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August 3
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Today is:
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 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 |
National Basketball Association formed on this day in 1949.
New Worlds Day - Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain in 1492. While in search
of China, he discovered the 'New Worlds' of the Western Hemisphere.
Born on this Day
1746: English architect James Wyatt chiefly remembered for his Romantic
country houses, especially the extraordinary Gothic Revival Fonthill Abbey.
1770: Frederick William III king of Prussia from 1797 to his death in
1840.
1801: Sir Joseph Paxton English landscape gardener and designer of
hothouses, who was the architect of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in
London.
1808: Hamilton Fish U.S. secretary of state (1869-77) who skillfully
promoted the peaceful arbitration of explosive situations with Great Britain and Latin
America.
1811: Elisha Graves Otis, inventor of the safe elevator.
1821: Uriah Smith Stephens American utopian reformer who was
instrumental in founding the Knights of Labor, the first national labour union in the
United States.
1884: The composer Louis Gruenberg was born.
1900: World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle (journalist: Pulitzer
Prize-winning reporter [1944]; managing editor: Washington Daily News)
1900: John T. Scopes (high school teacher: subject of famous 1925 Scopes
Monkey Trial: convicted of teaching evolution in Tennessee school)
1902: Martin Noth German biblical scholar who specialized in the early
history of the Jewish people.
1902: Ray Bloch (orchestra leader: TV shows: Blind Date, The Ed Sullivan
Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Larry Storch Show)
1905: Margaret E. Kuhn ("MAGGIE"), U.S. activist was the
vivacious cofounder (1970) of the Gray Panthers.
1905: Actress Dolores del Rio (Flying Down to Rio, Journey into Fear,
Flaming Star, Accused)
1918: Musician Les Elgart (lead trumpet, bandleader: w/brother: Les and
Larry Elgart)
1920: Author P.D. James
1921: Broadway composer Richard Adler
1924: Author Leon Uris (Exodus, Mitla Pass; screenplay: Gunfight at the
O.K. Corral)
1924: Singer Gordon Stoker (The Jordanaires)
1925: Rev. Billy Sol Hargis (evangelist)
1927: Actor Gordon Scott (Werschkul) (Gladiator of Rome, Tarzan and the
Trappers, Sampson and the 7 Miracles of the World)
1926: Singer Tony Bennett
1931: Actor Alex Cord
1940: Actor Martin Sheen
1941: Lifestyle expert Martha Stewart
1941: Singer Beverly Lee (The Shirelles -I Met Him on a Sunday,
Dedicated to the One I Love, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, Mama Said, Soldier Boy)
1950: Waldemar Cierpinski East German runner, the second marathon runner
(after Abebe Bikila) to win two Olympic gold medals.
1950: Movie director John Landis (Thriller video, Twilight Zone: The
Movie, Beverly Hills Cop 3, The Blues Brothers, Coming to America, National Lampoon's
Animal House, Oscar, Three Amigos,Trading Places)
1950: Actress JoMarie Payton
1952: Actor Jay North, television's "Dennis the Menace"
1959: Comedienne/actress Victoria Jackson (Saturday Night Live, The
Pick-Up Artist, Family Business)
1959: Actor John C. McGinley
1963: Rock singer James Hetfield (Metallica)
1963: Rock singer-musician Ed Roland (Collective Soul)
1966: Country musician Dean Sams (Lonestar)
1971: Hip-hop artist Spin (Salt-N-Pepa)
1970: Actress Brigid Conley Walsh.
1982: Singer Holly Arnstein (Dream)
1422: Death of Henry V, King of England
1460: James II, King of Scotland, killed at Roxburgh Castle
1480: Turks give up their unsuccessful Siege of Rhodes
1492: Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain with a convoy of three
small ships, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, accompanied by fewer than 100
crewmen. They left Spain half an hour before sunrise to begin the search for a water
passage to Cathay. Instead, Columbus and company landed on October 12 at Guanahani, San
Salvador Island in the Bahamas ... not India but the New World of the Americas. TODAY's BONUS HISTORY FACT
1530: Defeat, and execution, of Francesco Ferrucci
1530 Florence capitulates to the Imperial Army
1546: Etienne Dolet, printer, is hanged and burnt for blasphemy,
sedition and heresy
1553: Mary Tudor, Queen of England, enters London
1554 Writing of the earliest letter known to have been closed with
sealing wax, from London to the Rheingrave Philip Francis von Daun, in Germany by his
agent in England, Gerrard Herman
1576: Construction begins on Uranibourg Observatory, Hveen Island,
Denmark
1610: Henry Hudson enters Hudson's Bay
1778: The La Scala opera house in Milan opened. The first opera
performed there ("Europe riconosciuta") was by Antonio Salieri.
1914: Germany declared war on France. The following day, Britain
declared war on Germany and World War I was underway.
1923: Calvin Coolidge was sworn in as the 30th president of the United
States, following the death of Warren G. Harding.
1933: The world-famous Mickey Mouse Watch was introduced on this day.
The timepiece sold for $2.75. A Mickey Mouse Clock sold for $1.50. Today, new models sell
for $25 or more and the original watches and clocks are worth hundreds of dollars.
1936: The State Department urged Americans in Spain to leave because of
that country's civil war.
1943: General George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in
Sicily, accusing him of cowardice. (Patton was later ordered by General Dwight D.
