Today is: August  23

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

Birth Control Day - In 2032 B.C., Egyptians introduced one of the first birth control methods other than the rhythm method. They altered the pH of the vagina by inserting crocodile dung and honey, making it too acid for sperm to survive.

Gasoline Alley Birthday - This comic strip by Frank King first appeared in the Chicago Tribune in 1919.

Hug Your Boyfriend or Girlfriend Day - Take time today to appreciate your soulmate in a healthy relationship. Sponsor: Sharkbait Press.

Sacco-Vanzetti Memorial Day - In 1927, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, immigrant laborers, were electrocuted for a payroll robbery they did not commit. Fifty years later, in 1977, Govenor George Dukakis declared this day a memorial day for these victims of prejudice.

Singing in the Rain Day - Gene Kelley was born this day in 1912 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. On this day celebrate by singing and dancing - in the rain - if you can.Sponsor: The Life of the Party.

Born on this Day

• 1486: Austrian diplomat Siegmund Freiherr von Herberstein
  
  

• 1593: Italian poet Fulvio Testi (Pianto d'Italia)
  
  

• 1727: Composer Friedrich Hartmann Graf
  
  

• 1740: Ivan VI, Emperor of Russia 1740-41
  
  

• 1754: France's King Louis XVI was born at Versailles. King from (1774-93) eventually guillotined
  
  

• 1755: French geographer Jean Baptiste Lislet-Geoffroy
  
  

• 1769: French zoologist Georges Cuvier (La RŠgne Animal)
  
  

• 1773: German philosopher Jakob F Fries
  
  

• 1785: American naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry.
  
  

• 1809: Polish poet Juliusz Slowacki (Trip to H Land)
  
  

• 1869: Poet and novelist Edgar Lee Masters
  
  

• 1879: Composer Alfreds Kalnins
  
  

• 1881: Dutch painter and graphic artist Louis Schelfhout
  
  

• 1886: Composer Gottfried Rudinger
  
  

• 1887: Dutch actor and playwright Jo Sternheim (Fatherland)
  
  

• 1883: Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, hero of Bataan in World War II
  
  

• 1884: Humorist Will Cuppy
  
  

• 1900: Ernst Krenek was born in Vienna. Krenek's first and only major success came early, in 1927. "Jonny spielt auf," usually referred to in English as "Johnny Strikes Up the Band," is an opera that uses every musical style from atonality to jazz.
  
  

• 1905: Cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller (creator of "Nancy")
  
  

• 1929: Actress Vera Miles (The Wrong Man, Psycho, The FBI Story, Autumn Leaves, Into the Night, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Sergeant Ryker, Jigsaw, Our Family Business)
  
  

• 1912: Dancer, actor Gene Kelly (Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, Anchors Aweigh,The Three Musketeers, Marjorie Morningstar, Inherit the Wind, North and South Book I; director: Singin' in the Rain, Hello, Dolly!, A Guide for the Married Man, The Cheyenne Social Club)
  
  

• 1917: Singer Tex Williams ( Smoke, Smoke, Smoke [that Cigarette], Shame on You, The Rose of the Alamo, Bluebird on Your Windowsill, Bottom of a Mountain)
  
  

• 1926: Movie director Robert Mulligan ("Summer of '42")
  
  

• 1931: Actress Vera Miles
  
  

• 1932: Political satirist Mark Russell
  
  

• 1933: California Governor Pete Wilson
  
  

• 1934: Actress Barbara Eden
  
  

• 1938: Actor Ronny Cox
  
  

• 1940: Actor Richard Sanders
  
  

• 1942: Ballet dancer Patricia McBride
  
  

• 1944: Former Surgeon General Antonia Novello
  
  

• 1947: Country singer Rex Allen Junior
  
  

• 1949: Actress Shelley Long
  
  

• 1949: Actor-singer Rick Springfield
  
  

• 1949: Country singer-musician Woody Paul (Riders in the Sky)
  
  

• 1951: Queen Noor of Jordan
  
  

• 1951: Actor-producer Mark Hudson (The Hudson Brothers)
  
  

• 1961: Rock musician Dean DeLeo (Stone Temple Pilots)
  
  

• 1970: Actor River Phoenix (Running on Empty, Stand By Me, This Thing Called Love, Sneakers, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Little Nikita, The Mosquito Coast, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers)  
  
  

• 1971: Actor Jay Mohr 
         
  
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 0408: Stilicho beheaded
  
  
  

• 0476: Odoacer proclaimed King of Italy
  
  
  

• 0634: Abu Bakr, the Upright, 2nd Moslem Caliph, dies1244: Turks expel the crusaders under Frederick II from Jerusalem.
  
