SPEEKERBOXX

 What Happened Today... August 1st

1498 - Christopher Columbus landed on mainland America, but thinking it was an island, called it Isla Santa.

1778 - The World's first savings bank was opened in Hamburg, Germany.

1790 - The first United States census was completed, showing a population of nearly 4 million people.

1793 - France became the first country to use the metric system of weights and measures, a by-product of the French Revolution.

1798 - The British fleet under Lord Nelson defeated the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile, thwarting Napoleon's conquest of the Middle East.

1808 - British troops landed on Portuguese soil to push back Napoleon's French forces that had occupied the whole of the Iberian peninsular.

1936 - Adolf Hitler opened the 11th Olympic Games in Berlin.

1976 - Trinidad and Tobago became an independent republic within the Commonwealth.

1976 - The 21st Olympic Games in Montreal ended on this date.

1990 - A five-day coup attempt in Trinidad and Tobago ended with the surrender of the Black Muslim rebels and the release of their captives.

1994 - German President Roman Herzog apologized for the suffering his nation caused Poland in World War II.

 What Happened Today... August 2nd

1100 - King William II of England, son of William the Conqueror, was killed by an arrow while hunting in the New Forest.

1492 - Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on a voyage that took him to the present-day Americas.

1887 - Rowell Hodge, patented barbed wire.

1914 - Germany declared war on France.

1958 - The nuclear-powered submarine Nautilus became the first vessel to cross the North Pole under water.

1970 - The British army used rubber bullets for the first time to quell a riot in Northern Ireland.

1989 - Trade restrictions between Britain and Argentina were lifted for the first time since the 1982 Falklands war.

 What Happened Today... August 3rd

1985 - Mail service was reinstated to Paradise Lake, Florida, a nudist colony, after residents promised they would wear clothes or at least stay out of sight when the mailperson came to deliver.

1988 - The Soviet Union released Mathias Rust, the young West German pilot who had landed a light plane in Moscow's Red Square in May 1987.

 What Happened Today... August 4th

1940 - Italy invaded British Somaliland and occupied some towns in Sudan and Kenya.

1944 - Nazi police found Anne Frank and her family, hiding in secret rooms above her father’s factory in Amsterdam, Holland.

1954 - In Saskatchewan, Canada, the uranium rush began.

1954 - Britain's first supersonic fighter plane, the English Electric Lightning P-1, made its maiden flight.

1966 - John Lennon proclaimed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ.

1997 - The world's oldest person, Jeanne Calment, died aged 122 years and 164 days in Arles, France.

1997 - North Korea handed over the remains of four United States soldiers killed during the 1950-1953 Korean War.

 What Happened Today... August 5th

1858 - The first trans-Atlantic cable was completed, enabling telegraphic communication between United States and Britain. The service was ended on September 1 because the current was too weak.

1923 - The first American to swim the English Channel was Henry Sullivan.

1997 - 226 people died when a South Korean jumbo jet crashed and burst into flames on the island of Guam.

 What Happened Today... August 6th

1890 - Convicted murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair as he was put to death at Auburn State Prison in New York.

1948 - At the Olympic Games in London, England, 17-year-old Bob Mathias won the decathlon competition.

1962 - Jamaica became an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.

 What Happened Today... August 7th

768 - Stephen III began his reign as Pope.

1498 - Christopher Columbus arrived in the Caribbean.

1953 - Eastern Airlines entered the jet age, using the Electra propjet.

1959 - The United States launched "Explorer Six," which sent back a picture of the Earth.

1978 - Thousands of mourners filed past the body of Pope Paul VI.

1990 - President Bush ordered United States troops and warplanes to Saudi Arabia to guard the oil-rich desert kingdom against a possible invasion by Iraq.

1997 - A Russian capsule on a fix-it mission docked gingerly with the crippled Mir space station, bringing a new crew charged with salvaging the orbiting outpost.

What Happened Today... August 8th

1989 - Space shuttle "Columbia" blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a secret, five-day military mission.

