history-today:

A bit of August 30th history…

1146 - European leaders outlaw use of crossbow, intending to end war for all time

1363 - Battle of Lake Poyang: 2 Chinese rebel leaders are pitted against each other in what is one of the largest naval battles in history during the Mongol - led Yuan Dynasty

1890 - US President Harrison signed first US law requiring inspection of meat products

1909 - Burgess Shale fossils discovered (pictured)

1941 - Siege of Leningrad by German troops begins during WWII

1963 - Hotline communication link between the Pentagon in Washington DC and the Kremlin in Moscow installed; known as the “red telephone”

1967 - US Senate confirm Thurgood Marshall as 1st black Supreme Court Justice 

1979 - 1st recorded occurrence of a comet hitting the sun, releases energy equal to 1 million hydrogen bombs

2019 - Outlook for the Great Barrier Reef downgraded to very poor according to official Australian reports 

history-today:

A bit of August 29th history…

1833 - Britain’s 1st Factory Act becomes law “to regulate the labor of children and young persons in the mills and factories of the United Kingdom”

1842 - Great Britain and China sign Treaty of Nanking, ending the Opium War

1990 - Saddam Hussein declares America can’t beat Iraq

1997 - Netflix founded in California as an online DVD rental business

2005 - Hurricane Katrina makes landfall as a category 3 hurricane, devastating much of the US Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida panhandle; kills more than 1,836, and causes over $115 billion in damages (pictured)

2012 - The USADA claims to have stripped Lance Armstrong of his 7 Tour de France titles

2017 - Hurricane Harvey sets rainfall record for a tropical cyclone in continental US according to National Weather Service

2019 - Discovery of world’s largest child sacrifice site announced by archaeologists with 227 victims from Chimu culture in Huanchaco, Peru 

history-today:

A bit of August 28th history…

489 - Theodoric, King of Ostrogoths, defeats Odoacer at the Battle of Isonzo, forcing his way into Italy

1830 - 1st American built locomotive, the “Tom Thumb”, races a horse drawn car from Baltimore to Elliott Mills; due to mechanical problems, the horse won

1837 - Pharmacists John Lea and William Perrins make Worcestershire Sauce

1859 - A geomagnetic storm causes the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly it is seen clearly over parts of the US, Europe, and even Japan

1884 - 1st known photograph of a tornado is made in S Dakota (pictured)

1963 - Martin Luther King Jr delivers his “I have a dream” speech, addressing the March on Washington fro Jobs and Freedom civil rights march

2019 - Climate change activist Greta Thunberg arrives in NY after sailing across the Atlantic in an emissions free voyage 

history-today:

A bit of August 27th history…

479 BC - Greco-Persian Wars: Battle of Mycale won by Greek forces over Persian naval troops on Ionian coast; double victory with that of Plataea ends the Persian invasion

1883 - Krakatoa volcano, west of Java in Indonesia, erupts with a force of 1300 megatons and kills approx 40,000 people (pictured)

1896 - Britain defeats Zanzibar in a 38 minute war; shortest recorded war in history

1913 - Gideon Sundback applies to patent all purpose zipper

1918 - Spanish Flu arrives in Boston, beginning the second and deadliest wave in the US

1928 - Kellogg - Briand Pact; 60 nations agree

1955 - “Guinness Book of World Records” 1st published

2008 - Barack Obama becomes 1st African-American to be nominated by a major political party for President of the United States 

history-today:

A bit of August 26th history…

55 - Britain was invaded by Roman forces under Julius Caesar

1346 - Battle of Crecy: cannons used for 1st time in battle

1873 - 1st free kindergarten in the US - Missouri

1959 - British Motor Corporation introduces the Morris Mini-Minor; it was only 10 ft long but seated 4 passengers (pictured)

1973 - 10 yr old Mary Boitano is 1st woman to win 6.8 mile Dipsea Race in California, beating a field of 1500 runners

1996 - US President Clinton signs Welfare Reform into law, representing major shift in welfare policy

2016 - San Francisco 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick kneels in protest during the US national anthem, objecting to racial injustice and police brutality in the US 

history-today:

