Today is: August 15

Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.
Proverbs 27:1

August is:

Children's Vision and Learning Month National Back-to-School Month National Inventors' Month Science / Medicine / Technology Book Month Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month

Chauvin Day - Honors Nicholas Chauvin, a soldier so blindly devoted to Emperor Napoleon that his name became a word: "chauvanism," which means an absurd attachment to a cause.

National Relaxation Day - This is the day to totally relax. Sponsor: Sean Moeller.

Born on this Day

• 1195: St. Anthony of Padua
  
  

• 1432: Poet Luigi Pulci, Italy
  
  

• 1619: Flemish cartoonist/copper plate Hubertus Quellinus,
  
  

• 1688: Frederick-William I, king of Prussia (1713-1740)
  
  

• 1702: Italian rococo painter and etcher Francesco Zuccarelli
  
  

• 1725: Composer Ferdinando Bertoni
  
  

• 1727: Composer Johann Georg Holzbogen
  
  

• 1736: Composer Johann Christoph Kellner
  
  

• 1769: Napoleon Bonaparte born on the island of Corsica.
  
  

• 1771: Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe, The Talisman) See today's history focus
  
  

• 1803: Sir James Douglas, father of British Columbia.
  
  

• 1859: Longtime Chicago White Sox owner Charles Comiskey
  
  

• 1879: Actress Ethel Barrymore (Blythe) ( None But the Lonely Heart; The Farmer's Daughter)
  
  

• 1887: Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Edna Ferber ( So Big, Show Boat, Cimarron, Saratoga Trunk, Ice Palace, Giant)
  
  

• 1888: T.E. Lawrence, the British soldier who gained fame as "Lawrence of Arabia," (Tremadoc, Wales).
  
  

• 1912: Cooking expert Julia Child
  
  

• 1912: Actress Dame Wendy Hiller (Separate Tables; A Man for All Seasons, Murder on the Orient Express, Pygmalion, The Elephant Man, Toys in the Attic, David Copperfield)
  
  

• 1922: Composer Lukas Foss
  
  

• 1924: Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly
  
  

• 1925: Actress Rose Marie (Curley) (The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hollywood Squares, The Doris Day Show, My Sister Eileen)
  
  

• 1925: Actor Mike Connors (Krekor Ohanian) (Mannix, Tightrope, Today's F.B.I., Sudden Fear)
  
  

• 1925: Jazz musician Oscar Peterson
  
  

• 1925: Country singer Rose Maddox
  
  

• 1925: Rhythm-and-blues singer Bill Pinckney (The Drifters)
  
  

• 1928: Movie director Nicolas Roeg
  
  

• 1931: Actress Janice Rule
  
  

• 1932: Actress Abby Dalton
  
  

• 1933: Actress Lori Nelson
  
  

• 1934: Singer-producer Bobby Byrd
  
  

• 1935: Civil rights activist Vernon Jordan
  
  

• 1935: Actor Jim Dale
  
  

• 1936: Actress Pat Priest
  
  

• 1938: Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer
  
  

• 1944: Author-journalist Linda Ellerbee
  
  

• 1946: Songwriter Jimmy Webb
  
  

• 1950: Britain's Princess Anne
  
  

• 1950: Actress Tess Harper
  
  

• 1955: Actor Larry Mathews ("The Dick Van Dyke Show")
  
  

• 1957: Actor Zeljko Ivanek
  
  

• 1961: Rock singer-musician Matt Johnson
  
  

• 1964: Actress Debi Mazar
  
  

• 1968: Actress Debra Messing ("Will and Grace")
  
  

• 1972: Actor Ben Affleck
  
  

• 1974: Actress Natasha Henstridge       
         
  
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 0465: Death of Libius Severus, Emperor of the West
  
  

• 0717: Siege of Constantinople raised
  
  

• 0778: Charlemagne's rear guard, returning from Spain, attacked by Basques; Death of Roland
  
  

• 1038: Death of St. Stephen, King of Hungary
  
  

• 1057: MacBeth, King of Scotland, killed by Malcolm MacDuncan, son of King Duncan.
  
