July 14th
 

1789 ~ Citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille. Generally recognized as the beginning of the French Revolution.

1798 ~ The Sedition Act made it a federal crime to write, publish, or utter false or malicious statements about the U.S. government.

1862 ~ Birthday of Gustav Klimt, Austrian Painter & Graphic Artist.

1881 ~ Billy the Kid was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett.

1911 ~ Birthday of Terry-Thomas, British comic actor.

1912 ~ Birthday of Woody Guthrie, American folk singer.

1918 ~ Birthday of Ingmar Bergman, Swedish film and theatre director.

1933 ~ Gleichschaltung: All German political parties except the Nazi Party were outlawed.

1965 ~ Mariner 4 flyby of Mars took the first close-up photos of another planet.

2000 ~ A Florida jury ordered five major tobacco companies to pay smokers $145 billion in punitive damages. (The verdict was later overturned by the Florida Supreme Court.).

July 15th
 

1099 ~ The Crusaders of the First Crusade took Jerusalem.

1606 ~ Birthday of Rembrandt Van Rijn, Dutch artist.

1796 ~ Birthday of Thomas Bulfinch, American Mythologist.

1799 ~ French Captain Pierre Bouchard found the Rosetta Stone.

1870 ~ Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.

1918 ~ WWI: Second Battle of the Marne began.

1954 ~ First flight of the Boeing 707, the first American jet passenger airliner.

1965 ~ Birthday of David Miliband, British politician.

1995 ~ Bosnian Serbs force Muslims out of Srebrenica.

2002 ~ John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban", pleaded guilty to supplying aid to the enemy and possession of explosives during the commission of a felony.

July 16th
 

622 ~ Start of the Islamic calendar.

1918 ~ At Ekaterinburg, Russia, Bolsheviks executed Czar Nicholas II and his family.

1945 ~ Allied leaders Winston Churchill, Harry Truman Josef Stalin meet at Potsdam.

1945 ~ The U.S. detonated the first nuclear weapon at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico.

1955 ~ The original Disneyland park opened.

1969 ~ Apollo 11 was launched from Cape Kennedy to become the first manned mission to land on the moon.

1980 ~ Birthday of Justine Joli, Porn actress.

1980 ~ Birthday of Jesse Jane, Porn actress.

1989 ~ Death of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian Conductor.

1994 ~ Death of Julian Schwinger, American physicist, Nobel laureate.

July 17th
 

1790 ~ Death of Adam Smith, Scottish Economist.

1899 ~ Birthday of James Cagney, Actor.

1947 ~ Birthday of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (formerly Parker Bowles), former British royal mistress and now wife of Prince Charles.

1962 ~ Tha nuclear test shot Little Feller I became the last American atmospheric detonation at the Nevada Test Site.

1975 ~ An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.

1979 ~ Nicaraguan President Anastasio Somoza resigned and fled into exile in Miami.

1997 ~ The F.W. Woolworth Company went out of business after 117 years.

2003 ~ Death of Dr. David Kelly, U.N. Weapons Inspector.

2005 ~ Death of Edward Heath, UK PM.

2009 ~ Death of Walter Cronkite, Broadcast journalist.

July 18th
 

1817 ~ Death of Jane Austen, English Novelist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Vidkun Quisling, Norwegian Politician & Traitor.

1918 ~ Birthday of Nelson Mandela, former President of SA, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 1993.

1922 ~ Birthday of Thomas Kuhn, Philosopher of Science.

1925 ~ Adolf Hitler’s "Mein Kampf" was published.

1927 ~ Birthday of Kurt Masur, Conductor.

1942 ~ The Messerschmitt Me-262 was test flown using only its jets for the first time.

1968 ~ The Intel Corporation was founded in Santa Clara, California.

1969 ~ After a party, Senator Ted Kennedy drove his car off a wooden bridge into, into a pond, and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, died.

2001 ~ In Baltimore, Maryland, a 60-car train derailment occurred in a tunnel, sparking a fire that lasted days and virtually shut down downtown.

2005 ~ Eric Rudolph was sentenced to life in prison for an abortion clinic bombing that killed an off-duty police officer.

July 19th
 

1692 ~ Five women were hanged following the Salem Witch Trials for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

1834 ~ Birthday of Edgar Degas, Impressionist Painter.

1848 ~ America’s first women's rights convention convened in Seneca Falls, N.Y. and "Bloomers" were introduced.

