This Day in History

[GordMay]

July 30

0762: City of Baghdad, founded by Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur.

1619: House of Burgesses Virginia forms, 1st elective American governing body.

1775: Captain James Cook, with “Resolution”, returns to England.

1825: Malden Island is discovered in the central Pacific by British warship HMS “Blonde”.

1832: French chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal died. He developed the process of adding sugar to unfermented wine, to increase its alcohol content. He also coined the name "nitrogen", and wrote the first book on industrial chemistry.

1844: 1st US yacht club - NY Yacht Club organized by John Cox Stevens, and 8 friends, aboard the “Gimcrack”.

1863: Henry Ford born.

1869: The “Charles”, considered the world’s first ‘oil tanker’, departs from the United States, headed for Europe, with a bulk capacity of 7,000 barrels of oil.

1872: Mahlon Loomis patents wireless telegraphy.

1898: Otto von Bismarck, 1st Chancellor of the German Empire, died.

1909: French chemist Eugène Schueller founds ‘L'Oréal’, with his new range of hair dyes.

1923: New Zealand claims Ross Dependency, in Antarctica.

1930: Uruguay defeated Argentina, to win the first World Cup in football.

1935: 1st Penguin book is published, starting the paperback revolution.

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs Medicare, a health insurance program for elderly Americans, into law, as an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1935. Former President Harry Truman was enrolled as Medicare’s first beneficiary, and received the first Medicare card. Medicaid, a state and federally funded program, that offers health coverage to certain low-income people, was also signed into law, by President Johnson on July 30, 1965, as an amendment to the Social Security Act.

1974: House Judiciary Committee votes on 3rd, & last, charge of "high crimes & misdemeanors", to impeach President Nixon, in the Watergate cover-up.

1975: US Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappears, in suburban Detroit; Hoffa legally declared dead in 1982.

1980: Vanuatu (New Hebrides) gains independence, from Britain & France.

1998: Monica Lewinsky turns over the blue dress, that contained physical evidence [semen], of her affair with U.S. President Bill Clinton. This evidence prompted Clinton's famous "What the meaning of 'IS' is" statement, in defense of his previous denials of having sexual relations with Lewinsky.

2003: The last of 21,529,464 classic Volkswagen Beetles, built since World War II, rolls off the production line, at Volkswagen’s plant in Puebla, Mexico.

2013: Wikileaks discloser Bradley [later Chelsea] Manning convicted of 17 espionage charges.

[GordMay]

The Maryland flood that was caused by a 1-in-1,000-year rain event

On Saturday, July 30, 2016, 165 mm of rain fell on Ellicott City, Maryland, in around three hours.

That's almost double the city's monthly average.
According to the National Center for Environmental Information, statistically, that's a 1-in-1,000-year rain event.
he record levels of rain caused flash flooding, primarily affecting Main Street. The floods swept away cars, and damaged homes and other buildings. Maryland's governor, Larry Hogan, declared a state of emergency for the area.
Businesses on Main Street closed, for over two months, for flood restoration. The street was also closed to cars, for roads and sidewalk repairs.
Two people died in the flash floods, Jessica Watsula, 35, and Joseph A. Blevins, 38. Both of them were in cars that were swept away by the rushing waters.
Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia meteorologist, said that stormwater management systems are out of date in the area. He also mentioned that impervious urbanized surfaces, like asphalt and concrete, cause water to run off into streams, lakes, and rivers.

More ➥ https://megaphone.link/PLC34164992

[GordMay]

July 31:

0030 BC: Battle of Alexandria: Mark Antony achieves minor victory over Octavian, but most of his army subsequently deserts, leading to Octavian's invasion of Egypt.

1498: Christopher Columbus discovers the island of Trinidad, on his third voyage.

1556: Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order [of Roman Catholic missionaries and educators, or Society of Jesus], dies.

1677: The Treaty of Breda ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, and transferred New Netherland (now New York and New Jersey) to England.

1703: English novelist Daniel Defoe is made to stand in the pillory, as punishment for offending the government and church [seditious libel], with his satire ‘The Shortest Way With Dissenters’. He is pelted with flowers.

1777: 19-year-old French aristocrat, Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, accepts a commission, as a major-general in the Continental Army, without pay.

1790: The U.S. Patent Office opens. 1st US patent granted, to Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.

1856: Christchurch, New Zealand, is chartered as a city.

