Today is: August 1

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

Emancipation of 500 Anniversary - On this day in 1791, the largest private emancipation of slaves in the U.S. occurred. Robert Carter III, a major Virginia plantation owner, issued a deed of emancipation freeing his 500 slaves.

Festival of Green Corn - A Native American Feast.

Helsinki Human Rights Day - The Helsinki Accords were signed in 1975. Prior to this, 35 countries had met in Helsinki, Finland, to make agreements on human rights and security.

MTV's Birthday - This cable channel premiered on this day in 1981. The first video aired was the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star."

Rounds Resounding Day - Join the world in harmony by singing contrapuntal American folksongs. Sponsor: Rounds Resounding Society.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori Feast Day - Patron saint of theologians and vocations.

Woman Astronomers Day - Maria Mitchell was the first female professional astronomer, first woman to become a professor of astronomy, and the first woman to be elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts in 1918.

National Night Out - Celebrated on the first Tuesday in August. This day is to encourage police and communities to work together to reduce crime. Sponsor: National Association of Town Watch.

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Born on this Day

• 0010BC: Claudius, 4th Roman Emperor
  
  

• 0126: Publius Helvius Pertinax, Roman Emperor
  
  

• 0527: Justin I, Emperor of Eastern Rome
  
  

• 1578: Juliet Capulet (according to Shakespeare)
  
  

• 1744: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, believed in inheritance of acquired traits
  
  

• 1770: William Clark, explored Pacific Northwest with Lewis
  
  

• 1779: Francis Scott Key, composer of "The Star-Spangled Banner,"
  
  

• 1815: Lawyer and writer Richard Henry Dana Jr., author of "Two Years Before the Mast"
  
  

• 1818: Maria Mitchell (Nantucket Island), America's first woman astronomer
  
  

• 1819: Author Herman Melville
  
  

• 1843: Robert Todd Lincoln (son of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln; rescued from train accident by Edwin Booth, brother of man who assassinated President Lincoln)
  
  

• 1912: Actor Henry Jones
  
  

• 1922: Actor Arthur Hill
  
  

• 1930: Actor-director Geoffrey Holder
  
  

• 1930: Composer-lyricist Lionel Bart
  
  

• 1931: Singer Ramblin' Jack Elliott
  
  

• 1931: Cartoonist Tom Wilson ("Ziggy")
  
  

• 1933: Actor-comedian Dom DeLuise
  
  

• 1936: French fashion designer Yves St. Laurent
  
  

• 1942: Jerry Garcia, co-founder of the Grateful Dead rock group
  
  

• 1942: Karen Black, actor
  
  

• 1942: Actor Giancarlo Giannini
  
  

• 1953: Blues singer-musician Robert Cray
  
  

• 1956: Steve Green
  
  

• 1958: Rock musician Robert Buck (10,000 Maniacs)
  
  

• 1959: Rock singer Joe Elliott (Def Leppard)
  
  

• 1960: Rock singer-musician Suzi Gardner (L7)
  
  

• 1960: Rapper Chuck D (Public Enemy)
  
  

• 1963: Rapper Coolio
  
  

• 1966: Country singer George Ducas
  
  

• 1968: Country musician Charlie Kelley (Buffalo Club)
  
  

• 1973: Actress Tempestt Bledsoe
  
  

• 1981: Actress Taylor Fry     
         
  
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 0902: The Aghlabids capture Sicily
  
  

• 0984: Death of St. Ethelwold
  
  

• 1009: Large Danish army lands at Sandwich & attacks London
  
  

• 1096: 1st Crusade, led by Peter the Hermit, arrives in Constantinople
  
  

• 1098: Death of Bishop Adhemar
  
  

• 1107: An assembly of Bishops, Abbots and nobles settles the "lay investiture" controversy between Anselm and Henry I
  
  

• 1137: Death of Louis VI, "the Fat," King of France
  
  

• 1252: Death of Carpini, Papal Legate and explorer of Mongolia
  
  

• 1291: The Everlasting League forms, the basis of the Swiss Confederation
  
  

• 1417: Henry V of England lands in France....again
  
  

• 1464: Piero de Medici becomes ruler of Florence
  
  

• 1498: Columbus discovers Venezuela
  
  

• 1543: Publication of Vesalius' "De Humanis Corporis Fabrica"
  
  

• 1641: Court of Star Chamber abolished in England
  
  

• 1714: Britain's Queen Anne died; she was succeeded by George I.
  
  

• 1717: Bach became the Kapellmeister in Cothen. It wasn't a great gig but it was a means of escaping from Weimar, where the Duke was such a jerk that he briefly jailed Bach for quitting.
  
  

• 1785: Caroline Herschel becomes first woman discoverer of a comet.
  
  

• 1789: U.S. Customs begins enforcing Tariff Act.
  
  

• 1790: The first United States census was completed, showing a population of nearly four million people.
  
  

• 1794 Whiskey Rebellion.
  
  

• 1847: The Musical Gazette of Paris contained this remark about Verdi: "There has not yet been an Italian composer more incapable of producing what is commonly called a melody."
  
  

• 1852: Black Methodists in San Francisco establish first black church, Zion Methodist.
  
  

• 1873: Inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.
  