1870 ~ The Franco-Prussian war began.

1898 ~ Birthday of Herbert Marcuse, Communist Philosopher.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill launched his "V for Victory" campaign in Europe.

1947 ~ Death of Aung San, Burmese nationalist. Aung San's daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, is now the leader of the Burmese opposition to the current military regime.

1996 ~ Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic was forced out of office.

2003 ~ Death of Bill Bright, evangelist, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

2008 ~ Death of Anastasia Blue, Porn actress.

July 20th
 

1938 ~ Birthday of Dame Diana Rigg, Actress (The Avengers, In This House of Brede).

1938 ~ Birthday of Natalie Wood, Actress (Rebel Without a Cause, West Side Story).

1944 ~ Adolf Hitler was slightly wounded when a bomb exploded at his Rastenburg headquarters.

1946 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives voted 265-79 to put control of atomic energy in the hands of a civilian body, the Atomic Energy Commission, rather than leave the military in control.

1960 ~ Ceylon elected Sirimavo Bandaranaike Prime Minister, the world's first female prime minister.

1969 ~ Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the Moon.

1974 ~ Turkey invaded Cyprus.

1999 ~ After 38 years at the bottom of the Atlantic, astronaut Gus Grissom's Liberty Bell 7 Mercury capsule was lifted to the surface.

2004 ~ The UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel tear down the barrier it was building to seal off the West Bank.

2005 ~ Canada became the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage.

July 21st
 

1796 ~ Death of Robert Burns, Scottish Poet.

1861 ~ First Battle of Bull Run - the first major battle of the American Civil War began.

1911 ~ Birthday of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian Communications Theorist.

1925 ~ In Dayton, Tennessee, high school biology teacher John Scopes was found guilty of teaching evolution in class and fined $100.

1948 ~ Birthday of Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam), English Singer.

1954 ~ France surrendered North Vietnam to the Viet Minh.

1970 ~ The Aswan High Dam in Egypt was completed at the end of eleven years of construction

1994 ~ Tony Blair was declared the winner of the leadership election of the British Labour Party.

2006 ~ Death Ta Mok, Khmer Rouge war criminal.

2008 ~ Radovan Karadžić was arrested in Serbia and indicted by the UN's ICTY tribunal for War Crimes.

July 22nd
 

1822 ~ Birthday of Br. Gregor Mendel, Austrian Geneticist.

1887 ~ Birthday of Gustav Hertz, German Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1925.

1898 ~ Birthday of Alexander Calder, American Artist.

1933 ~ Wiley Post becomes first man to fly solo around the world.

1934 ~ John Dillinger was shot to death by FBI agents in Chicago.

1967 ~ Death of Carl Sandburg, Poet.

1977 ~ Deng Xiaoping, returned to Chinese Government.

1992 ~ Pablo Escobar, fearing extradition to the U.S., escaped from his luxury prison.

1998 ~ Death of Alan Shepard, Astronaut.

2003 ~ Saddam Hussein's sons Odai and Qusai were killed when U.S. forces stormed a villa in Mosul, Iraq.

July 23rd
 

1914 ~ Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia following the killing of Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

1938 ~ Birthday of Juliet Anderson, Porn actress and producer.

1942 ~ The Treblinka extermination camp opened.

1952 ~ Creation of the European Coal and Steel community. This gave birth to European Economic Community (EEC), which itself later became the European Union.

1954 ~ Birthday of Annie Sprinkle, Porn actress and producer.

1962 ~ Telstar relayed the first live trans-Atlantic television signal.

1982 ~ The International Whaling Commission voted a moratorium on commercial whaling by 1985-86.

1984 ~ Vanessa Williams became the first Miss America to resign her title, because of nude photographs published in Penthouse magazine.

1986 ~ Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

2002 ~ Death of Leo McKern, Australian actor.

July 24th
 

1898 ~ Birthday of Amelia Earhart, American Aviatrix.

1924 ~ The World Chess Federation, FIDE, was founded in Paris.

1943 ~ The RAF Bomber Command bombed Hamburg by night, USAAF 8th Air Force Bomber Command by day. By the end of the operation, 9,000 tons of explosive & incendiary bombs created a firestorm which killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.

1959 ~ Khrushchev and Nixon had a war of words in the “Kitchen Debate”.