1891: Great Britain declares territories in Southern Africa up to the Congo to be within its sphere of influence.

1904: The Trans-Siberian railroad connecting the Ural mountains with Russia's Pacific coast, is completed.

1917: World War I: Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres) begins, goes on to cause approximately 500,000 casualties.

1938: Archaeologists discover engraved gold and silver plates, from King Darius, in Persepolis.

1941: Hermann Göring, writing under instructions from Hitler, ordered Reinhard Heydrich, SS general and Heinrich Himmler’s number-two man, “to submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.”

1944: Last deportation train, out Mechelen, departs to Auschwitz.
1944: Transport #77 departs with French Jews, to Nazi Germany.

1954: First ascent of K2, by an Italian expedition, led by Ardito Desio.

1970: Black Tot Day: the last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration, in the Royal Navy (started 1740).

1971: Apollo 15 astronauts, James B. Irwin and David Scott, first used the four-wheeled, battery-powered, Lunar Roving Vehicle to extensively [6½ hour] explore the Moon's surface, in particular the Hadley-Apennine site.

1980: Hurricane ‘Allen’ forms in the Atlantic Ocean, will go on to become the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic Basin, with winds of 190mph (305km/h).
The most intense storm in the North Atlantic by lowest pressure was Hurricane Wilma.
The strongest storm by 1-minute sustained winds was Hurricane Allen.

1988: Last Playboy Club closes in Lansing, Michigan.

2006: Because of health problems, longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro handed over provisional power, to his brother Raúl; the latter served as the country's acting president, until officially assuming the post in 2008.

2007: The British Army's longest continual operation, ‘Operation Banner’ (1969-2007), ends as British troops withdraw from Northern Ireland.

2018: Facebook discloses, and removes, Russian-linked network of sites, attempting to interfere in American politics

[GordMay]

August 1

0010 BCE: Roman Emperor Claudius I was born in Lugdunum, Gaul (now Lyon, France).

0030 BCE: Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.

0527: Justinian I becomes the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.

1498: Explorer Christopher Columbus sets foot on the American mainland, for the first time, at the Paria Peninsula in present-day Venezuela. Thinking it an island, he christened it Isla Santa, and claimed it for Spain.

1740: Thomas Arne's song "Rule Britannia" is performed for the first time.

1744: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French biologist, best known for his theory that acquired traits are inheritable, an idea known as Lamarckism, was born in Bazentin-le-Petit.

1774: English chemist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen, by isolating it in its gaseous state.

1798: Admiral Horatio Nelson routs the French fleet, in the Battle of the Nile, at Aboukir Bay, Egypt.

1801: The American schooner “Enterprise” captures the Barbary cruiser “Tripoli”.

1819: American writer Herman Melville, best known for his novels of the sea, most notably Moby Dick (1851), was born.

1834: Slavery is abolished, by the Slavery Abolition Act, throughout the British Empire.

1893: A machine for making shredded wheat breakfast cereal is patented.

1896: George Samuelson completes rowing Atlantic (NY to England).

1914: Four days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Germany and Russia declare war against each other, France orders a general mobilization, and the first German army units cross into Luxembourg, in preparation for the German invasion of France.

1939: Synthetic vitamin K is produced, for the first time.

1942: Ensign Henry C. White, while flying a J4F Widgeon plane, sinks “U-166" as it approaches the Mississippi River, the first U-boat sunk, by the U.S. Coast Guard.

1943: “PT-109" sinks; Lieutenant John F. Kennedy is instrumental in saving the 11 surviving crew.

1944: Anne Frank writes her last diary entry, three days before she and her family are arrested and placed in concentration camps. It is believed that an anonymous tip helped guide the Nazis to their secret hiding place, yet despite decades of investigations, the identity of the informant has never been proven. The group’s hideout was located inside a warehouse he had once owned, and they were aided by several of his employees as well as other Dutch sympathizers. Of the eight prisoners, her father, Otto Frank, was the only survivor. Anne Frank died in 1945, from typhus, at Germany’s Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Her diary was published, by her father, in 1947.

1957: US and Canada create North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

1958: US atomic submarine USS “Nautilus” begins 1st transit of North Pole "operation Sunshine".

1972: On August 1, 1972, future President George Walker Bush, son of former president George Herbert Walker Bush, is suspended from flying with the Texas Air National Guard, for missing an annual medical examination.
1972: 1st article exposing Watergate scandal, by Bernstein and Woodward, in ‘The Washington Post’.

