August 7th is

National Purple Heart Day *

National Lighthouse Day *

Professional Speakers Day

Raspberries n’ Cream Day

Sea Serpent Day *

Particularly Preposterous Packaging Day

International Assistance Dog Week *

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MORE! Simón Bolívar, Mata Hari and Abebe Bikila, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, British Virgin Islands, Domenica, Grenada, Montserrat, Saints Kitts and Nevis: Carnival Monday/August Festival

Australia – Northern Territory: Picnic Day

Barbados – Kadooment Day

Bahamas – Emancipation Day

Canada – August Long Weekend
Toronto ON: OVO Music Fest

Columbia – Battle of Boyacá Day *

Cote d’Ivoire – Independence Day

Germany – Berlin:
International Berlin Beer Festival

Iceland – Fridagur verslunarmanna
(commerce day)

India: Raksha Bandhan

Kribati – Youth Day Holiday

Malaysia – Sarawak:
Rainforest World Music Festival

Scotland – Lùnastal

Sri Lanka – Nikini Full Moon Poya Day

Sweden – Visby: Medeltidsveckan
(Middle Ages Festival)

Tuvalu – National Children’s Day

Zambia – Farmers’ Day
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On This Day in HISTORY

322 BC – Athenian coalition forces lose to the Macedonians at the Battle of Crannon, effectively ending their rebellion against Macedonian hegemony, which they attempt to overthrow after the death of Alexander the Great in June

1420 – Construction of Santa Maria del Fiore dome begins in Florence, Italy

1461 – Ming Dynasty Tianshun Emperor has a ‘to-be-purged’ list of any who didn’t support him against his half-brother, the Jingtai Emperor, so General Cao Qin and his Mongol and Han troops attempt to overthrow him, but their plot is exposed and fails. Cao Qin commits suicide at the end of a last stand against imperial troops

1533 – Don Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga born, Spanish noble, soldier and epic poet; his octava real poem La Araucana depicts the courageous insurrection of the Araucanians and the Spanish conquest of Chile

1560 –Elizabeth Báthory born, the “Blood Countess,” Hungarian torturer and killer of hundreds of young women over a 24-year period

1751 – Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange born, leader of the dynastic stadtholder party and the counter revolution while married to William V of Orange

1779 – Carl Ritter born, German geographer, a pioneer of modern geography

1783 – John Heathcote born, English inventor of lace-making machinery

1782 – General George Washington designates the first American military decoration,
the Badge of Military Merit, for “any singularly meritorious action” now known as the Purple Heart for its shape and color

1789 – U.S. Congress approves an act for “establishment and support of Lighthouse, Beacons, Buoys, and Public Piers” – Two hundred years later, Congress designated August 7th as National Lighthouse Day *

1789 – U.S. Department of War established, later becomes Department of Defense

1813 – Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis born, American abolitionist, feminist and educator, founds pioneering U.S. women’s rights newspaper, The Una; co-founder of the New England Woman Suffrage Association

1819 – Simón Bolívar defeats the Spanish in the Battle of Boyacá *

1848 – Sea Serpent Day *- The crew of the HMS Daedalus, voyaging to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, sight a 60-foot-long sea creature with a strange maned head

1848 – Alice James born, American diarist, chronicled her life and struggles with mental illness, sister of psychologist William James and novelist Henry James

1857 – Cecile Chaminade born, French late-Romantic composer and pianist

1864 – Ellen Fitz Pendleton born, American, Wellesley College president (1911-36)

1876 – Mata Hari born, Dutch exotic dancer; executed as a WWI German spy, but a double-agent for the French and the Germans

1886 – Pietro Yon born in Italy, American composer and organist

1887 – Anna Elisabet Weirauch born, German author and screenwriter; actor with the German State Theatre under Max Reinhardt; notable for Der Skorpion, a pioneering novel of lesbian literature