Eisenhower to apologize for this and a second, similar episode.)
1948: Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, publicly accused former
State Department official Alger Hiss of having been part of a Communist underground, a
charge Hiss denied.
1949: The National Basketball Association was formed.
1957: Pablo Casals got married to Martita Montanez in Puerto Rico.
Casals was 80; his bride, 20. Casals once compared a cello to "a beautiful woman who
grown not older but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful...."
1958: The nuclear-powered submarine "Nautilus" became the
first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater.
1963: The Beatles made their final appearance at the Cavern Club in
Liverpool, England on this day. The group was about to leave its hometown behind for
unprecedented world-wide fame and fortune.
1963: The Beach Boys' song, Surfer Girl, was released on Capitol
Records this day. It became one of their biggest hits. Surfer Girl made it to number seven
on the hit music charts (9/14/63).
1963 - Comedian Allan Sherman's summer camp parody, Hello Mudduh, Hello
Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp) was released this day on Warner Brothers Records. It went to
number two on the pop charts (8/24/63).
1963: The college football all-stars defeated the Green Bay Packers by
a 20-17 score. It was a major upset since the college upstarts had been the heavy (50-1)
underdogs.
1966: Comedian Lenny Bruce died of a morphine overdose on this day.
1981: US air traffic controllers went on strike, despite a warning from
President Reagan they would be fired.
1983: Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn resigned after 14 years on the
job. Initially, he had been asked to take the job for six months or so.
1984: At the Los Angeles Summer Olympics, Mary Lou Retton won the gold
medal in the individual all-around event in women's gymnastics by scoring a perfect 10 on
the vault in her final routine.
1985: In South Africa, thousands of chanting mourners, defying a
government decree banning mass funerals, buried 11 victims of rioting in the eastern Cape
township of Zwide.
1986: In Lebanon, a statement purportedly from Islamic Jihad threatened
the lives of American hostages saying they would be killed unless the group's demands were
met.
1987: The Iran-Contra congressional hearings ended, with none of the 29
witnesses tying President Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to
Nicaraguan rebels.
1988: The Soviet Union released Mathias Rust, the young West German
pilot who had landed a light plane in Moscow's Red Square in May 1987.
1989: Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon suspended their threat to
execute another American hostage, three days after the purported hanging of Lt. Col.
William R. Higgins.
1989: Hashemi Rafsanjani was sworn in as president of Iran.
1990: A day after Iraq invaded Kuwait, thousands of Iraqi soldiers
pushed to within a few miles of the border with Saudi Arabia, heightening world concerns
that the invasion could spread.
1990: The prime ministers of East and West Germany agreed to move up
unification to early fall and rescheduled all-German elections from December 2 to October
14.
1991: Secretary of State James A. Baker III met with King Hassan II of
Morocco. Baker asked the monarch for his help in gaining Palestinian participation in a
Middle East peace conference.
1991: Japanese Finance Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto publicly apologized,
but refused to resign, for involvement in loans worth $10 million to three friends.
1992: The U.S. Senate voted to sharply restrict, and eventually end,
U.S. testing of nuclear weapons.
1992: Millions of South African blacks joined a nationwide strike
against white-led rule.
1992: Russia and Ukraine agreed to put the disputed Black Sea Fleet
under joint command for three years.
1993: The Senate voted 96-to-3 to confirm Supreme Court nominee Ruth
Bader Ginsburg.
1993: A U.S. federal court ruled that John Demjanjuk, whose conviction
on charges he was death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible" was overturned earlier by
the Israeli Supreme Court, should be allowed to return to the U.S..
1993: The body of basketball star Michael Jordan's father, James
Jordan, was found in a South Carolina creek, eleven days after he was slain; his remains
weren't identified until August 13th.
1994: President Clinton told a prime-time news conference he would sign
either of two Democratic health plans before Congress.
1994: Arkansas carried out the nation's first triple execution in 32
years.
1994: Stephen G. Breyer was sworn in as the Supreme Court's newest
justice in a private ceremony at Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's Vermont summer home.
1995: A Palestinian, Eyad Ismoil, was flown to the United States from
Jordan to face charges he'd driven a bomb-laden van into New York's World Trade Center.
(The 1993 explosion killed six people and injured more than 1,000.)
1996: At the Atlanta Olympics, the US men's 400-meter relay, without
Carl Lewis, failed to win the gold medal, finishing behind Canada. The American women's
400 and 16-hundred relays, and the men's 16-hundred, all won gold. The US men's basketball
"Dream Team" beat Yugoslavia, 95-to-69, to win the gold.
1997: Iran's new president, moderate Muslim cleric Mohammad Khatami,
took office with a message of peace to the world but said his country opposes the
"high-handedness of certain big countries," a reference to the United States.
1998: The White House played down the possibility that
President Clinton would reverse previous statements and admit to a sexual relationship
with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky when he testified before a grand jury.
1999: Congressional Republicans, shrugging off a
presidential veto threat, nailed down the details of an agreement for a ten-year, $792
billion tax cut.
1999: Arbitrators ruled the government had to pay the
heirs of Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder $16 million for his movie film that captured
the assassination of President Kennedy.
1999: The first issue of Talk magazine hit newsstands.
2000: : George W. Bush accepted the
Republican presidential nomination at the party's convention in
Philadelphia, presenting himself as an outsider who would return
"civility and respect" to Washington politics.
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