1967 ~ During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declared in Montreal "Vive le Québec libre!" (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

1974 ~ Death of James Chadwick, English physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1935.

1980 ~ Birthday of Gauge, Porn actress.

1980 ~ Death of Peter Sellers, Actor.

1985 ~ Birthday of Teagan Presley, Porn actress.

2005 ~ Lance Armstrong closed out his effective cycling career with a seventh consecutive Tour de France victory.

2005 ~ Lance Armstrong closed out his effective cycling career with a seventh consecutive Tour de France victory.

Didn't these victories retrospectively not happen?

I suppose it depends on how one chooses to look at the event. Did the win occur? Yes. Was the win revoked? Yes. That’s why I removed the link I used to have there.

July 25th
 

1834 ~ Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet. (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner & Kubla Khan )

1909 ~ Louis Bleriot made the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air machine. Calais to Dover in 37 minutes.

1917 ~ Sir Thomas Whyte introduced the first income tax in Canada as a "temporary" measure (lowest bracket is 4% and highest is 25%).

1848 ~ Birthday of Arthur Balfour, UK PM, remembered for issuing the British declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

1946 ~ Crossroads Baker, a 21-kiloton nuclear weapon was detonated underwater in the lagoon of Bikini atoll.

1956 ~ 51 people died when the Italian liner Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm.

1976 ~ Birthday of Tera Patrick, Porn actress.

1978 ~ Louise Brown, the first baby conceived by in-vitro fertilization, was born in Oldham, England.

1984 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya became the first woman to walk in space.

2000 ~ An Air France Concorde crashed just after takeoff from Paris, killing 113.

July 26th
 

1856 ~ Birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Author, Playwright, awarded t he Nobel Prize in Literature 1925.

1898 ~ Birthday of Willy Messerschmitt, German aircraft engineer and designer.

1928 ~ Birthday of Stanley Kubrick, Movie Director.

1943 ~ Birthday of Mick Jagger, English Musician. (Rolling Stones)

1945 ~ The Labour Party wins the United Kingdom general election, removing Winston Churchill from power.

1947 ~ U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act into law creating the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council.

1953 ~ Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution began.

1956 ~ Egyptian leader Gamal Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal sparking international condemnation.

1973 ~ Birthday of Vaniity, Transsexual Porn actress.

1991 ~ Paul Reubens, aka Pee Wee Herman, was arrested for allegedly masturbating at a Sarasota, Florida adult theatre.

July 27th
 

1904 ~ Birthday of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Writer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

1921 ~ Researchers at the University of Toronto led by biochemist Frederick Banting announced the discovery of the hormone insulin. He shared the 1923 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this.

1949 ~ Initial flight of the de Havilland Comet, the first jet-powered airliner.

1953 ~ The Korean War stopped. The U.S., People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea signed an armistice agreement.

1980 ~ Death of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran.

1984 ~ Death of James Mason, English actor.

1990 ~ Belarus declared independence from the Soviet Union.

2003 ~ Death of Bob Hope, English-born Entertainer.

2002 ~ A Sukhoi Su-27 fighter crashes during an air show at Lviv, Ukraine; the largest ever air show disaster.

2007 ~ Phoenix News Helicopter Collision: news helicopters from Phoenix, Arizona television stations KNXV and KTVK collide over Steele Indian School Park in central Phoenix while covering a police chase.

It should be interesting to see if the inevitable introduction in the near future of drones into metropolitan airspace will manage to avoid similar events.

Hopefully, the drones will be low-mass vehicles you can swat like flies. Skeet options also raise their heads.

Lol

July 28th
 

1741 ~ Death of Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Composer.

1750 ~ Death of Johann Sebastian Bach, German Composer.

1794 ~ Maximilien Robespierre, a leading figure of the French Revolution, was sent to the guillotine.

1866 ~ Birthday of Beatrix Potter, English Author. (The Tale of Peter Rabbit)

1868 ~ The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed Congress, which integrated Due Process & Equal Protection into the constitution.

1904 ~ Birthday of Pavel Cherenkov, Soviet Physicist, awarded one third the Nobel Prize in Physics 1958.

1914 ~ World War I began as Austria declared war on Serbia.

1996 ~ The remains of a prehistoric man, Kennewick Man, was discovered near Kennewick, Washington.

1998 ~ Monica Lewinsky was given blanket immunity from prosecution in exchange for grand jury testimony in the investigation of her relationship with President Bill Clinton.