1980: Icelandic teacher and politician Vigdís Finnbogadóttir became president of Iceland; she was the first woman in the world to be elected head of state, in a national election.

1988: Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh begins his national radio show.

1999: Petronas Towers officially opened, in Kuala Lumpur, as the world's tallest building, at 451.9 m (1483 ft), by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad.

2012: Typhoon ‘Saola’ kills 82 people, and displaces over 150,000, in the Philippines, Taiwan and China.

[GordMay]

August 2

0047: Julius Caesar defeats Pharnaces, at Zela in Syria, and declares, "veni, vidi, vici," [I came, I saw, I conquered].

0216: Hannibal Barca wins his greatest victory over the Romans [Second Punic War], at Cannae, defeating numerically superior Roman army, under command consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus, and Gaius Terentius Varro.

1610: English explorer Henry Hudson enters the bay later named after him, the Hudson Bay.

1695: Daniel Quare receives a British patent, for his portable barometer.

1790: 1st US census conducted, the population was 3,939,214, including 697,624 slaves.

1802: Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed "Consul for Life", by the French Senate, after a plebiscite from the French people.

1847: William A. Leidesdorff launches the first steam boat in San Francisco Bay.

1865: Trans Atlantic Cable, being laid by SS “Great Eastern”, between Great Britain and America, snaps, and is lost.

1876: James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok is murdered, whilst playing poker, at the No. 10 Saloon, in Deadwood, South Dakota, by Jack McCall. He was holding two pair, pair of aces and eights, known as the ‘dead man’s hand’.

1880: British Parliament officially adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

1916: Austrian sabotage [WW I] causes the sinking of the Italian battleship “Leonardo da Vinci”, in Taranto.

1917: Mutiny breaks out on German battleship “Prinzregent Luitpold”, anchored at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven.

1921: After 3 hours deliberation, a Chicago jury acquits 8 Chicago White Sox accused in ‘Black Sox scandal’ [throwing World Series]; next day they are banned from organised baseball, for life.

1922: China is hit by a typhoon; about 60,000 die.

1932: Carl David Anderson discovers, and photographs, a positron, the first known antiparticle.

1934: With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany, under the title of Fuhrer, or “Leader.”

1937: Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed, in America, essentially rendering marijuana, and all its by-products, illegal.

1943: Armed revolt, by 800 prisoners at Treblinka Extermination Camp: crematorium destroyed; 200 escape the compound, but only 100 survive.

1945: After 3½ days suffering exhaustion, lack of water, and shark attacks in the Philippine Sea, the surviving crew of USS “Indianapolis” are spotted by Wilbur “Chuck” Gwinn, a PV-1 Ventura pilot on a routine sector search. 316 had survived.
1945: The last wartime conference [Potsdam Conference] of the “Big Three”, the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain [Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman, and Winston Churchill], concludes, after two weeks of intense, and sometimes acrimonious. debate.

1961: The Beatles 1st gig, as house band of Liverpool's Cavern Club.

1964: U.S. destroyer “Maddox” is reportedly attacked by North Vietnamese patrol boats, in the Gulf of Tonkin incident which would eventually escalate US involvement in the Vietnam War.

1990: Iraqi forces invade Kuwait, sparking the [1ST] Persian Gulf War, in which an international force, led by the United States [‘Desert Storm’] quickly defeated Iraq.

2013: Carl Icahn sues computer giant Dell, in an attempt to derail a buyout bid by the CEO, Michael Dell.

2017: First successful gene editing in human embryos, to repair disease-causing mutation, reported by scientists in "Nature".
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23305
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/nature23533

2018: Apple becomes the first American public listed company to reach $1 trillion in value.

2020: SpaceX Dragon capsule, carrying NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, splashes down in the Gulf of Mexico, 1st commercial crewed mission.

[GordMay]

August 3

1492: Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sets sail, from the Spanish port of Palos de la Frontera, in command of three ships, the “Niña”, “Pinta”, and “Santa María”, on a journey to find a western sea route to China, India and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.

1583: English navigator Sir Humphrey Gilbert arrived at St. John's, Newfoundland, and claimed it in the name of the queen.

1678: Robert LaSalle builds “Griffon”, 1st ship built in America, .

1804: Naturalist Alexander von Humboldt lands at Bordeaux, France, completing his 5 year expedition to Latin America.

1914: Germany invades Belgium, and declares war on France, beginning World War I.

