Today is: August  31

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

Saint Raymond Nonnatus Feast Day - Since Raymond was born by Caesarean section, he is patron saint of childbirth, pregnant women, midwives and children.

Thoughtful Thursday - Not a big deal, but try to make someone else's life easier. Always celebrated on the Thursday of the last 7 days in August. Sponsor: Lorraine Jara.

Born on this Day

• 0012: Caligula, 3rd Roman Emperor (37-41 AD)
  
  

• 0161: Commodus, 18th Roman Emperor (180-91)
  
  

• 1569: Great mogol of India Djehangir
  
  

• 1663: French physicist Guillaume Amontons
  
  

• 1696: Composer Johann Paul Kunzen
  
  

• 1741: Composer Johann Paul Aegidius Martini
  
  

• 1748: Composer Jean-Etienne Despreaux
  
  

• 1749: Writer Radistschew
  
  

• 1755: Composer Johann Ignaz Walter
  
  

• 1775: Composer Francois de Paule Jacques Raymond de Fossa
  
  

• 1824: American hymnwriter Anna B. Warner . She never married, but lived with her sister Susan in New York state. In 1860, a novel they co-authored contained a poem which became one of the most beloved of all children's hymns: 'I Know.'
  
  

• 1834: Amicare Ponchielli was born in Cremona. He became an organist and small town conductor, but his operas were occasionally staged with some success. The first Ponchielli opera to be staged at La Scala did pretty well.
  
  

• 1861: American hymnwriter, Jesse Brown Pounds. During her lifetime she published nine books, 50 cantatas and over 400 religious song texts. Three of her hymns remain popular today: "Anywhere With Jesus," "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" and "The Way of the Cross Leads Home."
  
  

• 1870: Italian educator Maria Montessori
  
  

• 1897: Actor Fredric March
  
  

• 1903: Entertainer Arthur Godfrey
  
  

• 1908: Writer William Saroyan
  
  

• 1913: Astronomer Sir Alfred Lovell
  
  

• 1916: Broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr
  
  

• 1924: Comedian Buddy Hackett
  
  

• 1928: Actor James Coburn
  
  

• 1935: Baseball Hall-of-Famer Frank Robinson
  
  

• 1937: Actor Warren Berlinger
  
  

• 1939: Rock musician Jerry Allison (Buddy Holly and the Crickets)
  
  

• 1940: Actor Jack Thompson
  
  

• 1945: Violinist Itzhak Perlman
  
  

• 1945: Singer Van Morrison
  
  

• 1949: Actor Richard Gere
  
  

• 1957: Rock singer Glenn Tilbrook (Squeeze)
  
  

• 1957: Rock musician Gina Schock (The Go-Go's)
  
  

• 1959: Singer Tony DeFranco (The DeFranco Family)
  
  

• 1960: Singer Chris Whitley
  
  

• 1963: Rhythm-and-blues musician Larry Waddell (Mint Condition)
  
  

• 1969: Rock musician Jeff Russo (Tonic)
  
  

• 1970: Singer-composer Debbie Gibson
  
  

• 1977: Rhythm-and-blues singer Tamara (Trina & Tamara)
  
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 30 B.C.: Death of St. Paulinius of Trier
  
  

• 0651: Death of St. Aidan of Lindisfarne
  
  

• 1057: Death of Leofric, husband of Lady Godiva
  
  

• 1186: Death of Baldwin V ("Baudouinet"), King of Jerusalem, age 9
  
  

• 1230: Utrecht bishop Willebrand grants Swells state justice
  
  

• 1290: Edward I, King of England, expels the Jews from England
  
  

• 1310: German king Heinrich VII makes his son Johan king of Bohemia
  
  

• 1378: The government of Florence massacres the Ciompi
  
  

• 1422: Death of Henry V, King of England, at Bois de Vincennes
  
  

• 1476: Locusts ravage Poland, causing widespread famine
  
  

• 1521: Cortes and his Indian allies take Tenochtitlan
  
  

• 1522: Adrian VI (Netherlands) is crowned last non-Italian Pope until 1978 CE
  
  

• 1535: Pope Paul II deposes & excommunicates England's King Henry VIII
  
  

• 1650: Cromwell retreats to Dunbar
  
  

• 1745: Bonnie Prince Charlie reaches Blair Castle Scotland
  
  

• 1751: English troops under sir Robert Clive occupy Arcot India
  
  

• 1772: Hurricane destroy ships off Dominica
  
  

• 1688: English Puritan author and preacher John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progess, dies at age 69. He had been imprisoned several times between 1660 and 1672, Bunyan used these periods of isolation to pen his two literary masterpieces, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666) and Pilgrim's Progress (1678).
  
  

• 1886: An earthquake rocked Charleston, South Carolina, killing up to 110 people.
  
  

• 1887: Thomas A. Edison received a patent for his "Kinetoscope," a device which produced moving pictures.
  
  

• 1903: A Packard automobile completed a 52-day journey from San Francisco to New York, becoming the first car to cross the nation under its own power.
  