A bit of August 25th history…

325 - Council of Nicaea ends with the adoption of the Nicene Creed establishing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity

1829 - US President Jackson makes an offer to buy Texas, but Mexican government refuses

1875 - Captain Matthew Webb makes 1st observed and unassisted swim across the English Channel

1915 - Hurricane kills 275 in Galveston, TX with $50 million damages

1991 - Linux was born when Linus Torvalds sent off the email announcing his project to create a new operating system

2006 - Hyperion, the world’s tallest living tree, a Redwood standing 379.1 ft (155.55 m) discovered in California (pictured) 

history-today:

A bit of August 24th history…

79 - Mt Vesuvius erupts; buries Pompeii and Herculaneum, 15,000 die)

410 - Rome overrun by Visigoths under Alaric I for the 1st time in nearly 800 years, seen as the fall of the Western Roman Empire

1456 - Printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed

1572 - St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 70,000 Protestants by Roman Catholics beginning in Paris and spreading to French provinces

1853 - 1st potato chips prepared by chef Crum in NY

1891 - Thomas Edison patents motion picture camera

1995 - Microsoft debuts Windows 95

2006 - Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet

2018 - Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler sends cease-and-desist letter to President Trump demanding he stop using the bands songs at rallies 

history-today:

A bit of August 23rd history…

79 - Mt Vesuvius begins stirring, on feast day of Vulcan, Roman god of fire (goes on to destroy Pompeii)

1305 - William Wallace, Scottish patriot, is executed for high treason by Edward I of England

1793 - The French National Convention adopts the levee en masse, conscripting all able bodied men between 18 & 25 for military service during the French Revolution

1990 - US begins call up of 46,000 reservists to the Persian Gulf

2007 - Hashtag invented and 1st used in a tweet by US product designer Chris Messina

2013 - UN inspectors are stopped by Syrian government from investigating a reported site of a chemical massacre

2017 - World’s driest place, the Atacama Desert in Chile, blooms after an unexpected rainfall (pictured) 

history-today:

A bit of August 22nd history…

565 - St Columbe reports seeing monster in Loch Ness

1485 - Battle of Bosworth Field: Henry Tudor’s forces defeat English King Richard III during last battle in the Wars of the Roses; Richard is killed - last English monarch to die in battle

1770 - Australia claimed under British Crown when Captain James Cook lands there

1775 - King George III proclaims colonies to be in open rebellion

1812 - Swiss traveler Johann Burckhardt id 1st European to rediscover the Nabataean City of Petra (pictured)

1864 - 1st Geneva Convention - signed by 12 nations

2004 - “The Scream” (1919 painted version) and “Madonna”, 2 paintings by Edvard Munch, are stolen at gunpoint from the Munch Museum in Norway

2018 - Discovery of a bone of a 90,000 hybrid human: half Neanderthal, half Denisovan from Anuy River, Siberia; published in “Nature” 

history-today:

A bit of August 21st history…

1541 - Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian kingdom and dominate Hungary for 150 years

1772 - King Gustav III of Sweden completes a coup d’etat by adopting a new constitution and installing himself as an enlightened despot, ending 50 years of parliamentary rule

1831 - Former slave Nat Turner leads uprising against slavery (pictured)

1942 - Walt Disney’s “Bambi” is released

1968 - Warsaw Pact forces complete their invasion of Czechoslovakia by arresting the Czech leader Alexander Dubcek and forcing him to sign the Moscow Protocols

1976 - “Operation Paul Bunyan” begins in retaliation for the “Korean axe murder incident” 3 days prior; 110 troops, 27 helicopters, & 3 B-52 bombers are deployed to the Korean Demilitarized Zone to cut down a poplar tree blocking the view of UN observers

1998 - P W Botha found guilty of contempt for repeatedly ignoring subpoenas to testify before South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

2018 -Michael Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, pleads guilty to charges including illegal payment at direction of Trump to women Trump had affairs with

2018 - Paul Manefort, former Trump campaign chairman, is convicted on 8 counts of fraud in a federal court in Alexandria, VA