August 4^th is

Chocolate Chip Day

Hooray for Kids Day

U.S. Coast Guard Day *

White Wine Day

International Beer Day

Single Working Women’s Day *

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MORE! Yang Liang, Elizabeth Bower-Lyon and Barak Obama, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Anguilla – August Thursday Holiday

Barbados – Bridgetown:
Crop Over Festival (ongoing)

Bermuda – Somers Day

Canada – Montreal:
Osheaga Music Festival

Cook Islands – Constitution Day

El Salvador – Fiestas Patronales
(El Salvador patron saints fiestas – first day)

Iceland – Heimaey: Þjóðhátíð
(opening day of ‘national festival’)

Rwanda – Umuganura
(Harvest thanksgiving)

Scotland – Edinburgh: Edinburgh Festival
(start of the Festival Fringe & Military Tattoo)

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On This Day in HISTORY

598 – Yang Liang, youngest son of Emperor Wéndi of Sui, is ordered by his father to conquer Goguryeo (now Korea); he arrives with the Chinese army and navy during the Manchurian rainy season, and immediately gets bogged down

1870s Korean map of Korea

1327 –Wars of Scottish Independence: Sir James Douglas, the ‘Black Douglas’ who ruthlessly practices guerilla and psychological warfare against the much larger English forces, leads a surprise midnight attack on Weardale, and almost captures the sleeping  English King Edward III

1532 – After King Charles VIII of France marries Anne, Duchess of Brittany, the Estates of Brittany vote to unite the Ducal crown with the French crown, ending the Duchy’s independence, after 600 years as a feudal state

1578 – In the Battle of  Al Kasr al Kebir, the Moroccans defeat the Portuguese. King Sebastian of Portugal is killed in the battle, leaving his elderly uncle, Cardinal Henry, as his heir, setting off a succession crisis in Portugal

1693 – Legend says Dom Perignon discovers the process for making Champagne on this date, and that he exclaims (in French): “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!” (If it’s not true, it should be)

1704 – In the War of the Spanish Succession, the combined English and Dutch fleets capture Gibraltar

1735 – NY Weekly Journal writer John Peter Zenger acquitted of seditious libel by the jury because “the truth is not libelous,” establishing basis for freedom of the press

1748 – Abbé Maximilian Stadler born, Austrian composer, musicologist and organist; Commander of the Cistercian Abbey in Lillienfeld (1786-1789); involved with Mozart’s musical estate and the very first Mozart catalog of works

1755 – Nicolas-Jacque Conte born, French mechanical genius and portrait painter; developer of the method from which the modern manufacture of graphite pencils is derived; he is chief of the balloon corps on Napoleon’s 1798 Egyptian expedition

1789 – Members of the French National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges

1790 – U.S. Coast Guard Day * – The Revenue Cutter Service, a U.S. naval task force, the precursor to Coast Guard, is formed by a tariff act

1792 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, notable English Romantic poet, is born

1821 – The Saturday Evening Post moves to weekly publication

1830 – Plans are laid out for the city of Chicago

1839 – Walter Pater born, British critic, essayist and humanist

1845 – Pherozeshah Merwanjee Mehta born, Indian political leader, lawyer, activist for Indian self-rule, education and healthcare; co-founder of the Indian National Congress and its President in 1890; founder and publisher of the Bombay Chronicle, English-language weekly newspaper (1910-1959), an important nationalist voice and chronicle of pre-independent Indian political upheavals

1892 – Johanna Bordewijk Roepman born, Dutch composer

1900 – Elizabeth Bower-Lyon born, future wife of King George VI, and Queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions; mother of Queen Elizabeth II; she lived  to the age of 101; greatly admired for her indomitable spirit during WWII and her calm, cheerful public persona, affectionately called ‘the Queen Mum’

Elizabeth Bower-Lyon — Queen consort — ‘the Queen Mum’

1901 – Louis ‘Satchmo’ Armstrong born, influential virtuoso American Jazz trumpeter and gravel-voiced singer; Good Will Ambassador for the U.S State Department on tours to Africa, the Middle east and Latin America

1908 – Sir Osbert Lancaster born, English cartoonist, stage designer and writer

1910 – Hedda Sterne born in Romania, American Abstract Expressionist and Surrealist painter, member of “The Irascible Eighteen”

Machines, by Hedda Stern

1910 – William Schuman born, American composer

1912 – Raoul Wallenberg born, Swedish diplomat and humanitarian; as Sweden’s special envoy in Budapest, between July and December 1944, he issues protective passports and shelters Jews in buildings designated as Swedish diplomatic territory,  saving the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews. During the January, 1945 siege of Budapest by the Soviet Red Army, he is detained by SMERCH on suspicion of espionage and disappears; questions remain unanswered about his reported death in Lubyanka, the KGB prison, and Wallenberg’s possible ties to U.S. intelligence. One of those saved by Wallenberg, U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos, sponsors the bill in 1981 which makes Wallenberg an Honorary Citizen of the United States, a privilege given to only eight people to date, including the Marquis de Lafayette (posthumously), Sir Winston Churchill, and Mother Teresa

1914 – After Germany invades Belgium, Britain declares war on Germany, U.S. proclaims neutrality

1920 – Helen Thomas born, American journalist, columnist, White House press corps member who covers eleven U.S. presidents from Eisenhower to Obama; first woman officer of National Press Club, first female member of Gridiron Club, first woman member of the White House Correspondents’ Association and its first female president

1927 – Jimmy Rodgers records “Sleep Baby Sleep”

1938 – Ellen Schrecker born, American historian and professor; notable for American Inquisition: The Era of McCarthyism, and several other books on the McCarthy era, also Regulating the Intellectuals: Perspectives on Academic Freedom in the 1980s

1944 – A Dutch informer betrays the hiding place of Anne Frank’s family and their friends. The Gestapo arrests all ten of them and the two Christians who are helping them. Anne and her sister die of typhus in Belgen-Belsen, less than two months before the camp is liberated by British forces in 1945.

1956 – Elvis Presley releases “Hound Dog”

1958 – Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool” is first #1 song on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart

1961 – Barak Obama is born, future 44^th U.S. President and Nobel Peace Laureate

1964 – After a massive search headed by the FBI, the bodies of three missing C.O.R.E. civil rights workers are found buried in an earthen dam in Neshoba County, Mississippi

1964 – The Kinks single “You Really Got Me” released in U.K.

1966 – Most U.S. radio stations ban the Beatles after John Lennon says band is more popular than Jesus

1977 – President Carter signs a measure establishing the Department of Energy

1984 – African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso

1987 – The FCC votes to rescind the Fairness Doctrine; radio and TV stations no longer required to present controversial issues in a balanced manner

1994 – Yugoslavia withdraws its support for Bosnian Serbs, sealing the 300-mile border between Yugoslavia and Bosnia

1996 – Marathoner Josia Thugwane is first black South African to win Olympic gold

2006 – Single Working Women’s Day * is started by Barbara Payne, co-founder of the Single Working Women’s Affiliate Network, for both young women just joining the workforce and all the single-parent moms (almost one-third of American families today)

2007 – NASA spacecraft Phoenix is launched, taking the Phoenix Lander to Mars

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