On This Date In 1492 Genoese navigator,
colonizer and explorer Christopher Columbus set out on his first voyage to what
came to be known as the New World. With three
ships and a crew of ninety, Columbus hoped to
find a western route to the Far East. Instead,
the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria landed
in the Bahama Islands. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/aug03.html
On This Date In 1644 The Battle of
Freiburg, also called the Three Day Battle, took place on August 3, August 5
and August 9, 1644 as part of the Thirty Years' War. The entrenched Bavarians
led by Franz von Mercy retreated after three separate days of being assaulted
by the French army under Louis II de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien and marshal Henri
de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne, and the French then went on to
capture the city of Freiburg. The Battle of Freiburg produced the highest
number of casualties of any battle in the war.
On This Date In 1645 During the Thirty
Years' War, the second Battle of Nördlingen (or Battle of Allerheim) was fought
southeast of Nördlingen near the village
of Alerheim, France, and its
Protestant German allies defeated the forces of the Holy
Roman Empire and its Bavarian Catholic league allies.
On This Date In 1757 Through August 9,
1757, and during the French and Indian War, the Siege of Fort William Henry was
conducted by French General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm against the British-held
Fort William Henry. The fort, located at the southern end of Lake George, on
the frontier between the British Province of New York
and the French Province
of Canada,
was garrisoned by a poorly supported force of British regulars and provincial
militia led by Lieutenant Colonel George Monro. After several days of
bombardment, Monro surrendered to Montcalm, whose force included nearly 2,000
Indians from a large number of tribes.
On This Date In 1846 Abraham Lincoln was
elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served one two-year
term. He was the only Whig in the Illinois
delegation, but he showed his party loyalty by participating in almost all
votes and making speeches that echoed the party line.
On This Date In 1864 Through August 8,
1864, the Siege of Fort Gaines took place during the American Civil War. It was
fought in the Mobile Bay area of Alabama
as part of the larger battle of Mobile
Bay, and resulted in the
surrender of the fort and its defenders to Union forces.
On This Date In 1914 Two days after
declaring war on Russia, Germany declared war on France, moving ahead with a
long-held strategy, conceived by the former chief of staff of the German army,
Alfred von Schlieffen, for a two-front war against France and Russia. Hours
later, France made its own
declaration of war against Germany,
readying its troops to move into the provinces of Alsace
and Lorraine, which it had forfeited to Germany in the
settlement that ended the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.
On This Date In 1916 During World War I,
the Battle of Romani took place near the Egyptian town of Romani,
23 miles (37 km) east of the Suez Canal near the Mediterranean shore of the Sinai peninsula. On the night of August 3, 1916, an
Ottoman army, under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein,
attacked the British Empire defences at
Romani. The fort at Romani was strategic as it controlled the northern approach
to the Suez canal. After a night and day of
fighting, the Ottoman assault was defeated and thereafter the Allies were on
the offensive, pushing the Ottoman army back across the Sinai.
On This Date In 1916 Sir Roger David
Casement, an Irish-born diplomat, humanitarian campaigner and an Irish patriot,
poet, revolutionary, and nationalist, who in 1911 was knighted by King George
V, was executed by hanging for his role in Ireland's Easter Rising. In 1965,
Casement's body was repatriated to Ireland
and, after a state funeral, was buried with full military honours in the
Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.
On This Date In 1923 Calvin Coolidge took
the presidential oath of office after the unexpected death in office of
President Warren Harding. The new president inherited an administration plagued
and discredited by corruption scandals. In the two remaining years of this
term, Coolidge, long recognized for his own frugality and moderation, worked to
restore the administration's image and regain the public’s trust. He went on to
win the presidential election of 1924 in his own right.