1994 - The leaders of Jordan and Israel opened their countries' first border crossing, cementing an end to 46 years of hostilities.

 What Happened Today... August 9th

1859 - The escalator was patented by Nathan Ames of Saugus, Massachusetts.

1990 - China's first airship, 40 metres (130 feet) long, made its maiden flight over the central province of Hubei.

 What Happened Today... August 10th

1793 - The Louvre in Paris had its grand opening.

1990 - The Magellan spacecraft entered the orbit of Venus, marking the most prolific image gathering of Venus to date. Thanks to Magellan, astronomers learned that Venus's surface is hotter than that of any other planet in the solar system, including Mercury, due to an atmosphere composed of 96 percent carbon dioxide.

 What Happened Today... August 11th

1934 - The first federal prisoners arrived at the island prison Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

1962 - The Soviet Union launched cosmonaut Andrian Nikolayev on a 94-hour flight.

 What Happened Today... August 12th

1813 - Austria declared war against Napoleon.

1865 - Joseph Lister, namesake for Listerine mouthwash, became the first doctor to utilize disinfectant during surgery.

1953 - The Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

1970 - The Soviet Union and West Germany signed a non-aggression pact in Moscow.

1972 - The last American combat ground troops left Vietnam.

1978 - Pope Paul VI, who had died August sixth at age 80, was buried in St. Peter's Basilica.

1985 - A Japan Air Lines Boeing 747 crashed into Mount Osutaka, killing all but four of 524 aboard. 

What Happened Today... August 13th

1792 - French, revolutionaries imprisoned the French royal family.

1814 - The Cape of Good Hope was formally ceded to the British by the Dutch.

1868 - A series of earthquakes began in Peru and Ecuador that killed about 25,000.

1914 - France declared war on Austria-Hungary, leading to World War I.

1986 - More than 120 people died in a hotel collapse in Thailand.

1996 - Data sent back by the Galileo space probe indicated there might be water on one of Jupiter's moons, heightening the possibility it could support a primitive life form.

 What Happened Today... August 14th

1040 - King Duncan of Scotland was murdered by Macbeth, who then became king and ruled for 17 years.

1598 - Earl of Tyrone, Irish rebel, annihilated the English force at Yellow Ford on Blackwater River.

1936 - In Berlin, Germany, the first basketball competition was held at the Olympic Games. Canada was defeated by the United States, 19-8.

1969 - British troops arrived in Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

1994 - Several thousand IRA supporters rallied outside Belfast's city hall, 25 years after Britain deployed troops in Northern Ireland as would-be peacekeepers.

1997 - United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright granted a visa to Gerry Adams, head of the Sinn Fein political party in Northern Ireland.

 What Happened Today... August 15th

1057 - Macbeth, King of Scotland whose life was the basis for Shakespeare's play, was killed by Malcolm Canmore at Lumphanan, near Aberdeen.

1534 - The Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was founded in Paris by St. Ignatius of Loyola.

1961 - East German workers began to build the Berlin Wall.

1979 - Two Soviet Aeroflot airliners collided in mid-air over Ukraine, killing 173.

1998 - A car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killed 29 people and injured 370.

 What Happened Today... August 16th

1977 - Elvis Presley died.

1987 - 156 people were killed when Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed.

What Happened Today... August 17th

1976 - A severe earthquake shook the Philippine island of Mindanao, leaving about 8,000 people dead.

1987 - Adolf Hitler's deputy Rudolf Hess was found dead in his cell in Spandau Prison, after hanging himself with an electric cord.

1998 - United States President Clinton admitted to having an improper relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

 What Happened Today... August 18th

1559 - Pope Paul IV, pope from 1555 to 1559, died.

1964 - South Africa was banned from the Olympic Games because of its apartheid policies.

What Happened Today... August 19th

1934 - Germans voted to give Adolf Hitler the presidency in addition to being Chancellor.

