Today is: August  30

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 Fiacre Feast Day - A gardener himself, he is patron saint of gardeners; also patron saint of cab drivers and hosiers.

Saint Rose of Lima Feast Day - The first saint of the Western Hemisphere is patron saint of the Americas. Because of her name she is also the patron saint of florists and gardeners. She is also patron saint of Peru, the Philippines, and India.

International Red Phone Day - The hot line telephone was installed between Russia and the U.S. on this day in 1963. Sponsor: The Life of the Party.

Born on this Day

• 0580: Arabic prophet Mohammed founder (Islam)
  
  

• 1334: Pedro, the Cruel, King of Castilia & Leon
  
  

• 1609: Flemish sculptor Artus I Quellinus "the Old"
  
  

• 1687: Composer Francesco Maria Vallara
  
  

• 1632: The creator of "Frankenstein," Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
  
  

• 1693: Dutch composer and organist Jacobus Nozeman
  
  

• 1748: Neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David(Death of Marat)
  
  

• 1767: Composer Christian Frederich Gottlieb Schwencke
  
  

• 1820: George F. Root, American sacred music editor and composer. Root helped edit 75 musical collections, as well as composing several hundred original sacred melodies. One of these, JEWELS, is the tune to which is commonly sung the hymn, "When He Cometh."
  
  

• 1870: Educator Maria Montessori.
  
  

• 1896: Character actor Raymond Massey was born in London, England. (The President's Plane is Missing, McKenna's Gold, How the West was Won. The Great Impostor, Battle Cry, The Naked and the Dead, East of Eden, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Dr.Kildare)
  
  

• 19??: Jenny Gullen (Hoi Polloi)
  
  

• 1901: Civil rights leader Roy Wilkins (Executive Director of NAACP)
  
  

• 1901: Journalist-author John Gunther
  
  

• 1907: Actress Shirley Booth (Thelma Booth Ford) (Come Back Little Sheba, Hot Spell, The Matchmaker; Emmy Award-winner [1962]: Hazel; A Touch of Grace)
  
  

• 1908: Actor Fred MacMurray My Three Sons, The Caine Mutiny, Egg and I, Above Suspicion, The Apartment, The Happiest Millionaire, The Shaggy Dog, The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber,The Miracle of the Bells)
  
  

• 1912: Actress Joan Blondell (The Baron, The Champ, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Public Enemy)
  
  

• 1918: Baseball Hall-of-Famer Ted Williams
  
  

• 1919: Country singer Kitty Wells
  
  

• 1922: Opera singer Regina Resnik
  
  

• 1928: Actor Bill Daily
  
  

• 1935: Singer John Phillips
  
  

• 1939: Actress Elizabeth Ashley
  
  

• 1941: Actor Ben Jones ("The Dukes of Hazzard")
  
  

• 1943: Cartoonist Robert Crumb
  
  

• 1943: Skier Jean-Claude Killy
  
  

• 1947: Actress Peggy Lipton
  
  

• 1951: Actor Timothy Bottoms
  
  

• 1954: Actor David Paymer
  
  

• 1963: Actor Michael Chiklis ("The Commish")
  
  

• 1966: Actress Michael Michele
  
  

• 1971: Country singer Sherrie Austin
  
  

• 1972: Actress Cameron Diaz
  
  

• 1973: TV personality Lisa Ling ("The View")
  
  

• 1980: Rock singer-musician Aaron Barrett (Reel Big Fish)
  

• 1987: Actor Cameron Finley
  
  

Events in History on this day
  

• 30 B.C. (on August 30th, by some estimates), the seventh and most famous queen of ancient Egypt known as "Cleopatra" committed suicide.
  
  

• 0070: 2nd Temple in Jerusalem is set aflame (approximate)
  
  

• 0257: Election of Sixtus III as Pope
  
  

• 0410: Death of St. Pammachius
  
  

• 0526: Death of Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths
  
  

• 0670: Death of St. Fiacre of Ireland
  
  

• 1125: Duke Lotharius of Supplinburg elected king of Germany
  
  

• 1146: European leaders outlaw crossbow intending to ending war for all time
  
  

• 1181: Death of Pope Alexander III
  
  

• 1462: Election of Paul II as Pope
  
  

• 1464: Pietro Barbo elected to succeed Pope Pius II (Paul II)
  
  

• 1481: 2 Latvian monarchs executed for conspiracy to Polish king Kazimierz IV
  
  

• 1483: Death of Louis XI, King of France
  
  

• 1540: Death of Guillaume Bude
  
  

• 1563: Jewish community of Neutitschlin Moravia expelled
  
  

• 1617: Canonization of St. Rosa de Lima (Peru), first American Saint
  
  

• 1637: 1st Congregational Church synod held, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  
  

• 1637: Anne Hutchinson tried in Massachusetts, and banished. See today's History Focus
  
  

• 1645: Treaty of peace between Dutch & Indians.
  
  

• 1835: Felix Mendelssohn took his post as music director of Leipzig. He was then 26. It was in Leipzig that the composer produced his Second Piano Concerto and started work on the Violin Concerto.
  
  

• 1856: Wilberforce University was established in Xenia, Ohio under auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1863, the university was transferred to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church.
  
  

• 1682: William Penn sailed from England on this day. He later established the colony of Pennsylvania
  
  

• 1862: The Union Army commanded by Maj. Gen. John Pope was defeated by Confederate troops in the second Battle of Bull Run.
  
  

• 1905: Ty Cobb appeared in his first major-league baseball game. He played for the Detroit Tigers.
  
