Today is:
August 18
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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 |
Bad Poetry Day - This is a day to celebrate bad poetry -- really bad poetry. Write
yourself some, if you can't find any. Sponsor: Wellness Permission League.
Women's Voting Rights Day - In 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified, giving women the
right to vote. A young state legislator in Tennessee (the 36th state to ratify the
Amendment) cast the deciding vote after being told to do so by his mother.
Born on this Day
0472: Flavius Ricimer, general of the Western Roman Empire, kingmaker
1579: Charlotte Flandrina van Nassau, daughter of Willem I of Orange
1587: Virginia Dare became the first child of English parents to be born
on American soil, on what is now Roanoke Island, North Carolina. See today's History Focus
1685: Mathematician Brook Taylor, discoverer of Taylor's Theorem
1774: American explorer Meriwether Lewis See
today's History Focus
1750: Composer Antonio Salieri
1792: Lord John Russel, Prime Minister of England from 1846 to 1852 and
1865 to 1866
1807:Charles F. Adams, U.S. diplomat and public official whose father
was John Quincy Adams
1834: Chicago department store founder Marshall Field
1873: Songwriter Otto Harbach ("Smoke Gets In Your Eyes")
1904: Cosmetic mogul Max Factor
1917: Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger
1922: Actress Shelley Winters
1927: Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter
1930:Actor Grant Williams ( Escape from Planet Earth, The Incredible
Shrinking Man)
1933: Movie director Roman Polanski
1934: Baseball Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente
1935: Actress Gail Fisher
1937: Actor Robert Redford
1939: Singer Johnny Preston
1941: Actor Christopher Jones
1943: Actor-comedian Martin Mull
1945: Singer Nona Hendryx
1952: Actor Patrick Swayze
1958: Actress Madeleine Stowe
1968: Rock singer-musician Zac Maloy (The Nixons)
1969: Actor Christian Slater
1970: Actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner
1978: Actor Mika Boorem ("The Tom Show")
0410: King Alarik I's Visigoten occupies & plunders
Rome
1227: The Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan died.
1274: Coronation of Edward I as King of England
1276: Death of Pope Adrian V
1289: Pope Nicolaus IV publishes degree "Supra
montem"
1477: Marriage of Maximillian, Holy Roman Emperor, to Mary
of Burgundy
1559: Death of Pope Paul IV
1564: Spanish king Philip II joins Council of Trente
1571: Valletta, capital of Malta, completed and occupied
by the Knights of St. John
1572: King Navarra Henri de Bourbon marries Margaretha van
Valois
1587: Virginia Dare became the first child of English
parents to be born on American soil, on what is now Roanoke Island, North Carolina.
1634: Burning of Urbain Grandier for witchcraft
1698: After invading Denmark and capturing Sweden, Charles
XII of Sweden forces Frederick IV of Denmark to sign the Peace of Travendal.
1759: The French fleet is destroyed by the British under
"Old Dreadnought" Boscawen at the battle of Lagos Bay.
1840: The organization of the American Society of Dental
Surgeons was founded in New York City.
1846: US forces led by General Stephen W. Kearney captured
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
1862: Chief Little Crow leads the Sioux in an uprising
that lasts until defeated by Colonel Henry H. Sibley at Wood Lake, Minnesota, on September
23, that same year.
1894: Congress established the Bureau of Immigration.
1894: Marcel Proust went on holiday with a composer named
Reynaldo Hahn. Proust told the 19-year-old Hahn that he would make him the main character
of his new novel, and apparently Hahn was indeed the basis for the character Henri de
Reveillon in the book "Jean Santeuil."
1914: President Wilson issued his "Proclamation of
Neutrality," aimed at keeping the United States out of World War One.
1916: Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky was given
to the U.S. government as a national shrine to the 16th president.
1919: The Anti-Cigarette League of America was formed in
Chicago, Illinois.
1920: Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th
Amendment to the Constitution, which guaranteed the right of all American women to vote.
1929: The first cross-country women's air derby begins.
Louise McPhetride Thaden wins first prize in the heavier-plane division, while Phoebe
Fairgrave Omlie finishes first in the lighter-plane category.
1938: President Roosevelt dedicated the Thousand Islands
Bridge connecting the United States and Canada.
