August 8^th is

Dalek Day *

Frozen Custard Day

Happiness Happens Day

International Cat Day *

National Dollar Day *

Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Day

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MORE! Tycho Brahe, Sara Teasdale and Nicholas Holtham, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

British Virgin Islands –
August Festival East End Parade

Scotland – Edinburgh:
Edinburgh Festival Cirque Berserk

Tanzania – Wakulima ya Nane Nane
(Peasants’ day)

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On This Day in HISTORY

422 – 11 Rabbit born (nicknamed “Casper”by archaeologists who thought his glyph resembled the friendly ghost); at age 13, he becomes Mayan Ajaw (ruler) of Palenque, and rules for 52 years

870 – King Louis the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald partition the Middle Frankish Kingdom into east and west divisions in the Treaty of Meersen

1576 – Cornerstone laid for Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg observatory on the island of Hven

1709 – Bartolomeu de Gusmão shows the lifting power of hot air at the court of King John V of Portugal to get support for his airship project

1786 – National Dollar Day *- A Second Continental Congress resolution establishes U.S.  currency as the dollar, with dimes, cents and mills as fractions of it

1794 – Joseph Whidbey’s expedition searches for the Northwest Passage in Alaska

1814 – Esther Hobart Morris born, abolitionist; first female U.S. Justice of the Peace, in Wyoming, appointed to replace the previous justice after he resigned in protest over Wyoming extending suffrage to women

1844 – Brigham Young is chosen as the new leader of the Mormons

1857 – Cécile Chaminade born, French composer and pianist, in spite of her father’s disapproval; noted for character pieces for piano and salon songs, including Scarf Dance, The Silver Ring and Flute Concertino in D Major; first woman to receive the French Légion d’Honneur for music composition

1863 – Florence Merriam Bailey, American ornithologist and nature writer, organized Audubon Society chapters, co-author with husband of Handbook of Birds of the Western United States and The Birds of New Mexico

1876 – Thomas Edison patents his mimeograph

1884 – Sara Teasdale born, lyric poet, Pulitzer Prize for Love Songs; also published Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems and Helen of Troy and Other Poems

1885 – More than 1.5 million people come to funeral of Ulysses S. Grant in NYC

1896 – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings born, American author; won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Yearling

1898 – Marguerite Bise born, French chef and restauranteur; notable as the third woman to win three Michelin stars, in 1951 as head chef of the restaurant Auberge du Père Bise which she founded with her husband in Talloires, Haute-Savoie, a lakeside resort town in southeastern France

1899 – A.T. Marshall patents the refrigerator

1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first public flight at a Le Mans, France racecourse

1910 – U.S Army Lt. Benjamin Foulois installs a safety belt and tricycle landing gear on a Wright Flyer in San Antonio TX; the Flyer originally had a brake skid instead of wheels

1911 – The millionth application is filed at the U.S. Patent Office, by Francis Holton, for a tubeless vehicle tire

1922 – Gertrude Himmelfarb born, American traditionalist historian, noted for works on Victorian England

1925 – 200,000 Ku Klux Klan members stage the KKK’s first national march, in Washington DC

1926 – Larisa Bogoraz born, Soviet linguist, author and dissident, organizes a protest in Red Square of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia; exiled for four years in Siberia; co-author of Memory, contributor to the underground Chronicle of Current Events (1968-1983), run by dissidents for free speech and civil rights

1927 – Maia Wojciechowska born in Poland, American children and young adult fiction author, Newbery Award for Shadow of a Bull

1929– The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight

1930 – Terry Nation, creator of the villainous Daleks on Doctor Who, is born, To honor him; his birthday is celebrated by Doctor Who fans as Daleks Day *

1933 – Serena Wilson born, American student of Ruth St. Denis, pioneer in legitimizing belly dance in the U.S.; television host of The Serena Show;choreographer and teacher

1937 – Sheila Varian born, American Arabian Horse breeder and trainer; received recognition for her work from the U.S. Equestrian Federation as one of the top ten breeders of Arabians in the country, and awarded the 2001 Ellen Scripps Memorial Breeders’ Cup to her; honored in 2005 with the Arabian Breeders Association Lifetime Achievement Award

1939 – The U.S. boycotts the Venice Film Festival because of Italy’s fascist regime

1942 – Quit India Movement launched against British rule after Gandhi’s call for swaraj: complete independence for India

1945 – The London Charter is signed by France, the U.K., Soviet Union and U.S., establishing the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg Trials

1945 – U.S. President Truman signs the United Nations Charter

1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, world’s first mass-produced aircraft designed to carry nuclear weapons – also first bomber with intercontinental range

B-29 on left, Convair B-36 on right

1948 – Svetlana Savitskaya born, Soviet cosmonaut who became the second woman in space aboard Soyuz T-7 in 1982; on her 1984 mission, she became the first woman to be in space twice, and the first woman to perform a spacewalk

1948 – Margaret Urban Walker born, American philosopher, ethicist and author; Moral Contexts, and Naturalized bioethics: toward responsible knowing and practice

1953 – Soviet Premier Georgy Malenkov announces the USSR has a hydrogen bomb, which is tested four days later on August 12 at Semipalatinsk

1954 – Nicholas Holtam born, British cleric, Church of England Bishop of Salisbury; first C of E bishop to publicly support same-sex marriage; chair of Ministry Committee for Ministry with and among Deaf and Disabled People

1958 – Deborah Norville born, American television journalist; anchor on the syndicated news magazine Inside Edition since 1995; on the Board of Directors of Viacom Corporation; worked for CBS News (1992-1995), including a stint as co-anchor on America Tonight; she hosted The Deborah Norville Show on ABC TalkRadio (1991-1992) after taking maternity leave; worked for NBC (1987-1990)

1959 – Caroline Ansink born, Dutch composer, musician and music educator; won both a Composition Prize and a GEDOK for Pyrrhus for Organ in 1989

1963 – The Great Train Robbery in England – 15 robbers steal £2.6 million

1969 – At London zebra crossing, photographer Iain Macmillan shoots the Beatles Abbey Road album cover photo

1969 – Executive order 11478, issued by President Nixon, requires each federal department and agency to establish and maintain an affirmative action program of equal employment opportunity for civilian employees and applicants

1969 – The International Fund for Animal Welfare is founded in Canada – it now has projects in over 40 countries; IFAW is the sponsor of International Cat Day *

1970 – Janis Joplin buys a headstone for blues singer Bessie Smith’s unmarked grave, two months before her own funeral

1973 – Ilka Agricola born, German mathematician in the field of differential geometry, concerned with its applications in mathematical physics; dean of mathematics and computer science at the University of Marburg

1974 – President Nixon announces his resignation from office on national TV broadcast

1983 – Metallica releases their first single, “Whiplash”

1988 – Russian troops begin pulling out of Afghanistan after nine fruitless years of war

1991 – Warsaw Poland’s radio mast, once the world’s tallest man-made object, collapses

2000 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley raised after 136 year on the ocean floor

2008 – The Summer Games of the XXIX Olympiad open in Beijing China

2014 – The World Health Organization (WHO) declares the West African Ebola outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern; at least 1,000 people had already died, a figure disputed by some experts as much lower than the actual death toll; survivors often face chronic conditions like joint pain, and eye inflammation that can lead to blindness

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