  

• 1876: Colorado was admitted as the 38th state.
  
  

• 1881 US Quarantine Station authorized for Angel Island, San Francisco Bay.
  
  

• 1901 Burial within San Francisco City limits prohibited.
  
  

• 1892: John Philip Sousa quit the US Marine Corps Band to form his own hundred-piece band. Sousa was then 37 years old.
  
  

• 1907: An Aeronautical Division was added to the Army Signals Corps, and this forerunner of the U.S. Air Force bought its first airplane. The aircraft was built by the Wright brothers.
  
  

• 1919: Oscar Hammerstein died. Hammerstein's not only contributed to the art form of musical, but he also built opera houses in New York, Philadelphia and London.
  
  

• 1936: The Olympic games opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.
  
  

• 1943: Race-related rioting erupted in New York's Harlem section, resulting in several deaths.
  
  

• 1944: An uprising broke out in Warsaw, Poland, against Nazi occupation, a revolt that lasted two months before collapsing.
  
  

• 1946: President Truman signed the Fulbright Program into law, establishing the scholarships named for Senator William J. Fulbright.
  
  

• 1946: The Atomic Energy Commission was established by President Truman.
  
  

• 1957: The United States and Canada reached agreement to create the North American Air Defense Command ("NORAD").
  
  

• 1958 First Class postage up to 4 cents (had been 3 cents for 26 years).
  
  

• 1966: 25-year-old Charles Joseph Whitman shot and killed 15 people at the University of Texas before he was gunned down by police.
  
  

• 1977: Francis Gary Powers, pilot of a U-2 pilot spy plane shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, was killed when his weather helicopter crashed in Los Angeles.
  
  

• 1981: The rock music video channel MTV made its debut at 12:01 a.m. (EDT).
  
  

• 1984: Romania won the gold medal in women's team gymnastics at the Los Angeles Olympics. The U.S. won the silver medal with the help of perfect routines by Julianne McNamara on the uneven parallel bars and Mary Lou Retton on the vault.
  
  

• 1985: The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved economic sanctions against South Africa, by a vote of 380-to-48, but Senate conservatives were able to force postponement of final action.
  
  

• 1986: The Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted, 15-2, in favor of strict economic sanctions against South Africa to protest apartheid.
  
  

• 1987: Iranians attacked the Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti embassies in Tehran as word spread of the rioting in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the day before that had claimed some 400 lives, most of them Iranian pilgrims.
  
  

• 1988: Iran said it would honor an immediate cease-fire in its eight-year-old war with Iraq.
  
  

• 1989: The Revolutionary Justice Organization, a pro-Iranian group in Lebanon which threatened to kill American hostage Joseph Cicippio, extended its deadline a day after another group released a videotape of a body said to be William R. Higgins'.
  
  

• 1990: Moslem rebels surrendered in Trinidad and Tobago, five days after launching a coup and taking Prime Minister Arthur Robinson and 42  other hostage.
  

• 1991: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir accepted a U.S. formula for Middle East peace talks with the Arabs.
  
  

• 1991: President Bush, visiting the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, urged Soviet republics to show restraint in their demands for more autonomy.
  
  

• 1992: The Supreme Court permitted the Bush administration to continue returning Haitians intercepted at sea to their Caribbean homeland.
  
  

• 1992: Gail Devers won the women's 100 meters, Linford Christie the men's 100 meters, at the Barcelona Summer Olympics.
  
  

• 1993: The city of St. Louis found itself besieged by the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, which had swelled to record levels after months of flooding in nine Midwestern states.
  
  

• 1994: Supporters of Haiti's military rulers declared their intention to fight back in the face of a U.N. resolution paving the way for a U.S.-led invasion.
  
  

• 1994: Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley confirmed they had been secretly married 11 weeks earlier in the Dominican Republic.
  
  

• 1995: In the second TV network takeover in as many days, Westinghouse Electric Corporation struck a deal to buy CBS for $5.4 billion.
  
  

• 1996: A political victory for President Clinton, a federal jury in Little Rock, Arkansas, acquitted two Arkansas bankers of misapplying bank funds and conspiracy to boost his political career. (The jury deadlocked on seven other counts.)
  
  

• 1996: At the Atlanta Olympics, Michael Johnson broke his world track record by more than three-tenths of a second, winning the 200 meters in 19-point-32 seconds.
  
  

• 1997: The National Cancer Institute reported that fallout from 1950s nuclear bomb tests had exposed millions of children across the country to radioactive iodine.
  
  

• 1997: President Clinton lifted a 20-year-old ban on the sale of high-performance aircraft and other advanced weapons to Latin America.
  
  

• 1998: Dismissing as "an empty promise" GOP-backed legislation to create a patients' bill of rights, President Clinton in his Saturday radio address pressed Congress to pass a measure that would allow patients to sue their health insurers.
  

• 1999: A heat wave that had gripped the nation since mid-July finally broke; authorities attributed nearly 200 deaths to the heat and humidity.
  

• 2000: A US military court in Germany sentenced Army Staff Sergeant Frank Ronghi to life in prison without parole for sexually assaulting and killing Merita Shabiu, an eleven-year-old ethnic Albanian girl, while on peacekeeping duty in Kosovo. 
  
  
  
  

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