  

• 1928: "The Threepenny Opera" was premiered in Berlin. Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht wrote the music and words, and their wives Lotte Lenya and Helene Weigel sang in it. The brief overture is a witty, cynical, decadent little masterpiece all by itself.
  
  

• 1935: President Roosevelt signed an act prohibiting the export of US arms to belligerents.
  
  

• 1941: The radio program "The Great Gildersleeve" made its debut on NBC.
  
  

• 1954: Hurricane "Carol" hit the northeastern United States, resulting in nearly 70 deaths and millions of dollars in damage.
  
  

• 1962: The Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago became independent within the British Commonwealth.
  
  

• 1965: The U.S. House of Representatives joined the Senate in voting to establish the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
  
  

• 1969: Boxer Rocky Marciano died in a light airplane crash in Iowa, the day before his 46th birthday.
  
  

• 1972: At the Munich Summer Olympics, American swimmer Mark Spitz won his fourth and fifth gold medals, in the 100-meter butterfly and 800-meter freestyle relay; Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut won the gold medal in the floor exercises and the balance beam.
  
  

• 1980: Poland's Solidarity labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17-day-old strike.
  
  

• 1983: Slain Philippine opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Junior was buried in his homeland, ten days after he was shot dead as he ended a self-imposed political exile. Over a million mourners were addressed by his widow Cory.
  
  

• 1984: The crew of the space shuttle Discovery launched the second of three communications satellites from the spacecraft's cargo bay.
  
  

• 1985: Richard Ramirez, later convicted of California's "Night Stalker" killings, was captured by residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood.
  
  

• 1986: An Aero-Mexico DC-9 collided with a single-engine plane over Cerritos, California, killing 82 people, including 15 on the ground.
  
  

• 1986: The Soviet passenger ship "Admiral Nakhimov" collided with a merchant vessel in the Black Sea, causing both vessels to sink; up to 448 people reportedly died.
  
  

• 1987: The Justice Department challenged the constitutionality of the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, which provided for the appointment of independent counsels. (The Supreme Court upheld the law.)
  
  

• 1988: Fourteen people were killed when a Delta Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The airline later blamed crash the on the crew's failure to set the wing flaps in proper position.
  
  

• 1989: The fraud and conspiracy trial of PTL founder Jim Bakker in Charlotte, North Carolina, was interrupted after the former TV evangelist suffered an apparent breakdown in his attorney's office.
  
  

• 1989: Britain's Princess Anne and Mark Phillips announced they were separating after 16 years of marriage.
  
  

• 1989: The Rolling Stones opened their first concert tour in eight years before 50,000 fans in Philadelphia.
  
  

• 1990: U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar met twice with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Azizona in Amman, Jordan, trying to negotiate a solution to the Persian Gulf crisis.
  
  

• 1990: East and West Germany signed a treaty to harmonize their legal and political systems after merging on October 3.
  
  

• 1991: Uzbekistan and Kirghiziz declared their independence, raising to 10 the number of republics seeking to secede from the Soviet Union.
  
  

• 1991: In Washington, D.C., hundreds of thousands of union members marched in a "Solidarity Day" protest.
  
  

• 1992: White separatist Randy Weaver surrendered to authorities in Naples, Idaho, ending an eleven-day siege by federal agents that claimed the lives of Weaver's wife, son and a deputy US marshal.
  
  

• 1993: Mideast peace talks resumed in Washington amid hopes that a historic agreement to establish Palestinian autonomous areas would be concluded within days.
  
  

• 1993: Hurricane "Emily" hit North Carolina's Outer Banks, killing three people.
  
  

• 1993: Russia withdrew its last soldier from Lithuania, the first Baltic nation to eject all former Soviet troops.
  
  

• 1994: The Irish Republican Army declared a cease-fire after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.
  
  

• 1994: Russia officially ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltics after half a century.
  
  

• 1995: At the O.J. Simpson trial in Los Angeles, Judge Lance Ito ruled the defense could play only two examples of police detective Mark Fuhrman's racist comments from taped conversations with a screenwriter.
  
  

• 1996: Seven people drowned when their vehicle rolled into John D. Long Lake in Union, South Carolina; they had gone to see a monument to the sons of Susan Smith, who had drowned the two boys in October 1994.
  
  

• 1996: New York City police found the body of four-year-old Nadine Lockwood in her family's apartment; she'd been starved to death. (The girl's mother, Carla Lockwood, faces murder charges.)
  
  

• 1997: Prince Charles brought Princess Diana home for the last time, escorting the body of his former wife to a Britain that was shocked, grief-stricken and angered by her death in a Paris traffic accident.
  
  

• 1998: Prices on the New York Stock Exchange plunged amid news of political chaos in Russia and North Korea's apparent firing of a missile over part of Japan.
  

• 1999: Detroit's teachers went on strike, wiping out the first day of class for 172,000 students in one of the largest teachers' strikes in years. (The walkout lasted nine days.)
  

• 1999: An LAPA Boeing 737-200 crashed on takeoff from Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 72 people, including five on the ground.
  
  

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