  

• 1922: The New Orleans Rhythm Kings recorded "Tiger Rag", one of the most familiar ragtime jazz tunes ever. It was released on General Records.
  
  

• 1941: The World War Two siege of Leningrad began as Nazi forces took Mga. It was the start of a 900-day siege of Leningrad. When it ended, the Russian city lay in ruins and hundreds of thousands of people had died.
  
  

• 1945: General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japan, and set up Allied occupation headquarters.
  
  

• 1963: The "Hot Line" communications link between Washington and Moscow went into operation.
  
  

• 1965: After 40 years in baseball, Casey Stengel announced his retirement.
  
  

• 1967: The US Senate confirmed the appointment of Thurgood Marshall as the first black justice on the US Supreme Court.
  
  

• 1979: Hurricane "David" devastated the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica as it began a rampage through the Caribbean and up the eastern US seaboard that claimed some 1,100 lives.
  
  

• 1982: PLO leader Yasir Arafat bid an emotional farewell to Beirut and left for Greece. Carrying a large olive branch, Arafat began his last day in Beirut with a farewell courtesy call on the headquarters of the People's Socialist Party.
  
  

• 1983: Guion S. Bluford Junior became the first black American astronaut to travel in space, blasting off aboard the "Challenger."
  
  

• 1984: President Ronald Reagan, along with Red Barber, Bill Stern, Graham McNamee, Don Dunphy and Ted Husing were inducted into the Sportscasters Hall of Fame, in ceremonies at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
  
  

• 1984: Following 3 postponements over 2 months, the space shuttle Discovery finally blasted off on its maiden voyage, deploying the first of 3 communications satellites from its cargo bay after several hours in orbit.
  
  

• 1985: Residents of Florida and Louisiana continued to prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Elena, which was packing winds of 100 mph as it approached the Gulf Coast.
  
  

• 1986: Soviet authorities arrested Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for "US News and World Report," after he was handed a package by a Russian acquaintance. (He was later released.)
  
  

• 1986: Franco Zefferelli's movie, "Otello," a presentation of Verdi's opera, was itself first presented at the Vienna Opera.
  
  

• 1987: A redesigned.space shuttle booster, created in the wake of the "Challenger" disaster, roared into life in its first full-scale test-firing near Brigham City, Utah.
  
  

• 1988: Top aides to Republican presidential nominee George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis met in Washington without reaching agreement on a schedule for debates in the fall.
  
  

• 1989: A federal jury in New York found so-called hotel queen Leona Helmsley guilty of income tax evasion. Helmsley served her sentence at a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, and was released in January 1994.
  
  

• 1990: U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar arrived in Jordan to try to mediate the Persian Gulf crisis. President Bush told a news conference that a "new world order" could emerge from the Gulf crisis.
  
  

• 1991: Azerbaijan declared its independence, joining the stampede of republics seeking to secede from the Soviet Union.
  
  

• 1992: The television series "Northern Exposure" won six Emmy Awards, including best drama series, while "Murphy Brown" received three Emmys, including best comedy series, in a ceremony marked by satirical jabs directed at Vice President Dan Quayle.
  
  

• 1992: 15 or more people were killed and 31 wounded when an artillery shell exploded in a crowded Sarajevo market.
  
  

• 1993: Israel's Cabinet approved a framework for Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories.
  
  

• 1993: Robert Malval was installed as prime minister of Haiti during a ceremony at the Haitian Embassy in Washington.
  
  

• 1993: "The Late Show with David Letterman" premiered on CBS TV.
  
  

• 1994: Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus in 1955 helped touch off the civil rights movement, was robbed and beaten in her Detroit apartment by Joseph Skipper.(Joseph Skipper later pleaded guilty to assault and robbery and was sentenced to prison.)
  
  

• 1994: The Lockheed and Martin Marietta corporations agreed to a merger that would create the largest U.S. defense contractor.
  
  

• 1995: The West pounded the Bosnian Serbs with artillery and air attacks in hopes of bludgeoning them into serious peace talks.
  
  

• 1995: At a lavish opening ceremony in Beijing, organizers of the largest women's conference ever vowed to fight to fight for empowerment and equality.
  
  

• 1996: President Clinton and Vice President Gore, following their renominations at the just-concluded Democratic national convention in Chicago, set out with their wives on a bus caravan through America's heartland.
  
  

• 1996: A commercial expedition to raise part of the sunken British luxury liner "Titanic" ended in failure. Nylon lines being used to lift a 21-ton section of the hull snapped, sending the section back to the bottom of the North Atlantic.
  
  

• 1997: Philip Noel Johnson, an armored car driver believed to have stolen $22 million, was arrested at the Texas border. Johnson later pleaded guilty to charges of kidnapping, money laundering and interfering with interstate commerce.
  
  

• 1997: Americans (and others in the Western Hemisphere) learned of the deaths of Princess Diana, her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, in a car crash in a Paris traffic tunnel. Bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones survived. (Because of the time difference, it was the morning of August 31st in Paris when Diana was pronounced dead.)
  
  

• 1998: The largest union of U S West, the regional telphone service, ended a 15-day strike with a tentative agreement on a three-year contract.
  

• 1999: Residents of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in a U.N.-sponsored ballot. (Afterward, pro-Indonesia militiamen reacted by going on a violent rampage that ended when international forces were sent in.)
  
  

Send Mail to pbower@neo.rr.com

Looking for more quotations?
Past quotes from the Daily Miscellany can be found here!

I hope you are viewing this page with IE

My favorite Browser