August 3^rd is

Clean Your Floors Day

Grab Some Nuts Day

India Pale Ale Day

Watermelon Day

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MORE! Ernie Pyle, P. D. James and Jesse Owens, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Bermuda – Somers Day
(Second day of Cricket Cup Match)

El Salvador – San Salvador:
Fiesta de San Salvador

Equatorial Guinea – Golpe de la Libertad
(Freedom Day)

Guinea-Bissau – Pidjiguiti Day
(Striking dockworkers massacred by police)

Niger – Féte Nationale de l’Arbre
(Independence Day)

Rwanda – Umuganura
(Harvest thanksgiving)

Scotland – Edinburgh Festival Fringe
(through August 27)

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On This Day in HISTORY

8 AD – Roman general and future emperor Tiberius defeats an Illyrian tribe, the Breuci of Sava Valley, part of the Bellum Batonianum, an Illyian revolt

70 – The fires which destroy the Second Temple in Jerusalem are extinguished

1347 – Six burghers of the besieged French city of Calais surrender to Edward III of England, hoping to relieve the siege

The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin – 1884

1492 – Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain

1527 – First known letter from North America sent by explorer John Rut to Henry VIII via the trading vessels of the otherwise unknown Master Grube, returning from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Plymouth, England

1546 – French printer Etienne Doled, accused of heresy, blasphemy and sedition, hanged AND burned at the stake for printing reformist literature

1596 – David Fabricus discovers light variation of Mira (first variable star)

1678 – Robert LaSalle builds first ship in America, the Griffin, on Lake Erie

The Griffin

1750 – Christopher Dock completed first known book of teaching methods, titled “A Simple and Thoroughly Prepared School Management”

1778 – The world-famous opera house, Tetra allays Scala, known as “La Scala,” opens in Milan, Italy; Premiere performance is Antonio Allier’s Europe riconosciuta

1801 – Joseph Paxton born, English gardener and architect, designer of  The Crystal Palace for London’s Great Exhibition of 1851

1808 – Hamilton Fish born, American lawyer and politician, U.S. Secretary of State in Grant administration; developed concept of international arbitration during the negotiations with Great Britain over the sinking of Union ships by the Confederate naval vessel Alabama, built in British shipyards, allowed to sail to the South in spite of protests by the American Minister that it violated Britain’s proclaimed neutrality

1811 – Elisha Graves Otis born, American industrialist/inventor, Otis Elevator Company founder; inventor of a safety device to prevent elevators from falling if a hoist cable fails

1852 – Harvard wins first U.S. intercollegiate athletic event, the Harvard-Yale Boat Race

1855 – Henry Cuyler Bunner born, American novelist, short story writer and poet; The Tower of Babel

1859 – The American Dental Association is founded in Niagara Falls NY

1863 – Saratoga Race Course opens in Saratoga Springs NY

1873 – Inventor Andrew Hallidie successfully tests his cable car, making the first San Francisco cable car trip, traveling down Nob Hill on Clay Street to Kearney and back up

1882 – Segundo Luis Moreno Andrade born, Ecuadoran composer and folklorist

1882 – US Congress passes Immigration Act, 50 cent tax to be levied on all aliens landing at U.S. ports. Exclusionary criteria instituted: any apparent convicts, lunatics, idiots or those unable to take care of themselves are denied entrance. In May, 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act had already totally banned Chinese immigration for 10 years

1887 –Rupert Brooke born, British WWI poet whose poems expressed the idealism felt by many at the beginning of the war; he died aboard a French hospital ship moored off the Aegean coast of Greece in 1915, from sepsis caused by an infected mosquito bite

1900 – Firestone Tire & Rubber Company founded

1900 – Ernie Pyle born, American notable WWII war correspondent, killed on Iejima Island by Japanese machine-gun fire in April, 1945

1902 – Regina Jones in Germany, first woman ordained as a rabbi; she spent two years at the Theresienstadt concentration camp, then was killed at Auschwitz in 1944

