August 2 is

Coloring Book Day

National Night Out

Ice Cream Sandwich Day

Take a Penny/Leave a Penny Day

____________________________________________________________

WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Costa Rica – Our Lady of Los Angeles

India – Karkkadaka Vavu

Ireland –
Killorglin: Puck Fair

Macedonia –  Iliden (Republic) Day

Scotland –
Glasgow: Merchant City Festival

____________________________________________________________

On This Day in HISTORY

338 BC – Phillip II’s Macedonians defeat combined forces of Athens and Thebes

216 BC – Hannibal’s Carthaginian army wins Battle of Cannae against Romans

1343 – Jean de Clisson’s husband is executed for treason without proof being presented. She sells her holdings, buys three warships, outfits them with black hulls and crimson sails, and becomes “The Lioness of Brittany,” ferocious pirate captain of the Black Fleet, seeking revenge against French King Phillip VI and the French nobles she blamed for her spouse’s death. She personally beheaded with an ax any French noble aboard a captured vessel. and always left one survivor to tell the tale.

1610 – Henry Hudson sails into the bay which will be named after him

1776 – Continental Congress delegates begin signing the Declaration of Independence

1790 – The first U.S. census begins

1798 – British Royal Navy under Horatio Nelson defeats Napoleon in Battle of the Nile

More! For the Statue of Liberty, James Baldwin and Peter O’Toole, click

1824 – Fifth Avenue is opened in New York City

1834 – Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, French sculptor/Statue of Liberty designer, is born

1858 – The first mailboxes are installed along streets in Boston and New York City

1869 – Japan’s Shinōkōshō class system is abolished during Mejii Restoration

1870 – Tower Subway, world’s first underground tube railway, opens in London

1873 – Clay Street Hill Railroad begins operating first cable car line in San Francisco

1876 – “Wild Bill” Hickok shot and killed in Deadwood, SD

1887 – Rowell Hodge patents barbed wire

1892 – Charles Wheeler patents the first escalator

1918 – Canada’s first general strike begins in Vancouver BC

1923 – V.P. Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S president when Warren G. Harding dies

1924 – James Baldwin, author of  The Fire Next Time, is born

1929 – Fats Waller records “Ain’t Misbehavin”

1932 – Peter O’Toole, star of Lawrence of Arabia, is born

1934 – Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany

1937 – The Marihuana Tax Act effectively renders marijuana illegal

1939 – Albert Einstein signs letter to FDR urging U.S. atomic weapons research

1943 – Jewish uprising fails at Nazi Treblinka extermination camp

1962 – Robert Zimmerman legally changes his name to Bob Dylan

1964 – North Vietnamese may have fired on USS Maddox in Gulf of Tonkin

1989 – Pakistan is re-admitted to Commonwealth of Nations after democracy restored

1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, setting off the Gulf War

2007 – Mattel recalls almost a million Chinese-made toys because of lead contaminants

____________________________________________________________

Visuals

• Pile of pennies
• International flags
• The Black Fleet of Jean de Clisson, “The Lioness of Brittany”
• “The Destruction of L’Orient at the Battle of the Nile” by George Arnald (1827)
  National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England
• Page 2 Albert Einstein Letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  08/02/1939 President’s Secretary’s Files, Safe File: Alexander Sachs
  FDR Library
• A Clay Street Railroad cable car circa 1887
• Mattel Toy Recalls 2007