August 1
August is Admit You’re Happy Month and Family Fun Month and National Catfish Month and National Eye Exam Month and National Golf Month and Peach Month and Romance Awareness Month and Water Quality Month and National Picnic Month
It’s National Raspberry Cream Pie Day and Sport’s Day
ON THIS DAY…
30BC Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic
1291 The cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden form a protective confederation that will become the nation of Switzerland
1492 Ferdinand and Isabella drive the Jews out of Spain
1619 The first African slaves arrive in Jamestown, VA
1774 Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called “dephlogisticated air” — later known as oxygen
1800 The Act of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
1831 The New London Bridge opens to traffic
1834 The Emancipation Act abolishes slavery throughout the British Empire
1873 Inventor Andrew Smith Hallidie revolutionized transportation methods in San Francisco when he successfully tested a cable car he had designed to solve the problem of providing mass transit up San Francisco’s steep hills
1876 Colorado is admitted as the 38th US state
1893 Henry D. Perky of Colorado and William Ford of Watertown, NY, patented the pillow-shaped shredded wheat
1902 The United States buys the rights to the Panama Canal from France
1914 Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I
1929 Disney’s Mickey Mouse short The Haunted House is released in the US
1936 The Games of the XI Olympiad open in Berlin
1941 The first Jeep is produced
1944 Anne Frank makes the last entry in her diary
1944 With Soviet armies approaching the city from the east, the resistance movement in Warsaw, Poland, begins an uprising against the German occupation; the Germans crush the rebellion by October
1946 The Atomic Energy Commission was established as President Harry S. Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act, which transfered the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands
1954 The Yangtze River floods in China, killing 40,000 people and forcing 10 million others to leave their homes
1955 The first microgravity research began
1957 The United States and Canada form the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)
1957 The Solar Building (Bridgers and Paxton Office Building), Albuquerque NM, was the first commercial building to be heated by the sun’s energy; it was subsequently listed in the National Register of Historic Places for its “exceptional importance,” in the area of engineering because it was an early solar-heated commercial building, the equipment for which survived largely intact
1964 The Belgian Congo is renamed the Republic of the Congo
1966 Charles Whitman kills 15 people at The University of Texas at Austin from the observation deck of the University’s 32-story administrative building before being killed by the police
1966 Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official People’s Republic of China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution
1971 The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour premiers on CBS-TV
1978 Baseball player Pete Rose’s hitting streak of 44 consecutive games, which tied the National League record, comes to an end
1981 MTV debuts in America with The Buggles video “Video Killed the Radio Star”
1986 John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal are married; they would divorce in 1992
2000 A man in Israel become the first recipient of the Jarvik 2000, the first total artificial heart that can maintain blood flow in addition to generating a pulse
2007 The I-35W Mississippi River Bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapsed during the evening rush hour
2008 The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor opened in US movie theaters
BORN:
10BC Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus or Claudius I, Roman Emperor whose reign saw an expansion of the empire, including the conquest of Britain
1770 William Clark, explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor; along with Meriwether Lewis, Clark led the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803 to 1805 across the Louisiana Purchase to the Pacific Ocean
1779 Francis Scott Key, lawyer, author, and amateur poet who wrote the words to the United States’ national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner”
1819 Herman Melville, novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet who by the time of his death he had been almost completely forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby-Dick largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and most responsible for Melville’s fall from favor with the reading public was recognized in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature
1910 Walter Scharf, Emmy Award-winning television and film composer (The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., The Nutty Professor, Ben, The Fighting Seabees, Hans Christian Andersen)
1930 Lionel Bart, composer of songs and musicals, best known for Oliver!
1931 Tom Wilson, cartoonist, “Ziggy”
1933 Dom DeLuise, actor, comedian, film director, television producer, and chef (The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, The Cannonball Run)
1942 Jerry Garcia, musician/songwriter (The Grateful Dead)
1965 Sam Mendes, Academy Award-winning director (American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Jarhead)
1978 Dhani Harrison, George and Olivia Harrison’s son
1979 Honeysuckle Weeks, actress (Foyle’s War, Lorna Doone, The Wild House, A Dark Adapted Eye)
DIED:
1903 Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary-Burke), frontierswoman and professional scout best known for her claim of being a close friend of Wild Bill Hickok, but also for having gained fame fighting Native Americans, dies of pneumonia at 47
1977 Gary Powers, pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down while over the Soviet Union causing the 1960 U-2 incident, dies when the news helicopter he was piloting ran out of fuel and crashed just a few miles from Burbank Airport where he was based at 46
1990 Graham Young, British murderer who fatally poisoned three people (his stepmother, and then years later two work colleagues, Bob Egle and Fred Biggs) as well as administering smaller doses to scores of others, dies of a myocardial infarction while incarcerated at the age of 42