On This Date In 1936 Through August 9, and
at the 1936 Summer Olympics, Jesse Owens, American track and field athlete who
specialized in the sprints and the long jump, won 4 gold medals. On August 3,
1936, he won the 100m sprint, defeating Ralph Metcalfe; on August 4, the long
jump (later crediting friendly and helpful advice from Luz Long, the German
competitor he ultimately defeated); on August 5, the 200m sprint; and, after he
was added to the 4 x 100 m relay team, following a request by the Germans to
replace a Jewish-American sprinter, he won his fourth on August 9 (a
performance not equaled until Carl Lewis won gold medals in the same events at
the 1984 Summer Olympics).
On This Date In 1940 During World War II, Italy
began its offensive against the British colony of Somaliland, in East Africa,
territory contiguous with Italian Somaliland. Italy would not enter the Somaliland capital,
Berbera, until August 19, while Britain
built up its African forces in Kenya.
The war for East Africa was not over.
On This Date In 1943 During World War II,
the massacre in Szczurowa took place, the murder of 93 Romani people (also
known as Gypsies), including children, women and the elderly, by German Nazi
occupiers in the Polish village
of Szczurowa. Between ten
and twenty families of settled Romani had lived in Szczurowa for generations,
alongside ethnic Poles with whom they had friendly and neighborly relations. On
August 3, 1943 German police rounded up almost all the Romani inhabitants of
the village and transported them to the local cemetery where they were shot. A
list of all the victims has been preserved in the documents of the local
church.
On This Date In 1948 In hearings before
the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), Whittaker Chambers accused
former State Department official Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for
the Soviet Union. The accusation set into
motion a series of events that eventually resulted in the trial and conviction
of Hiss for perjury.
On This Date In 1949 After a damaging
three-year battle to win both players and fans, the rival Basketball
Association of America (BAA) and National Basketball League (NBL) merged to
form the National Basketball Association (NBA).
On This Date In 1958 The U.S. nuclear submarine Nautilus
accomplished the first undersea voyage to the geographic North Pole. The
world's first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus dived at Point Barrow, Alaska,
and traveled nearly 1,000 miles under the Arctic ice cap to reach the top of
the world. It then steamed on to Iceland,
pioneering a new and shorter route from the Pacific to the Atlantic and Europe.
On This Date In 1965 During the Vietnam
War, CBS-TV news showed pictures of men from the First Battalion, Ninth Marines
setting fire to huts in the village of
Cam Na, six miles west of Da Nang, despite reports
that the Viet Cong had already fled the area. The film report sparked
indignation and condemnation of the U.S.
policy in Vietnam
both at home and overseas. At the same time, the Department of Defense
announced that it was increasing the monthly draft call from 17,000 in August
to 27,400 in September and 36,000 in October. It also announced that the Navy
would require 4,600 draftees, the first such action since 1956.
On This Date In 1966 During the Vietnam
War, U.S. Marine units commenced Operation Prairie, a sequel to an earlier
operation in the area (Operation Hastings), which involved a sweep just south
of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) against three battalions of the North
Vietnamese 324B Division. An additional 1,500 Marines from Seventh Fleet ships
off Quang Tri Province
conducted amphibious landings on September 15 to assist in the operation, which
lasted until September 19 and resulted in a reported 1,397 communist
casualties.
On This Date In 1973 “Innervisions,” the
sixteenth album by American musician Stevie Wonder, was released on Motown
Records; a landmark recording of his “classic period”. After reaching its peak
position at the Billboard Album Charts of number 4 on September 15, the album
remained inside the Top 20 until the end of the year and remained inside the
whole Top 200 during the whole calendar year of 1975. It was also Wonder's
second consecutive soul album to top the Black Albums chart where it remained
for two weeks. (In the Cashbox charts, Innervisions
actually reached #1 near the end of the year.) In the UK, Innervisions also achieved big success, and became Stevie Wonder's
first album ever to reach the UK Top 10, peaking at #8.
On This Date In 1975 A Boeing 707 jetliner
chartered to Royal Air Maroc crashed in the Atlas Mountains near Agadir, a
coastal city in southern Morocco.
All 188 people aboard the plane were killed, in the fourth worst air disaster
to that date.