1960 - The Soviet Union launched its Sputnik 5 satellite into Earth orbit carrying two dogs, Belka and Strelka.

1987 - In Britain's worst mass killing, gunman Michael Ryan shot dead 16 people during a rampage through Hungerford.

 What Happened Today... August 20th

1940 - France fell to Germany during World War II.

1953 - The Soviet Union announced that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb.

1989 - 51 died when the pleasure cruiser Marchioness sank after being rammed by a dredger on the River Thames, London.

1998 - United States military forces attacked a chemical plant in Sudan and what they described as a terrorist camp in Afghanistan.

 What Happened Today... August 21st

1911 - Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting "Mona Lisa" was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris by Italian waiter Vicenzo Perruggia.

1988 - An earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale killed about 1,000 people on India's border with Nepal.

1990 - The first pictures from Venus by the space probe Magellan showed features similar to volcanoes and valleys on Earth.

1997 - A plastic artificial leg was fitted to a pink flamingo in Lincoln Park Zoo, Illinois.

 What Happened Today... August 22nd

1922 - Irish politician and Sinn Fein leader Michael Collins was killed in an ambush. He was largely responsible for the 1921 Anglo-Irish treaty.

1968 - Pope Paul VI arrived in Colombia on the first visit by a pontiff to Latin America.

1985 - 55 people were killed at Manchester airport when a British Airtours Boeing 737 burst into flames after the pilot aborted the takeoff.

 What Happened Today... August 23rd

1990 - East and West Germany announced that they would unite on October 3, healing four decades of post-World War Two division.

 What Happened Today... August 24th

0079 - Mt. Vesuvius, the volcano, erupted for the first time, destroying the southern Italy cities of Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum

1456 - Gutenberg Bible printing was completed.

1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came into being.

1990 - Irish hostage Brian Keenan was freed by his Islamic Dawn Organization captors in west Beirut after 52 months in captivity.

 What Happened Today... August 25th

1814 - British forces destroyed the United States Library of Congress along with the 3,000 books it contained.

1875 - British swimmer Matthew Webb was the first documented person to swim across the English Channel.

1940 - The British Air Force dropped their first bombs on Berlin in an overnight raid.

1978 - The Turin shroud, once venerated as the burial cloth of Christ, went on public display for the first time in 45 years.

1989 - NASA's spacecraft Voyager 2 made its closest approach to the planet Neptune. Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to photograph Neptune, its final planetary target before leaving the solar system.

 What Happened Today... August 27th

1979 - British war hero Lord Louis Mountbatten was killed off the coast of Ireland in a boat explosion claimed by the Irish Republican Army.

1991 - Moldova declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

1997 - A camel at the Knowsley Safari Park on Merseyside, England was killed by lightning.

1997 - The space between a woman's breast was given a name by the International Federation of Associations of Anatomists: the intermammary sulcus.

 What Happened Today... August 28th

1883 - Slavery was banned by the British Parliament throughout the British Empire.

1995 - A mortar shell killed 38 people in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. The act triggered NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs.

1996 - A divorce decree was issued for Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

 What Happened Today... August 29th

1833 - In England, the "Factory Act", legislation to settle child labour laws, was passed in England.

1991 - Today marked the end of the 75 years of control the Communist Party’s had over the Soviet Union.

What Happened Today... August 30th

30 B.C. - Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, died. She is said to have committed suicide by allowing a poisonous snake to bite her breast.

1881 - The first stereo system was patented by Clement Adler of Germany.

1963 - The "hotline" between the White House and the Kremlin became operational.

1973 - Kenya banned the hunting of elephants and the trade in ivory.

 What Happened Today... August 31st

1900 - The carbonated soft drink - Coca Cola went on sale in Great Britain for the first time.

1989 - Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark Phillips separated after 16 years of marriage dogged by constant rumours of estrangement.

1990 - East and West Germany signed a treaty to harmonize their legal and political systems after the October 3 merger.

1994 - The Irish Republican Army declared a cease-fire after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.