  

• 1070: Lanfranc becomes Archbishop of Canterbury
  
  

• 1079: Malcolm III, King of Scotland, invades England
  
  

• 1096: The First Crusade sets out for Jerusalem
  
  

• 1209: Surrender of Carcassone (Albegensian "Crusade")
  
  

• 1261: Michael VIII usurps the Byzantine throne
  
  

• 1281: The Kami Kaze, the "Divine Wind," destroys the invading Mongol fleet off Japan
  
  

• 1327: Slavs of Tver, Russia, massacre the Mongol population
  
  

• 1457: The completion of the "Mainz Psalter," the earliest specifically dated printed book. (3 years after Gutenberg.) The printer's names were Peter Schoeffer and Joachim Fust, which last is the origin of the legend of "Faust." The Psalter was printed in a calligraphic style, and all the books were "written" identically, giving rise to the story of Faust's pact with the Devil.
  
  

• 1464: Death of Pope Pius II
  
  

• 1534: Foundation of the Jesuits
  
  

• 1548: Mary, Queen of Scots, arrives in France
  
  

• 1620: "Mayflower" sets sail from Southampton with 102 Pilgrims
  
  

• 1635: 1st recorded hurricane in America, Plymouth Colony
  
  

• 1649: Cromwell lands in Ireland
  
  

• 1807: Paganini helped Napoleon celebrate his birthday by playing a sonata on the G-string.
  
  

• 1848: M. Waldo Hanchett of Syracuse, NY patented the dental chair.
  
  

• 1911: Procter & Gamble Company of Cincinnati, OH, introduced Crisco hydrogenated shortening this day.
  
  

• 1914: An American ship sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, officially opening the Panama Canal.
  
  

• 1935: Humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska.
  
  

• 1939: The M-G-M musical "The Wizard of Oz" premiered at the Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
  
  

• 1944: During World War Two, Allied forces landed in southern France.
  
  

• 1945: Proclaimed "V-J Day" by the Allies, a day after Japan agreed to surrender unconditionally. In a recorded radio message, Emperor Hirohito called upon the Japanese people to "bear the unbearable" and lay down their arms.
  
  

• 1947: India became independent after some 200 years of British rule. Jawaharlal Nehru became India's first prime minister.
  
  

• 1948: The Republic of Korea was proclaimed.
  
  

• 1951: Artur Schnabel died in Switzerland. He was 69. Schnabel was the first man to record all 32 of Beethoven's piano sonatas.
  
  

• 1952: 34 people were killed when rain-swollen streams carrying boulders and other debris tore through Lynmouth, England.
  
  

• 1960: The Congo (Brazzaville) gains it's independence.
  
  

• 1961: East German workers began building the Berlin Wall.
  
  

• 1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York. The three-day concert on or near Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, New York, featured 24 bands and drew a crowd of more than 400,000 people.
  
  

• 1971: President Nixon announced a 90-day freeze on wages, prices and rents.
  
  

• 1974: South Korean President Park Chung-hee escaped an assassination attempt in which his wife was killed.
  
  

• 1979: Andrew Young resigned as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations after criticism for an unauthorized meeting with the U.N. observer for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
  
  

• 1981: Lionel Richie and Diana Ross hit number one on the pop music charts this day, with "Endless Love." It remained number one for nine weeks.
  
  

• 1983: President Reagan, speaking in New Orleans, likened his Central America policy to the citizens' crime-fighting program "Neighborhood Watch," saying that "outside troublemakers and bullies will think twice.""
  
  

• 1983: Six-month-old Lisa Harap of Queens Village, New York became the youngest, identifiable living person to appear on the cover of "Time Magazine.""
  
  

• 1984: America's Olympic medal winners were honored with a ticker-tape parade in New York, an event marred when a scaffold rail collapsed, injuring about a hundred spectators.
  
  

• 1984: Pete Rose returned to become player and manager of the Cincinnati Reds after being away from his hometown for six years. Rose had been in Philadelphia and Montreal.
  