1940: The United States and Canada established a World War
II plan of joint defense against possible enemy attacks.
1942: A Czech composer was murdered in a Nazi
concentration camp. Erwin Schulhoff was 48. He had composed a cantata to the words of the
Communist Manifesto. Schulhoff was one of many composers who never got a chance to prove
themselves.
1943: The Royal Air Force Bomber Command completes the
first major strike against the German missile development facility at PeenemŸnde.
When the anticipated invasion of Britain failed to materialize in 1940, Londoners relaxed,
but soon they faced a frightening new threat, Hitler's V-weapon offensive.
1954: Assistant Secretary of Labor James E. Wilkins became
the first black to attend a meeting of a president's Cabinet as he sat in for Labor
Secretary James P. Mitchell.
1963: James Meredith became the first black to graduate
from the University of Mississippi.
1976: President Ford was nominated in Kansas City, Mo., to
head the Republican ticket. He lost the presidential race to Democrat Jimmy Carter in
November.
1982: The longest baseball game played at Wrigley Field in
Chicago, IL, went 22 innings -- before the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Cubs 2-1. The
game had started the previous day and had been postponed, after 17 innings, because of
darkness.
1982: For the first time, volume on the New York Stock
Exchange topped the $100 million level as 132.69 million shares were traded.
1983: Hurricane "Alicia" slammed into the Texas
coast, leaving 22 dead and causing more than a billion dollars' worth of damage.
1985: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced his
country would extend its nuclear testing moratorium, which began in August 1985, until
January 1, 1987.
1987: American journalist Charles Glass escaped his
kidnappers in Beirut after 62 days in captivity. (Glass had been abducted June 17th with
two Lebanese who were released after a week.)
1990: A U.S. frigate fired warning shots across the bow of
an Iraqi oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman -- apparently the first shots fired by the United
States in the Persian Gulf crisis.
1991: Soviet hard-liners launched a coup aimed at toppling
President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who was vacationing in the Crimea. (Gorbachev and members
of his family remained effectively imprisoned until the coup collapsed three days later.)
1992: On the second night of the Republican national
convention in Houston, Texas Senator Phil Gramm delivered the keynote address, denouncing
Bill Clinton's economic program as "worse than sleaze." Basketball star Larry
Bird announced his retirement after 13 years with the Boston Celtics.
1992: Basketball star Larry Bird announced his retirement
after 13 years with the Boston Celtics. In his 13 years, he was MVP three times, played in
12 All-Star Games and got triple-doubles in 69 games.
1992: A convoy of 17 buses carrying 1,000 women and
children left war-torn Sarajevo in the second such evacuation from Bosnia in a week.
1993: A judge in Sarasota, Florida, ruled that Kimberly
Mays, the 14-year-old girl who had been switched at birth with another baby, need never
see her biological parents again, in accordance with her stated wishes. (However, Kimberly
later moved in with Ernest and Regina Twigg.)
1994: Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles declared an immigration
emergency and demanded federal help to cope with the largest surge of Cuban refugees since
the 1980 Mariel boatlift.
1995: Shannon Faulkner, who'd won a 21/2-year legal battle
to become the first female cadet at The Citadel, quit the South Carolina military college
after less than a week, most of it spent in the infirmary.
1996: On the eve of his 50th birthday, President Clinton
was guest of honor at a trio of events in New York that combined celebrating with
fund-raising.
1996: Ross Perot, the presidential nominee of the Reform
Party, launched his campaign with a speech in which he criticized the Republican and
Democratic parties as captives of "special interests."
1997: United Parcel Service and the Teamsters union
reached a tentative agreement to end a 15-day-old strike. Beth Ann Hogan became the first
coed in the Virginia Military Institute's 158-year history.
1998: A day after his grand jury testimony, President
Clinton left Washington on a vacation with his family. Meanwhile, some lawmakers called
for Clinton to resign in the wake of his admissions concerning Monica Lewinsky while a
spokeswoman for Hillary Rodham Clinton said the first lady "believes in this
marriage."
1999: A day after a deadly earthquake struck western
Turkey, survivors denounced the rescue effort as sluggish and disorganized. (The death
toll eventually topped 17,000.)
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