August 8^th is

Dalek Day *

National Dollar Day *

Frozen Custard Day

Happiness Happens Day

International Cat Day *

Sneak Some Zucchini on Your Neighbor’s Porch Day

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MORE! Sara Teasdale, Emiliano Zapata and Janis Joplin, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Iraqi Kurdistan – Ceasefire Day

Mongolia – Bā bā Day (Father’s Day)

Sweden – Namesday of the Queen

Tanzania – Wakulima ya Nane Nane
(Farmers’ day)

Ukraine – Signal Troops 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 became Mayan Ajaw  (ruler) of Palenque, and ruled 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

1079 –Emperor Horikawa of Japan born; his reigns lasts from 1087 to 1107, but it was overshadowed by the cloistered rule of his father, former Emperor Shirakawa, who outlived his son. Horikawa died at 29 in 1107. Shirakawa lived until 1129, and took over raising his grandson, the future Emperor Toba, who was only four when his father died

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

1640 – Amalia Catharina, Countess of Erbach born, German poet and composer; she published 67 Pietist poems and songs in 1692, meant for private household devotions

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 and suffragist; first woman Justice of the Peace in the U.S., appointed as J.P. in South Pass City, Wyoming , when the previous justice resigned in protest after Wyoming extended suffrage to women in December 1869. She served the remainder of the term, which expired in December 1870, but was not nominated for reelection by either the Republican of Democratic Party. South Pass City was a mining town, which went boom and bust several times. Morris left not only the town, but her husband, whom she had once had arrested for assault and battery. She moved several times, but attended the 1872 American Woman Suffrage Association Convention in San Francisco, then declined the nomination in 1873 by the Woman’s Party of Wyoming to be their candidate for the Wyoming Territorial Legislature. Morris served as Vice President of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, addressing its 1876 National Convention in Philadelphia. In July, 1890, she presented the new Wyoming state flag to Governor Warren during the Wyoming statehood celebration. She died in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1902

1831 – Belgian Revolution – Ten Days’ Campaign, Battle of Hasselt: The Dutch invasion force is victorious over the outnumbered secessionist Belgian Army of the Meuse, but the Belgians later prevailed in gaining their independence because the French sent troops to their aid

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, nature writer, and field guide author. She was an advocate for protecting birds, calling for birders to use binoculars instead of shotguns, and she denounced the fashion of using bird feathers and whole birds as decorations on women’s hats, which caused millions of birds a year to be killed. Author of Birds Through an Opera Glass. She organized Audubon Society chapters, and was co-author with her 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, 1918 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for Love Songs; also published Sonnets to Duse and Other Poems, and Helen of Troy 

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

1896 – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings born, American author; won the 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, The Yearling

1897 – Emiliano Zapata born, leader and general in the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), and inspired the agrarian socialist land reform movement called Zapatismo; he was betrayed and shot when he arrived as a meeting with a supposed defector in April, 1919

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 racecourse in Le Mans, France

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; among her many titles are Victorian Minds, and Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians

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

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

1929 – Larisa Bogoraz born, Soviet linguist, author, and dissident for free speech and civil rights, she organized a protest in Red Square of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. She was exiled for four years to Siberia; co-author of Memory;  contributor to the underground Chronicle of Current Events (1968-1983), an underground periodical run by dissidents which reported violations of judicial procedure and civil rights by the Soviet government

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

1942 – L.V. Hull born, self-taught African American artist; Vernacular Art Yardscape

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

1964 – Anastasia Ashman born, American author, blogger, digital strategist and co-founder of the global branding startup GlobalNiche.net; noted for her books, Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, and The Thong Also Rises: Further Misadventures from Funny Women on the Road

1969 – At a 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

2018 – The Senate of Argentina rejected, by a vote of 38 to 31, a bill that would have decriminalized abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. The nation’s current law only allows exceptions to the abortion ban in cases of rape, or severe risk to the woman’s health. During the Senate debate, the Roman Catholic Church held a “Mass for Life” at the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral. After the vote was announced, police broke up several confrontations between advocates and opponents of the change outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires. A similar bill was introduced in May, 2019, in the Chamber of Deputies, Argentina’s lower house, which passed the bill by a vote of 129-121 in June 2019. The Senate again voted 38 to 31 against the proposed measure in August 2019

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