Today is: August  20

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

Bad Hair Day - Today is birthday of boxing promoter Don King. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio on this day in 1931. Today it is alright to go to work or school no matter how bad your hair looks. This we can do because Don King has some of the wildest hair on earth.

Plutonium Day - In 1942, scientists at the University of Chicago, led by Glenn Seaborg successfully weighed plutonium the first of the human-made elements.

Slavery Awareness Day - The first African slaves in the U.S. arrived at Jamestown, Virginia on this day in 1619. Celebrate this day by working to abolish slavery and all of its aftereffects from all areas of the world. Sponsor: Jamestown Yorktown Federation.

Summer Cool-Off Day - Lemonade, the summer cooler, was invented in 1630 in the city of Paris.

Hawaii Admission Day - On this day in 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state of the U.S. This day is celebrated on the 3rd Friday in August in the state of Hawaii

Born on this Day

• 1517: Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, cardinal and viceroy of Naples (1571-75)
  
  

• 1526: Church historian and humanist Peter Opmeer, (Historia Martyrum)
  
  

• 1561: The composer and singer Jacopo Peri.
  
  

• 1591: Robert Herrick
  
  

• 1625: French playwright Thomas Corneille
  
  

• 1702: Russian general-fieldmarshal Stepan F graaf Apraksin
  
  

• 1710: English mathematician Thomas Simpson(rules of Simpson)
  
  

• 1720: Composer Bernard de Bury
  
  

• 1745: Francis Asbury See today's History Focus
  
  

• 1756: Composer Bernardo Bitton
  
  

• 1785: Oliver Hazard Perry US Naval hero ("We have met the enemy")
  
  

• 1833: Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the United States in North Bend, Ohio.
  
  

• 1886: Paul Tillich, theologian and philosopher who wrote Systematic Theology
  
  

• 1881: Poet Edgar Guest
  
  

• 1890: Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft (The Color out of Space)
  
  

• 1907: Actress Shirley Booth (Hazel, A Touch of Grace)
  
  

• 1921: Author Jacqueline Susann (Valley of the Dolls)
  
  

• 1931: Boxing promoter Don King (shocking hairstyle)
  
  

• 1944: Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
  
  

• 1935: Country singer Justin Tubb
  
  

• 1942: Singer-musician Isaac Hayes
  
  

• 1946: Former CBS anchorwoman Connie Chung
  
  

• 1947: Musician Jimmy Pankow (Chicago)
  
  

• 1948: Rock singer Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)
  
  

• 1952: Country singer Rudy Gatlin
  
  

• 1952: Singer-songwriter John Hiatt
  
  

• 1953: Actor-director Peter Horton
  
  

• 1954: "Today" show weatherman Al Roker
  
  

• 1955: Actor Jay Acovone
  
  

• 1956: Actress Joan Allen
  
  

• 1965: Rapper KRS-One
  
  

• 1971: Actor Jonathan Ke Quan ("Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom")
  
  

• 1975: Rock singer Monique Powell (Save Ferris) 
         
  
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 0651: Death of St. Oswin, King of Deria (England)
  
  
  

• 0684: Death of St. Philibert
  
  
  

• 0917: A Byzantine counter-offensive is routed by Syeon at Anchialus, Bulgaria.
  
  
  

• 1153: Death of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, at 9:00 am
  
  
  

• 1191: Richard I, King of England, commands the execution of 2500 Muslim prisoners beneath the walls of Acre
  
  
  

• 1205: Henry crowned Emperor of Rumania
  
  
  

• 1384: Gerhard Groote, founder of Brethren of the Common Life dies
  
  
  

• 1597: First Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East
  
  
  

• 1611: Palestrina's contemporary Tomas Luis de Victoria died in Madrid at the age of 62
  
  
  

• 1612: Execution of the Lancashire Witches
  
  
  

• 1619: The first group of twenty Africans is brought to Jamestown, Virginia.
  
  
  

• 1636: Roger Williams draws up covenant for Providence Plantations
  
  
  

• 1667: John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.
  
  
  

• 1741: Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering discovered what is now Alaska.
  
  
  

• 1794: American General "Mad Anthony" Wayne defeats the Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in the Northwest territory, ending Indian resistance in the area.
  
  
  

• 1847: General Winfield Scott wins the battle of Churubusco on his drive to Mexico City. The Mexican War gave future civil war generals their first taste of combat.
  
  
  

• 1866: President Andrew Johnson formally declared the Civil War over, even though the fighting had stopped months earlier.
  
  
  

• 1866: The National Labor Union advocated an eight hour workday. Industry, however, did not heed the request. Workers commonly worked 10 or 12 hour days -- or more.
  
  
  

• 1882: The "1812" Overture was first performed on the occasion of the dedication of the Cathedral of the Redeemer in the Kremlin. The "1812" turned out to be a piece of such vigor that it became one of the most popular of all classics.
  
  
  

• 1914: German forces occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War One.
  
  
  

• 1918: Britain opened its offensive on the Western front during World War One.
  
  
  

• 1920: Pioneering American radio station EightMK in Detroit (later WWJ) began daily broadcasting.
  
  
  

• 1923: The first American dirigible, the Shenandoah, was launched at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on this day.
  