1940: Lithuania was “accepted” into the U.S.S.R., following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.

1977: Radio Shack introduces the ‘TRS-80' personal computer, which with Apple and Commodore, would form the "1977 Trinity”.

[GordMay]

August 4

1181: Supernova 'SN 1181', in the constellation Cassiopeia, observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers, lasting until August 6.

1704: During the War of the Spanish Succession, Britain took control of Gibraltar, after Spain surrendered, and “the Rock” subsequently became a British colony.

1753: George Washington becomes a Master Mason, the highest basic rank, in the secret fraternity of Freemasonry, at the Masonic Lodge No. 4, in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

1789: The National Constituent Assembly meets, and issues the first decrees that abolish centuries of feudalism, in France, beginning the French Revolution.

1790: U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton established the Revenue Marine Service, which became the U.S. Coast Guard, in 1915.

1821: Russian Antarctic expedition, led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, returns to Kronshtadt, after becoming the 1st to circumnavigate Antarctica.

1845: Emigrant ship “Cataraqui” wrecks in Bass Strait, with the loss of 400 lives, only nine survive, Australia's deadliest maritime civil disaster.
➥ https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-mome...aqui-shipwreck

1855: John Bartlett publishes "Familiar Quotations".

1875: Danish author, Hans Christian Andersen died.

1914: As World War I erupts in Europe, US President Woodrow Wilson formally proclaims the neutrality of the United States, a position that a vast majority of Americans favored.

1916: Denmark and the United States sign a treaty, whereby the Danish West Indies, including the Virgin Islands, are to be ceded to the US in 1917, for $25 million.

1944: Anne Frank Arrested. A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.

1961: Barack Obama [44] born, at Honolulu, Hawaii.

1964: Bodies of civil rights workers: Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney discovered, in an earthen Mississippi dam.

1987: FCC vote 4-0 to rescind fairness doctrine, for broadcasters.

1994: 'Dwingeloo 1', near milky way system, discovered.

2019: Frank Zapata is the first person to cross the English Channel by flyboard, in 22 minutes.

2020: Huge explosions, aboard abandoned Moldovan-flagged cargo ship MV “Rhosus”, at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, kill more than 200, and leaves over 6,000 thousand people injured.

[El Pinguino]

'2020: Huge explosions, aboard abandoned Moldovan-flagged cargo ship MV “Rhosus”, at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, kill more than 200, and leaves over 6,000 thousand people injured.'
Small correction - cargo had arrived in Beirut aboard the Rhosus and had eventually been discharged into a warehouse. The explosion occured within the warehouse.

[GordMay]

August 5

1858: After several unsuccessful attempts, the first transatlantic telegraph cable lands at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, spearheaded by Cyrus West Field (will fail after 3 weeks).

1861: Abraham Lincoln imposes first federal income tax [Revenue Act] - 3 percent tax on annual incomes over $800.

1930: Astronaut Neil Armstrong born, Wapakoneta, Ohio.

1943: Mount Etna erupts sending ash and lava miles into the sky.

1962: Movie actress Marilyn Monroe [Norma Jeane Mortenson] is found dead (aged 36), in her home, in Los Angeles.

1963: Representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain sign the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, underwater, or in the atmosphere.

1964: President Lyndon Johnson begins bombing North Vietnam, in retaliation for the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and asks Congress to go to war against North Vietnam.

1974: President Richard Nixon admits he ordered a cover-up, for political, as well as national security reasons.

1981: Ronald Reagan fires 11,359 striking air-traffic controllers.

2002: Divers recover U.S.S. “Monitor” iron gun turret. On March 9, 1862, the “Monitor” dueled to a standstill with the C.S.S. “Virginia” (originally the U.S.S. “Merrimack”), in one of the most famous moments in naval history - the first time two ironclads faced each other in a naval engagement.

[GordMay]

August 6

1497: Italian explorer John Cabot returns to Bristol, from North America (Newfoundland) - first European to do so since the Vikings.

1661: The Treaty of The Hague is signed, whereby the Dutch Republic sells New Holland (Brazil), to Portugal, for 63 tonnes of gold.

1699: HMS “Roebuck”, captained by William Dampier, lands at Shark Bay, Western Australia, on the first British scientific expedition to Australia.

1787: In Philadelphia, delegates to the Constitutional Convention begin debating the first complete draft of the proposed Constitution of the United States, ammending the Articles of Confederation, ratified several months before the British surrender at Yorktown, in 1781.