2004 ~ Death of Professor Francis Harry Compton Crick, OM FRS, awarded one third the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1962.

July 29th
 

1890 ~ Death of Vincent van Gogh, Dutch painter.

1905 ~ Birthday of Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General. Awarded the The Nobel Peace Prize 1961.

1907 ~ Sir Robert Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts movement with the first scout camp at Brownsea Island. :thumb:

1958 ~ The U.S. Congress created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1969 ~ Birthday of Adele Stevens, English Porn actress.

1974 ~ Death of Mama Cass Elliot, Musician.

1975 ~ Death of James Blish, Science Fiction Writer.

1981 ~ Lady Diana Spencer married Charles, Prince of Wales.

1993 ~ The Israeli Supreme Court acquitted Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk of all charges.

1996 ~ The child protection portion of the Communications Decency Act was struck down as too broad in U.S. federal court.

July 30th
 

1729 ~ The city of Baltimore was founded.

1792 ~ The French national anthem ''La Marseillaise'' by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, was first sung in Paris.

1818 ~ Birthday of Emily Brontë, English Novelist.

1941 ~ Birthday of Paul Anka, Singer and Composer.

1945 ~ World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sank the USS Indianapolis.

1966 ~ England won the first televised Football World Cup, beating Germany 4 to 2.

1975 ~ Death of James Blish, SF author.

2003 ~ The last 'old style' Volkswagen Beetle manufactured in Mexico.

2006 ~ After 42 years, the BBC show "Top of the Pops" was broadcast for the last time.

2007 ~ Death of Ingmar Bergman, Swedish director.

For the umpteenth time,

1945 ~ World War II: Japanese submarine I-58 sank the USS Indianapolis.

If you haven't watched Mission of the Shark, if you are prone to nightmares, then don't.

Oldfart,

Sorry, but I don’t understand what your focus is. You seem somewhat exasperated – “For the umpteenth time” – with my post, although the date and the parties are accurate. While I've not watched the TV movie Mission of the Shark, I'm sure it is very impressive.

Relax, jseal. I'm sure I have made the point a number of times before, and so I am at risk of boring the followers of the thread. The date and parties are accurate. The movie tells the tale in sometimes brutal detail of the sinking, why so many sailors died, and the (grossly unfair) crucifixion of Captain McVay.

If I was going to grump over something, it'd be on PM. Sorry.

Oldfart,

Yes, Captain McVay was treated unfairly.

July 31st
 

1556 ~ Death of Ignatius Loyola, Spanish priest, founder of the Jesuits.

1886 ~ Death of Franz Liszt, Hungarian Composer.

1912 ~ Birthday of Milton Friedman, awarded the Nobel Prize in economics, 1976.

1917 ~ The Third Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) started in Flanders. With casualties from both sides exceeding 550,000, the name Passcheddaele has come to be used as a synonym for pointless slaughter.

"...I died in Hell
(they called it Passchendaele) my wound was slight
and I was hobbling back; and then a shell
burst slick upon the duckboards; so I fell
into the bottomless mud, and lost the light"

Siegfried Sassoon

1941 ~ Hermann Göring ordered SS general Reinhard Heydrich 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."

1964 ~ Ranger program: Ranger 7 sent back the first close-up photographs of the moon.

1965 ~ Birthday of J. K. Rowling, Author.

1970 ~ The last day of the officially sanctioned rum ration in the Royal Navy.

1991 ~ Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) signed in Moscow.

1999 ~ NASA intentionally crashed the Lunar Prospector spacecraft into the Moon, ending its mission to detect frozen water on the moon's surface.

August 1st
 

10 B.C. ~ Birthday of Claudius, Roman Emperor.

1774 ~ The element oxygen was discovered by Joseph Priestley.

1834 ~ Slavery was abolished in the British Empire.

1932 ~ Birthday of Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League.

1936 ~ The Summer Olympic Games opened in Berlin.

1944 ~ Anne Frank made the last entry in her diary.

1957 ~ The United States and Canada formed the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

1977 ~ Death of Gary Powers, Spy Plane Pilot.

2005 ~ Death of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

2009 ~ Death of Corazon Aquino, Former President of the Philippines.

August 2nd
 

216 B.C. ~ Hannibal destroyed the double Consular Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Publius Terentius Varro in the Battle of Cannae.