  

• 1985: South African President P.W. Botha delivered an internationally broadcast speech in which he rejected calls to dismantle apartheid, saying it would lead white South Africans "on a road to abdication and suicide."
  
  

• 1986: The U.S. Senate voted 84-14 to approve a strengthened package of economic sanctions against South Africa, including a ban on importing South African steel, textiles, uranium, coal and agricultural produce.
  
  

• 1987: More than 13.5 inches of rain drenched the Chicago area, causing more than $100 million in damage.
  
  

• 1987: Thousands of people marched past the grave of Elvis Presley in Memphis, Tennessee, as they began an all-night vigil marking the tenth anniversary of his death.
  
  

• 1988: President Reagan bade a sentimental farewell on the first night of the Republican national convention in New Orleans, and praised the man destined to succeed him, Vice President George Bush.
  
  

• 1989: F.W. de Klerk was sworn in as acting president of South Africa, one day after P.W. Botha resigned as the result of a power struggle within the National Party.
  
  

• 1990: In an attempt to gain support against the U.S.-led coalition in the Persian Gulf, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein offered to make peace with longtime enemy Iran, saying he would pull troops out of territories seized from the Iranians.
  
  

• 1991: The U.N. Security Council, by a vote of 13-1, authorized Iraq to export $1.6 billion worth of oil in a tightly controlled sale to pay for desperately needed food and medicine.
  
  

• 1991: The congressional budget office disclosed that the federal deficit would rise to a record $362 billion.
  
  

• 1992: While Republicans were gathering in Houston for their national convention, President Bush was spending a weekend at Camp David, his renomination secure.
  
  

• 1992: 4 people were killed and as many as 20 wounded in a shooting spree at a Caribbean nightclub near Miami.
  
  

• 1992: Vietnam blamed Hollywood for creating the "myth" that U.S. servicemen are still being held in Indochina.
  
  

• 1993: Pope John Paul II conducted mass for up to 400,000 people at the World Youth Day festival south of Denver.
  
  

• 1993: Nearly 400 Palestinians who'd been deported from Israel to southern Lebanon in 1992 agreed to Israel's terms for their return.
  
  

• 1993: Pope John Paul the Second ended his four-day US visit with a farewell address at Denver's Stapleton International Airport in which he denounced the "culture of death" of abortion and euthanasia.
  
  

• 1993: An Egyptian surrendered peacefully after hijacking a Dutch jet to Germany to demand the US release Muslim cleric Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman.
  
  

• 1994: Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the terrorist known as "Carlos the Jackal," was jailed in France after being captured in Sudan.
  
  

• 1995: The Justice Department agreed to pay $3.1 million to white separatist Randy Weaver and his family to settle their claims over the killing of Weaver's wife and son during a 1992 siege by federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
  
  

• 1995: Pioneering TV journalist and Timex watch pitchman John Cameron Swayze died in Sarasota, Florida, at age 89.
  
  

• 1996: Bob Dole claimed the Republican presidential nomination at the party's convention in San Diego, offering himself as the "bridge to a time of tranquility" and describing himself as "the most optimistic man in America."
  
  

• 1996: Frederick Martin Davidson, a graduate student at San Diego State University, shot and killed three engineering professors (Davidson was later sentenced to three life terms in prison).
  
  

• 1997: The government expanded its recall of ground beef sold under the Hudson brand name to 1.2 million pounds because of new evidence of possible contamination by E. coli bacteria.
  
  

• 1997: The Justice Department decided against prosecuting senior FBI officials in connection with an alleged cover-up that followed the deadly 1992 Ruby Ridge siege in Idaho.
  
  

• 1998: Twenty-nine people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh, Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility.
  

• 1999: President Clinton and his family went house hunting in Westchester County, N.Y. (They later settled on a house in Chappaqua.) There goes the neighborhood!
  

• 1999: Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship, becoming the youngest player to win two majors since Seve Ballesteros. 
  
  

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