  
  

• 1285: Death of St. Philip Benizi
  
  
  

• 1305: Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn, beheaded, and quartered in London.
  
  
  

• 1358: Death of Isabella, widow of King Edward II of England
  
  
  

• 1591: Death of Luis de Leon, writer and mystic
  
  
  

• 1617: 1st 1-way streets established (London)
  
  
  

• 1711: A British attempt to invade Canada by sea fails.
  
  
  

• 1775: King George III of England refuses the American colonies' offer of peace and declares them in open rebellion.
  
  
  

• 1819: Oliver Hazard Perry naval hero, dies on 34th birthday.
  
  
  

• 1838: One of the first colleges for women, Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, graduated its first students.
  
  
  

• 1900: Booker T. Washington forms the National Negro Business League in Boston, Massachusetts.
  
  
  

• 1914: The Emperor of Japan declares war on Germany.
  
  
  

• 1926: Silent film star Rudolph Valentino died in New York at age 31. Italian-born heartthrob Rudolph Valentino died prematurely in New York City of peritonitis.The preeminent male sex symbol of the silent movie era, Rudolf Valentino brought millions of female fans into movie theaters and created Hollywood's prototypical "Latin Lover" character with his suave, passionate performances in films such as the "The Sheik". His funeral brought throngs of adoring women to tears and sent fans into hysteric mourning.
  
  
  

• 1927: Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in Boston for the murders of two men during a
  
  
  

• 1920 robbery. (Sacco and Vanzetti were vindicated in 1977 by Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis.) See today's History Focus
  
  
  

• 1939: Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland. Less than two years later, Germany launched a blitzkrieg attack on Russia.
  
  
  

• 1942: German forces begin an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad. The Krummer Lauf allowed German infantry and motorized artillery units to actually fire around corners.
  
  
  

• 1944: German SS engineers begin placing explosive charges around the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Adolf Hitler had decreed that Paris should be left a smoking ruin. 1944: Romanian prime minister Ion Antonescu was dismissed by King Michael, paving the way for Romania to abandon the Axis in favor of the Allies.
  
  
  

• 1945: The conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Leo Borchard, was shot dead at an American checkpoint when his driver ignored an order to halt.
  
  
  

• 1947: An audience at the Hollywood Bowl heard President Truman's daughter, Margaret, give her first public concert as a singer.
  
  
  

• 1950: Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps are called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.
  
  
  

• 1958: Marie Ashton completes playing piano a female record 133 hours
  
  
  

• 1960: Broadway librettist Oscar Hammerstein II died in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
  
  
  

• 1972: The Republican national convention, meeting in Miami Beach, Florida, nominated Vice President Spiro T. Agnew for a second term.
  
  
  

• 1979: Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defected while the Bolshoi Ballet was on tour in New York. He died May 18, 1995 at age 45
  
  
  

• 1982: Beirut Christian leader Beshir Gemayel was elected president of Lebanon. He was assassinated less than one month later and was succeeded by his brother, Amin.
  
  
  

• 1982: Gaylord Perry was tossed out of a game for throwing an illegal spitball. Perry, pitching for the Seattle Mariners, was given the heave-ho by the home plate umpire in the seventh inning of the game.
  
  
  

• 1984: President Reagan accepted the nomination of the Republican national convention in Dallas, declaring the Democrats were "openly committed to increasing your tax burden."
  
  
  

• 1984: South Fork Ranch, the home of the fictitious Ewing clan of the CBS-TV show "Dallas" was sold. The ranch, a 200-acre spread near Dallas, Texas, was to be transformed from a tourist site into a hotel, according to the new owners.
  