1776 ~ Delegates to the Continental Congress began to sign the Declaration of Independence.

1876 ~ Death of James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, Gunfighter.

1921 ~ Death of Enrico Caruso, Italian Tenor.

1932 ~ Birthday of Peter O'Toole, Actor. (Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter).

1934 ~ Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.

1939 ~ Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.

1943 ~ PT-109, commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy rammed and sunk.

1976 ~ Death of Fritz Lang, Film Director (Metropolis, M, Frau im Mond).

1990 ~ Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to the Gulf War.

August 3rd
 

1900 ~ Birthday of John T. Scopes, defendant in the “Monkey Trial”.

1924 ~ Death of Joseph Conrad, Author. (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim)

1924 ~ Birthday of Leon Uris, American Writer. (Exodus, QB VII)

1941 ~ Birthday of Martha Stewart, Media personality.

1943 ~ Gen. George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice.

1948 ~ Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist, publicly accused former State Department official Alger Hiss of having been part of a Communist underground.

1958 ~ The USS Nautilus traveled beneath the Arctic ice cap.

1972 ~ U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

2003 ~ The U.S. Anglican Church approved the appointment of an openly homosexual bishop.

2008 ~ Death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer.

August 4th
 

1782 ~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart married Constanze Weber.

1840 ~ Birthday of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sexologist.

1875 ~ Death of Hans Christian Andersen, Writer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Louis Armstrong, Jazz Musician.

1914 ~ The UK declared war on Germany.

1961 ~ Birthday of Barack Obama, American politician.

1964 ~ The bodies of three missing civil rights workers were found buried in an earthen dam in Mississippi.

1983 ~ New York Yankee Dave Winfield accidentally killed a seagull during a baseball game and was charged by police for his "act of cruelty to animals".

1991 ~ The cruise ship Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa.

2000 ~ Death of Leslie Glass, Porn actress.

August 5th
 

1885 ~ The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid.

1962 ~ Death of Marilyn Monroe, Actress.

1962 ~ Nelson Mandela imprisoned, not to be released until 1990.

1963 ~ The U.S., UK, and U.S.S.R. signed a nuclear test ban treaty.

1973 ~ Arab gunmen opened fire and threw grenades into a passenger lounge at Athens airport.

1980 ~ Birthday of Kaylani Lei, Singaporean/American Porn actress.

1981 ~ The federal government began firing air traffic controllers who had gone on strike.

1984 ~ Death of Richard Burton, Actor.

1987 ~ Birthday of Lexi Belle, Porn actress.

2000 ~ Death of Sir Alec Guinness, Actor.

August 6th
 

1809 ~ Birthday of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Poet.

1881 ~ Birthday of Alexander Fleming, awarded he Nobel Prize in Medicine 1945.

1945 ~ A nuclear bomb codenamed Little Boy was dropped on the city of Hiroshima.

1961 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov spent a day in orbit.

1965 ~ U.S. release of the Beatles’ album "Help!".

1972 ~ Birthday of Geri Halliwell, British Pop Singer (Spice Girls).

1987 ~ Birthday of Charley Chase, Porn actress .

1988 ~ Birthday of Aleska Diamond, Hungarian Porn actress.

1990 ~ The UN Security Council ordered a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

1991 ~ Tim Berners-Lee released his idea for the "World Wide Web".

August 7th
 

1560 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Bathory, serial killer.

1867 ~ Birthday of Mata Hari (Margaretha Zelle), spy.

1942 ~ Birthday of Garrison Keillor, radio host.

1945 ~ Birthday of Alan Page, American football player and jurist.

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft "Kon-Tiki", arrived at the Tuamotu Islands after a 101 day 4,300 mile journey across the Pacific Ocean, proving that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1964 ~ U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson broad powers to deal with reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces.

1974 ~ French stuntman Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.

1998 ~ Bombing of the United States embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya that killed 224 people and injured over 4,500.

1999 ~ The start of the Second Chechen War.

2005 ~ Death of Peter Jennings, Canadian-born news anchor.

August 8th
 

1879 ~ Birthday of Emiliano Zapata, Mexican Revolutionary.

1902 ~ Birthday of P.A.M. Dirac, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933.

1931 ~ Birthday of Roger Penrose, British physicist .

1937 ~ Birthday of Dustin Hoffman, Actor (The Graduate, Tootsie, Kramer vs. Kramer).