1905 – Maggie Kuhn born, American activist, founder of the Gray Panthers, advocate for human rights, social and economic justice, nursing home reform and increased understanding of mental health issues

1907 – Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis fines Standard Oil of Indiana $29.4 million for illegal rebates to freight carriers, but conviction and fine are reversed on appeal

1914 – WWI: Germany declares war on France, Romania declares its neutrality; and the 52-year-old British Foreign Secretary Edward Grey said, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

1920 – P. D. James born, British author and life peer in the House of Lords; notable for her Adam Dalgliesh detective series

1926 – Tony Bennett born, American singer; I Left My Heart in San Francisco

1928 – Cécile Aubry, French author, actress, screenwriter, and TV director; adapted her children’s book series Poly and and Belle et Sébastien for television

1933 – First Mickey Mouse Watch introduced, priced at $2.75

1936 – U.S. State Department warns Americans to leave Spain because of civil war

1936 – Jesse Owens wins the first of his four Olympic gold medals in Berlin

1941 – Martha Stewart born, American founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, a communications, publishing and merchandising empire

1943 – General George S. Patton slaps around a private in a “psychoneurosis anxiety state,” at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice; then does it to another soldier in shell shock on August 10; when informed, Eisenhower sends him a private reprimand and transfers most of Patton’s 7^th Army combat forces to Lt. General Mark W. Clark for the invasion of mainland Italy, and insists Patton apologize

1948 – Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist spy for the USSR

1949 – Sue Slipman born, British civil, human and women’s rights activist; executive member of the National Council for Civil Liberties (1977-1979); founding member of the Social Democratic Party (1981); Director of the National Council for One Parent Families (1986-1995); a staunch advocate for women, especially single parents, she was a member of the Working Group on Women’s Issues to the Secretary of State for Employment (1992-1998)

1957 – Kate Wilkinson born, New Zealand lawyer and politician, Commissioner of the Envrionment Court since 2015; Member of NZ Parliament (2005-2014); Minister of: Food Safety (2008-2013), Conservation (2010-2013), and Labour (2008-2012)

1958 – USS Nautilus becomes the first submarine to cross the North Pole while submerged underwater

1958 – Lindsey Hilsum born, English television journalist and writer; International Editor for Channel 4 News, and regular contributor to the Sunday Times, The Observer, The Guardian, The New Statesman, and Granta; recipient of the 2017 Patron’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society

1958 – The Billboard ‘Hot 100’ is launched

1958 – Ana Kokkinos born, Australian film and television director and screenwriter; her second short film, Only the Brave, won several awards; her first feature film, Head On (1998), won Best First Feature at San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival; other feature films include The Book of Revelation and Blessed

1960 – Niger becomes independent from France

1963 – The Beach Boys release Surfer Girl, Brian Wilson’s first song

1968 – The Doors “Hello I Love You” hits #1 in the U.S. singles chart

1968 – Opening of the first Newport Pop Festival in Costa Mesa CA; first music concert to have more than 100,000 paid attendees

1971 – Paul McCartney announces formation of his band Wings

1972 – U.S. Senate ratifies Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

1977 – Tandy unveils the TRS-80, pioneering mass-produced PC, for $600

1981 – The PATCO strike: the air traffic controllers go on strike. President Reagan says he will fire them

1984 – Mary Lou Retton’s perfect 10 vault wins gold at L.A. Summer Olympics

1985 – Tears for Fears Shout is the #1 U.S. single

1987 – The Iran-Contra congressional hearings end; none of the 29 witnesses tie President Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to Nicaraguan rebels

1992 – U.S. Senate votes to restrict and eventually end nuclear weapons testing

1996 – Los Del Rio Macarena starts a 14 week run as #1 on the U.S. singles chart

2004 – NASA launches Messenger, which will send back 270,000 pictures of Mercury

2004 – The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11 attacks in 2001

2009 – Bolivia becomes first South American country to declare right of indigenous people to govern themselves

2015 – Delta, American and United Airlines announce they will no longer transport big-game trophies amidst the on-going public outcry over the killing of Cecil, a protected lion in Zimbabwe in July by an American hunter

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