  
  

• 1939: Tarzan got married. Johnny Weissmuller married Beryl Scott.
  
  
  

• 1939: Orrin Tucker's Orchestra recorded Oh, Johnny, Oh, Johnny,Oh!, on Columbia Records.
  
  
  

• 1940: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid tribute to the Royal Air Force, saying, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."
  
  
  

• 1940: Exiled Russian Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City, with an ice pick to the back of the head, by one of Stalin's hired assassins (Frank Jackson).
  
  
  

• 1941: Adolf Hitler authorizes the development of the V-2 missile.
  
  
  

• 1949: Cleveland's Indians and Chicago's White Sox played at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland before the largest crowd to see a nighttime major-league baseball game: 78,382.
  
  
  

• 1953: The Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
  
  
  

• 1955: Hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria.
  
  
  

• 1964: President Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure.
  
  
  

• 1968: The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the "Prague Spring" liberalization drive of Alexander Dubcek's regime.
  
  
  

• 1971: The Cambodian military launches a series of operations against the Khmer Rouge. As the war in Vietnam wound down with the signing of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the war in neighboring Cambodia was going from bad to worse.
  
  
  

• 1977: The US launched "Voyager Two," an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
  
  
  

• 1982: President Reagan announced that a contingent of U.S. Marines would join French and Italian troops as peace-keepers in Beirut.
  
  
  

• 1983: The Commerce Department announced it was lifting export license requirements for the sale of heavy-duty pipe-laying equipment to the Soviet Union, a move that had been approved the day before by President Reagan.
  
  
  

• 1984: Republicans opened their 33rd national convention in Dallas as they prepared to nominate President Reagan and Vice President George Bush for a second term in office.
  
  
  

• 1985: The machine that revolutionized the world's offices, the original Xerox 914 copier, was formally presented to the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History. The invention of Chester Carlson, it was introduced to the world in March 196
  
  
  

• 1986: Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill went on a rampage at a post office in Edmond, Oklahoma, shooting 14 fellow workers to death before killing himself.
  
  
  

• 1986: The U.S. Census Bureau reported the nation's population at 240,468,000 and the median age had reached an all-time high of 31½ years.
  
  
  

• 1987: A federal appeals court in Washington rejected Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North's argument that the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair was operating under an invalid Justice Department regulation.
  
  
  

• 1988: Eight British soldiers were killed by an Irish Republican Army land mine that destroyed a military bus near Omagh, County Tyrone in Northern Ireland.
  
  
  

• 1989: Video executive Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty, were shot to death in their Beverly Hills, Calif., mansion by their sons, Lyle and Erik. The brothers' first murder trials ended in hung juries; they face re-trial.
  
  
  

• 1989: British conservationist George Adamson, 83, was shot and killed by bandits in Kenya.
  
  
  

• 1989: 51 people died when a pleasure boat sank in the Thames River in London.
  
  
  

• 1990: Ending administration resistance to the term, President Bush declared that Americans and other foreigners held by Iraq are "hostages" and warned that he would hold Iraq responsible for their "safety and well-being."
  
  
  

• 1991: More than 100,000 people rallied outside the Russian parliament building as protests against the Soviet coup increased. President Bush said he would never deal with the coup leaders.
  
  
  

• 1992: The early hours of August 20th, the Republican national convention in Houston renominated President Bush and Vice President Quayle. On the evening of the 20th, Bush delivered a hard-hitting speech in which he attacked the Democrats and promised to seek across-the-board tax cuts if re-elected.
  
  
  

• 1993: Conjoined twins Angela and Amy Lakeberg were separated at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in an operation that sacrificed Amy, since the sisters shared a common heart and liver tissue. (Although the separation appeared to be successful, Angela died in June 1994.)
  
  
  

• 1994: Benjamin Chavis Jr. was fired as head of the NAACP after a turbulent 16-month tenure.
  
  
  

• 1995: In northern India, 348 people were killed when a passenger train rammed another that had stopped on the tracks after hitting a cow.
  
  
  

• 1995: The remnants of an American peace delegation headed home from Bosnia-Herzegovina with the bodies of three diplomats killed in an accident.
  
  
  

• 1996: President Clinton approved the first minimum-wage increase in five years, raising the hourly minimum by 90 cents to $5.15 per hour over 13 months.
  
  
  

• 1996: Susan McDougal was sentenced in Little Rock, Arkansas, to two years in prison in a Whitewater fraud case.
  
  
  

• 1997: United Parcel Service drivers put away their picket signs, put on their brown shirts and shorts, and called on customers again as the delivery giant began to sluggishly recover from its costly strike.
  
  

• 1998: Retaliating 13 days after the deadly embassy bombings in East Africa, US forces launched cruise missile strikes against alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan and what was described as a chemical plant in Sudan.
  
  

• 1998: Monica Lewinsky went before a grand jury for a second round of explicit testimony about her White House trysts with President Clinton.
  

• 1999: The CIA pulled the security clearances for former Director John Deutch for keeping secret files on an unsecured home computer.
  

• 1999: Three Japanese banks announced a broad alliance plan that would create the world's largest banking group with assets of well over $1 trillion.
  
  

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