1888 – Theophilus Van Kannel patents the revolving door

1890 – Elizabeth Gurley Flynn born, American author, feminist, Labor activist and orator with the IWW, Chair of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA – the song “The Rebel Girl” was written for her by Joe Hill; founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and a principal activist for their International Labor Defense (ILD), formed in 1925

1903 – Louis Leakey born, Kenyan-English paleontologist and archaeologist

1904 – Ralph Bunche born, African American political scientist, pioneering UN diplomat who negotiates the 1949 armistice between newly-born Israel and the Arab states, for which he wins the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize

1905 – André Jolivet born, French composer, noted for use of ancient instruments for modern compositions

1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey becomes first to complete a cross-country automobile trip, traveling with three friends (none of whom could drive) for 59 days from New York, NY to San Francisco, CA

1911 – Nicholas Ray born, influential American filmmaker-screenwriter

1913 – George Van Eps born, American guitarist, played in orchestras of Benny Goodman and Ray Noble

1921 – Ricardo Baliardo, AKA Manitas de Plata, flamenco guitarist, is born

1925 – Felice Bryant born, American songwriter; teamed with her husband for such hits as “All I Have to Do Is Dream” and “Bye, Bye Love”

1927 – The Peace Bridge opens between Fort Erie ONT Canada and Buffalo NY

1928 – Betsy Byars born, American children’s book author; Newbery Medal for Summer of the Swans; National Book Award and Edgar Award winner

1932 – Abebe Bikila born, Ethiopian Olympic marathon winner and first East African medal winner, who set a world record at the 1960 Rome Olympics running barefoot to win the gold, then became the first athlete to successfully defend an Olympic marathon title, at the 1964 Tokyo games

1933 – Elinor Ostrom born, American political economist; shares 2009 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences with Oliver Williamson; first woman Nobel Laureate in Economics

1934 – U.S. Court of Appeals upholds lower court ruling against ban of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses

1937 – Bunny Berigan and his orchestra record “I Can’t Get Started”

1938 – Helen Caldicott born, Australian physician, author and activist; outspoken opponent of nuclear power and weapons; radio host of If You Love This Planet

1938 – Construction on the Nazi concentration camp at Mauthausen-Gusen begins, after the Third Reich annexes Austria in May, 1938

1942 – Garrison Keillor, author and radio star, is born

1942 – U.S. forces land at Guadalcanal, the opening of a major WWII Allied offensive in the Pacific

1944 – IBM dedicates Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I)

1947 – Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki reaches Tuamotu Islands after 101 day voyage across Pacific, proving pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America

1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, precursor to Sony, sells first transistor radio in Japan

1959 – Caroline Ansink born, Dutch composer and flautist

1959 – The “Lincoln Memorial” penny goes into circulation, replacing “sheaves of wheat” design

1960 – Ivory Coast becomes independent from France

1962 – Frances Oldham Kelsey receives U.S. President’s Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service for refusing to authorize thalidomide

1964 – U.S. Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving LBJ the broad powers he requests to strengthen his hand in dealing with “Communist aggression” in SE Asia

1971 – NASA Apollo 15 returns to Earth from its manned mission to the moon

1976 – NASA Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars

1985 – Takao Doi, Mamoru Mohri and Chiaki Mukai become Japan’s first astronauts

1987 – Lynne Cox becomes first person to swim from the United States to the USSR, crossing from Little Diomede Island in Alaska to Big Diomede in the Soviet Union

1990 – President George H.W. Bush orders U.S. military to Saudi Arabia, anticipating possible invasion by Iraq

1998 – Bombings at the U.S. embassies at Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Nairobi in Kenya kill over 210 people

2000 – Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore chooses Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate, the first Jewish candidate on a major party ticket

2003 – Arnold Schwarzenegger announces his candidacy for California governor

2007 – International Assistance Dog Week * is launched by Marcie Davis,  a paraplegic who has never let that slow her down; author of Working Like Dogs: The Service Dog Guidebook

2010 – Elena Kagan is sworn in as the fourth woman justice on the U.S. Supreme Court

Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan – 2010

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