1806: After a thousand years, the Holy Roman Empire [it was neither holy, Roman, nor an empire] came to its official end, with the secession of its confederated states, when Emperor Francis II, of Austria, renounces the title, becoming Emperor of Austria.

1862: The C.S.S. “Arkansas”, the most feared Confederate ironclad on the Mississippi River, is blown up by her crew, after suffering mechanical problems during a battle with the U.S.S. “Essex”, near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

1890: At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in history is carried out, against William Kemmler, who had been convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe.

1926: Gertrude Ederle, age 19, of New York, became the first woman to swim the English Channel [in 14 hours, 39 minutes], breaking the men's record by nearly two hours.

1945: The United States becomes the first, and only, nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime, when it drops an atomic bomb [“Little Boy”] on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast [equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT], and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.

1951: Typhoon floods kill 4,800 in Manchuria.

1962: After 300 years of British rule, Jamaica became an independent country, within the Commonwealth of Nations.

1964: ‘Prometheus’, the world's oldest tree, aged at least 4,862 years old, is accidentally cut down in Nevada.

1983: Supertanker “Castillo de Bellvar” catches fire, and sinks, northwest of Capetown, South Africa.

1991: Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service, on the Internet. Berners-Lee publishes the first-ever website: http://info.cern.ch

2012: Mount Tongariro, New Zealand, erupts for the first time since 1897.

2019: A quarter of humanity is running out of water, with 17 countries under extreme water stress, including Cape Town, Los Angeles and Bangalore, according to report by the World Resources Institute.
➥ https://www.wri.org/insights/17-coun...h-water-stress

[El Pinguino]

Dampier was by and large a bit of a ratbag - however-
https://www.sharkbay.org/culture-his...lliam-dampier/

Mas aqui
http://museum.wa.gov.au/research/res...ampier/roebuck

[GordMay]

August 7

1620: Astronomer Johannes Kepler's mother arrested for witchcraft.

1782: George Washington ordered the creation of the first U.S. military decoration, the ‘Badge of Military Merit’ (today called the ‘Purple Heart’), which was later awarded to three Revolutionary War soldiers for bravery in action.

1802: Napoleon orders re-instatement of slavery on St Domingue (Haiti).

1888: The first of the [5] murders, committed by Jack the Ripper, took place in London's East End.

1944: IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

1947: “Kon-Tiki”, a balsa wood raft, captained by Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, completes a 4,300-mile, 101-day journey from Callao Peru, to Raroia in the Tuamotu Archipelago, near Tahiti.

1954: Englishman Roger Bannister beats Australia’s John Landy, in the mile, at the Empire Games in Vancouver; first time 2 men run sub-4 minute mile, in the same race.

1955: Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, begins selling its first transistor radios in Japan.

1964: Congress passes Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson nearly unlimited powers to oppose “communist aggression” in Southeast Asia [Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia].

1970: First all-computer chess championship is conducted in New York, and won by CHESS 3.0 (CDC 6400), a program written by Slate, Atkin & Gorlen, at Northwestern University.

1974: Philippe Petit walks on a tightrope between the Twin Towers, of the World Trade Center.

1990: US deploys troops to Saudi Arabia, beginning ‘Operation Desert Shield’.

2005: A Russian ‘Priz AS-28' mini-submarine, with seven crew members on board, is rescued from deep in the Pacific Ocean, by a British ‘Scorpio-45' rescue sub.

2009: Typhoon ‘Morakot’ strikes Taiwan, with winds approaching 140 km/h (85 mph), causing catastrophic damage and loss of life, leaving 650 dead or missing. Together with the strong winds was torrential rainfall (109.3 inches) causing major mudslides, including one that buried the entire town of Xiaolin, killing an estimated 500 people in the village alone. Typhoon Morakot was deadliest typhoon to impact Taiwan in recorded history.

2018: Mendocino Fire becomes the largest recorded fire, in California's history, at 290,600 acres, overtaking 2017 Thomas Fire.
2018: Australia's population hits 25 million, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics.

[GordMay]

August 8

1303: Crete earthquake strikes, with estimated magnitude of 8, triggering a major tsunami, with major damage, including ships sweep 2 miles inland in Egypt.
1306: King Wenceslas, of Poland, is murdered.

1508: Spaniard Juan Ponce de León founds Caparra, the first European settlement in Puerto Rico.