On This Date In 1977 “The Spy Who Loved
Me,” starring Roger Moore as the suave superspy James Bond, known for his love
of fast cars and dangerous women, was released in theaters across America.
The film features one of the most memorable Bond cars of all time: a sleek,
powerful Lotus Esprit sports car that does double duty as a submarine.
On This Date In 1981 More than 12,000
members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization walked off the
job, setting off a chain of events that would redefine labor relations in America. In
response to the walkout, President Ronald Reagan issued one of the defining
statements of his presidency. He said the striking air-traffic controllers were
in violation of the law; if they did not report to work within 48 hours, their
jobs would be terminated. On August 5, Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic
controllers who had ignored his order to return to work, busting the union. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5604656
On This Date In 1987 “Hysteria,” the
fourth studio album by the English Heavy Metal band Def Leppard, was released
through Mercury Records. Produced by Robert John “Mutt” Lange, it is the band's
best-selling album to date, selling over 20 million copies worldwide, and
spawning six hit singles. The album charted at #1 on the Billboard 200 and #1
on the UK Albums Chart.
On This Date In 1988 Soviet authorities
freed Mathias Rust, the daring young West German pilot who landed a rented
Cessna on Moscow's Red
Square in 1987. Rust was serving a four-year sentence at a labor
camp when the Soviets approved his extradition as a goodwill gesture to the
West.
On This Date In 2009 President Evo Morales
of Bolivia began work on his
“indigenous autonomy” policy which he launched in the eastern lowlands
department, making Bolivia
the first country in the history of South America
to declare the right of indigenous people to govern themselves.
On This Date In 2009 Posters were spotted
throughout Los Angeles
portraying Obama as ‘The Joker’ from “The Dark Knight,” with the word “socialism”
printed in black above and below his face. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/03/posters-spotted-portraying-obama-joker/
On This Date In 2011 Charles Aaron “Bubba”
Smith (February 28, 1945 – August 3, 2011), an American professional football
player who became an actor after his retirement from the sport, died at age 66
from acute drug intoxication and heart disease. Phentermine, a weight-loss
drug, was found in his system. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/04/us-nfl-bubbasmith-idUSTRE7727IQ20110804
Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
, http://www.-history.com/this-day-in-history
, http://timelines.com/
Quotes
Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a
distance but disappear when you get up close to them. John Shirley
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate
of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. C.S. Lewis
All parents believe their children can do the impossible.
They thought it the minute we were born, and no matter how hard we've tried to
prove them wrong, they all think it about us now. And the really annoying thing
is, they're probably right. Cathy Guisewite
You are the embodiment of the information you choose to
accept and act upon. To change your circumstances you need to change your
thinking and subsequent actions. Adlin Sinclair
Most people are prisoners, thinking only about the future or
living in the past. They are not in the present, and the present is where
everything begins. Carlos Santana
Courtesy You Tube et al
American Gabby Douglas, a 16-year-old from Virginia,
won the women's gymnastics all-around gold medal Thursday, topping silver
medalist Viktoria Komova of Russia.
Stu Woo has details on The News Hub. Don't want to wait for prime time to see
the Olympics? Watch WSJ's Homemade Highlights HERE: http://bit.ly/NLOPY2
A key ingredient of Earth's strangest clouds does not come
from Earth. New data from NASA's AIM spacecraft proves that "meteor
smoke" is essential to the formation of noctilucent clouds.
Topics: Trillion Dollar Deficit--Democrats--Obama Campaign--Israel--Michelle
Obama--Jeff Greenfield--Greece Bankrupt--Facebook Stock--One Million Moms--Kanye
West--Kim Kardashian
Love NewsBusted and want to receive alerts about new
episodes in your
email? Visit http://newsbusters.org/newsbusted to sign up
for free!
Starring: Jodi Miller, Production: Dialog New Media
Why should we think upon things that are lovely?
Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the
environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is
stronger than its surroundings. William James
The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness;
to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good
example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her
proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity. Benjamin Franklin
No comments:
Post a Comment