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.