1945 ~ The U.S. ratified the United Nations Charter.

1963 ~ Britain's ''Great Train Robbery'' took place when thieves made off with 2.6 million pounds in banknotes.

1966 ~ The Beatles' released "Revolver”

1974 ~ U.S. President Nixon announced his resignation effective August 9.

1988 ~ U.N. Secretary-General Cuellar announced a cease-fire between Iran and Iraq.

1996 ~ Death of Frank A Whittle, inventor of the Jet engine.

August 9th
 

1173 ~ Construction of the (Leaning) Tower of Pisa began.

1483 ~ Opening of the Sistine Chapel.

1842 ~ The U.S.-Canada border east of the Rocky Mountains was defined.

1945 ~ A nuclear bomb codenamed Fat Man was dropped on the city of Nagasaki.

1962 ~ Death of Hermann Hesse, German-born writer, awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in Literature.

1969 ~ Members of a cult led by Charles Manson murdered five people including Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring and, Abigail Folger.

1975 ~ Death of Dmitri Shostakovich, Composer.

1986 ~ The Headington Shark was erected in Oxford.

1995 ~ Death of Jerry Garcia, guitarist: Grateful Dead.

2006 ~ Death of James van Allen, American physicist.

August 10th
 

610 ~ In Islamic tradition, this is when Muhammad began to receive the Quran.

1519 ~ Ferdinand Magellan's 5 ships set sail from Seville to circumnavigate the globe.

1675 ~ Foundation stone set of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

1793 ~ The Louvre officially opened in Paris with an exhibition of 537 paintings.

1846 ~ The Smithsonian Institution was chartered following a $500,000 donation by scientist Joseph Smithson.

1896 ~ Death of Otto Lilienthal, Aviation Pioneer.

1945 ~ Death of Robert Goddard, Rocket Scientist.

1990 ~ The Magellan space probe arrived at Venus.

1995 ~ Norma McCorvey, '”Jane Roe” in the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which legalized abortion, announced she had joined the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

2003 ~ Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko became the first man to marry in space.

August 11th
 

480 B.C. ~ Persians under Xerxes defeated Spartans under King Leonidas in the Battle of Thermopylae. The Spartans fight to the last man.

The Battle of Thermopylae has served as an example to officers and soldiers alike of what courage and self-sacrifice could achieve. It is still remembered, almost 2,500 years later, as a classic example of virtue.

1253 ~ Death of Saint Clare of Assisi, Patron Saint of television.

1905 ~ Birthday of Erwin Chargaff, biochemist.

1919 ~ Death of Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist & Philanthropist.

1929 ~ Babe Ruth became the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs.

1950 ~ Birthday of Steve Wozniak, Computer Pioneer.

1972 ~ The last U.S. ground combat unit left South Vietnam.

1974 ~ Birthday of Kira Kener, Porn actress.

1984 ~ U.S. President Reagan joked during a voice test for a paid political radio address that he had ''signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.''

2003 ~ NATO took over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe.

August 12th
 

1859 ~ Birthday of Katherine Lee Bates, Poet (America the Beautiful [arranged & performed by Ray Charles]).

1887 ~ Birthday of Erwin Schrödinger, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1933.

1927 ~ Birthday of Mstislav Rostropovich, Cellist.

1928 ~ Death of Leos Janacek, Czech Composer.

1953 ~ The Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

1960 ~ The first communications satellite, “Echo I”, was launched.

1964 ~ Death of Ian Fleming, Novelist.

1981 ~ The IBM PC was introduced.

2002 ~ The Russian submarine Kursk sank in the Barents Sea.

2004 ~ New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey came out of the closet at the press conference when he announced his resignation from the office.

August 13th
 

1521 ~ Tenochtitlán, present day Mexico City, fell to conquistador Hernán Cortés.

1899 ~ Birthday of Alfred Hitchcock, Director.

1910 ~ Death of Florence Nightingale, English nurse.

1942 ~ Walt Disney's animated cartoon "Bambi" premiered.

1946 ~ Death of H. G. Wells, Writer.

1961 ~ The Berlin Wall began to be built.

1966 ~ Beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution.

1973 ~ Birthday of Brittany Andrews, former Porno actress & Foot Fetishist.

1984 ~ Death of Tigran Petrosian, Soviet chess player.

1997 ~ The popular, controversial animated series "South Park" debuted.