1588: The English fleet won a decisive battle, over the Spanish Armada, off the coast of Gravelines in northern France.

1609: Venetian senate examines Galileo Galilei's telescope.

1846: The [unsuccessful] Wilmot Proviso, an attempt to prohibit the extension of slavery to new territories in the United States, was proposed, and, in the debate that followed, the Republican Party was born.

1854: Smith & Wesson patents metal bullet cartridges.

1863: In the aftermath of his defeat at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Confederate General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation, as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis refuses General Robert E. Lee's resignation.

1870: New York Yacht Club’s first defence of America’s Cup; “Magic” (US) defeats “Cambria” (England), and 16 fellow defenders, from NY Harbour to Sandy Hook Light Vessel on the Atlantic, and return (38 miles).

1876: Thomas Edison patents Autographic Printing [the mimeograph], US Patent 180,857.

1901: American physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence, winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics, for his invention of the cyclotron [the first particle accelerator to achieve high energies] was born in Canton, South Dakota.

1911: The millionth patent is filed, in the United States Patent Office, by Francis Holton for a tubeless vehicle tire.

1918: The Allies launch the Hundred Days Offensive [World War I], beginning with the Battle of Amiens, where 500 tanks and 10 Allied divisions attacked German lines.

1921: Off the coast of Alaska, the ship Alaska bound for San Francisco met with tragedy. In the fog the ship hit a rocky ledge twice. The boilers blew up as a result, blowing a lot of its passengers off the decks and out into the icy ocean. One hundred and sixty-six people were saved off of the vessel, but thirty-one were missing, and 28 were dead. The ship, Anyox, rescued the survivors, but risked the rocky reef in the fog.

1925: The first national congress of the Ku Klux Klan opens, with (between 25,000 and 40,000 marchers) in Washington, D.C.

1937: In Hamilton, Ontario a man who was charged with beating his wife was deemed to be within his legal rights. Canadian judge, William McLeary cited the English Common Law, made in 1879, which stated that a man has a right, in certain cases, to “chastise or confine” his wife.

1940: The German Luftwaffe attacks Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain [31 German aircraft shot down].

1945: The United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and France signed the London Agreement, which authorized the Nürnberg trials, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals, by the International Military Tribunal.

1953: Soviet leader Georgi Malenkov reports possession of hydrogen bomb.

1963: Armed robbers stole £2.6 million [$7.3 million US] from the Glasgow-London Royal Mail Train, near Bridego Bridge, north of London, in the Great Train Robbery.

1974: With impeachment proceedings underway against him, for his involvement in the Watergate affair, resident Richard M. Nixon announces his intention to become the first president in American history to resign, effective at 12pm the next day.
➥

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEOGJJ7UKFM

1975: As a result of rainfall from Typhoon ‘Nina’, the Banqiao Dam in China fails, causing the collapse of almost 6 million buildings, and 229,000 deaths.

1988: Discovery of most distant galaxy (15 * 10 ^ 12 light yrs) announced.

1991: The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses.

2019: Nuclear accident at Russian nuclear-weapon testing site, at closed city Sarov, kills five scientists in mysterious circumstances.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by GordMay

August 8

1940: The German Luftwaffe attacks Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain [31 German aircraft shot down].

I am on the cusp of feeling more than a little concerned about the veracity of your sources.

The first Luftwaffe raid was 16th October 1939 , it gave my mother no end of a fright. She was at the time a Post Office telegraphist just down the road.

Mas aqui
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/ar...h-bridge-raid/

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

I am on the cusp of feeling more than a little concerned about the veracity of your sources.
The first Luftwaffe raid was 16th October 1939 , it gave my mother no end of a fright. She was at the time a Post Office telegraphist just down the road.
Mas aqui
https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/ar...h-bridge-raid/

Fair enough.
Comments and corrections are welcomed.


That tidbit came from ‘HistoryNet’. https://www.historynet.com/today-in-history

Further research indicates that many/most historical accounts list September 7, as the start of the ‘Blitz’.

According to the Imperial War Museums:
“...The Blitz began on 7 September, 'Black Saturday', when German bombers attacked London, leaving 430 dead and 1,600 injured...”
➥ https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-blitz-around-britain

According to the BBC:
“.. and on 7 September 1940 they embarked on a sustained eight-month bombing campaign, targeting all the UK's major cities...”
➥ https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33314462