft, the Kon-Tiki, on a Polynesian island after a journey from Peru
1961 Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov completes 17 orbits of the Earth in 25.5 hours in Vostok 2, becoming the first person to spend more than a day in space
1964 After two reported North Vietnamese attacks on US warships, the US Congress approves the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon Johnson the power to launch the Vietnam War
1973 NBC airs the final day of the Watergate hearings on daytime television
1981 The Washington Star ceases all operations after 128 years of publication
2007 Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants breaks baseball great Hank Aaron’s record by hitting his 756th home run
BORN:
1726 James Bowdoin, founder and first president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
1876 Mata Hari (Margaretha Geertruida “Grietje” Zelle), Dutch exotic dancer and courtesan who was executed by firing squad for espionage during World War I
1884 Billie Burke, actress, singer (The Wizard of Oz, Dinner at Eight, Topper, Zenobia, Father of the Bride (1950), The Young Philadelphians)
1926 Stan Freberg, comedian, writer, producer, actor, voice actor for Warner Bros., UPA, and Walt Disney cartoons and radio’s “The Jack Benny Program”; he was also a prominent advertising writer-producer, radio personality, and novelty record artist
1927 Carl Switzer, child actor most notable for appearing in the Our Gang short subjects series as Alfalfa, one of the series’ most popular and best-remembered characters
1932 Edward Hardwicke, actor (Colditz, Edward the King, Let Him Have It, Shadowlands, Richard III (1995), Elizabeth, Love Actually and Dr. John Watson to Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock Holmes)
1933 Jerry Pournelle, science fiction writer, essayist and journalist
1937 William Ross Maples, forensic anthropologist who examined and identified the skeletons of a number of historical figures, including Tsar Nicholas II and other members of the Romanov family killed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks, Vietnam MIAs, conquistador Francisco Pizarro, and in 1994 helped convict Byron De La Beckwith of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers
1944 John Glover, actor (Smallville, Brimstone, Batman & Robin, Ed and His Dead Mother, The Chocolate War)
1952 Alexei Sayle, comedian, actor and author (The Young Ones, Didn’t You Kill My Brother?, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Gorky Park)
1955 Wayne Knight, character actor (Seinfeld, Jurassic Park, Xiaolin Showdown, 3rd Rock from the Sun, JFK)
1960 David Duchovny, actor (The X-Files, Californication, Evolution, Red Shoe Diaries, Kalifornia, Chaplin)
1963 Harold Perrineau Jr., actor (Oz, Lost, 28 Weeks Later, The Matrix Reloaded, Romeo + Juliet)
1975 Charlize Theron, Academy Award-winning actress (Monster, Hancock, Æon Flux, The Astronaut’s Wife, That Thing You Do!)
DIED:
1941 Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet, songwriter, philosopher, and advocate for independence who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, dies at 80
1957 Oliver Hardy, comic actor famous as one half of Laurel and Hardy, the classic double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted nearly 40 years, dies of a series of strokes at 65