  
  

• 1985: Rev. Jerry Falwell said his statement calling South African Bishop Desmond Tutu a "phony" was a poor choice of words. But Falwell said he still believed Tutu did not speak for the majority of black South Africans.
  
  
  

• 1986: Gennady Zakharov, a physicist assigned to the United Nations, was arrested by the FBI and charged with espionage. (Zakharov's arrest was followed a week later by the arrest of American journalist Nicholas Daniloff in the Soviet Union.)
  
  
  

• 1986: Darrell Waltrip became the first race car driver to earn $7 million in a racing career.
  
  
  

• 1987: Seven Democratic presidential hopefuls traded gentle barbs at a debate in Des Moines, Iowa, with Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis repeatedly called upon to defend his claims of economic revival in his state.
  
  
  

• 1987: It was called a "Union of Great Minds," Robert Jarvik, who invented the artificial heart, and Marilyn Mach vos Savant, who has an IQ of 228, married.
  
  
  

• 1988: Some striking workers in Poland ended a walkout that had begun a week earlier, but 125 miners barricaded themselves in an underground shaft, vowing to stay until they'd won their demands.
  
  
  

• 1989: In a case that inflamed racial tensions in New York, Yusuf Hawkins, a 16-year-old black youth, was shot dead after he and his friends were confronted by white youths in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.
  
  
  

• 1990: Iraqi state television showed President Saddam Hussein meeting a group of about 20 Western detainees, telling the group -- whom he described as "guest" -- that they were being held "to prevent the scourge of war."
  
  
  

• 1991: In the wake of a failed coup by hard-liners in the Soviet Union, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin acted to strip the Communist Party of its power and take control of the army and the KGB.
  
  
  

• 1992: Hurricane "Andrew" slammed into the Bahamas with 120 mile-an-hour winds.
  
  
  

• 1992: Three people were killed when their truck was struck at a railroad crossing by an Amtrak passenger train in Wallingford, Connecticut.
  
  
  

• 1992: James A. Baker the Third bowed out as Secretary of State after three and a-half years to become White House chief of staff.
  
  
  

• 1993: Former Detroit police officers Larry Nevers and Walter Budzyn were convicted of second-degree murder in the fatal beating of black motorist Malice Green (however, both convictions were later overturned; Budzyn was subsequently convicted of involuntary manslaughter in a retrial and sentenced to time already served; Nevers awaits retrial).
  
  
  

• 1993: Los Angeles police confirmed that pop star Michael Jackson was the subject of a criminal investigation.
  
  
  

• 1994: Republican senators threatened to thwart a $30 billion anti-crime bill unless Democrats accepted changes in the House-passed measure; President Clinton appealed for bipartisan cooperation.
  
  
  

• 1995: During a memorial service at Fort Myer, Va., President Clinton eulogized three U.S. diplomats killed in a road accident near Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and vowed to carry on the struggle for peace in the Balkans.
  
  
  

• 1995: Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt died on Martha's Vineyard at age 96.
  
  

• 1996: President Clinton imposed limits on peddling cigarettes to children as he unveiled Food and Drug Administration regulations declaring nicotine an addictive drug.
  
  

• 1996: A jury in Indianapolis found cigarette companies were not responsible for the lung cancer death of a 52-year-old lawyer who began smoking at age five.
  
  
  

• 1997: his weekly radio address, President Clinton said he would ask Congress to renew his authority for speedy negotiation of trade agreements, saying the "fast track" approach was needed to make US companies more competitive worldwide. 
  
  

• 1998: Boris Yeltsin again dismissed the Russian government, replacing his 36-year-old prime minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, with the Soviet-style leader he'd fired five months earlier, Viktor Chernomyrdin.
  

• 1999: The Dow Jones industrial average soared 199.15 to a new record of 11,209.84.
  

• 1999: Fifty years after the German government moved to the capital of Bonn, Berlin reclaimed its role as a center of power in Germany with the arrival of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
  
  

Send Mail to pbower@neo.rr.com