Today in history

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August 9

480 BC The Persian army defeats Leonidas and his Spartan army at the battle Thermopylae, Persia.

48 BC Julius Caesar defeats Gnaius Pompey at Pharsalus.

1483 Pope Sixtus IV celebrates the first mass in the Sistine Chapel, which is named in his honor.

1549 England declares war on France.

1645 Settlers in New Amsterdam gain peace with the Indians after conducting talks with the Mohawks.

1805 Austria joins Britain, Russia, Sweden and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the third coalition against France.

1814 Andrew Jackson and the Creek Indians sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving the whites 23 million acres of Creek territory.

1842 The Webster-Ashburn treaty fixes the border between Maine and Canada's New Brunswick.

1859 The escalator is patented. However, the first working escalator appeared in 1900. Manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company for the Paris Exposition, it was installed in a Philadelphia office building the following year.

1862 At Cedar Mountain, Virginia, Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson repels an attack by Union forces.

1910 The first complete, self-contained electric washing machine is patented.

1936 Jesse Owens wins four gold medals in track and field events at the Berlin Olympics.

1941 President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The meeting produces the Atlantic Charter, an agreement between the two countries on war aims, even though the United States is still a neutral country.

1945 The B-29 bomber Bock's Car drops a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan.

1969 Charles Manson's followers kill actress Sharon Tate and her three guests in her Beverly Hills home.

1974 Gerald Ford is sworn in as president of the United States after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

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August 10

955 Otto organizes his nobles and defeats the invading Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in Germany.

1539 King Francis of France declares that all official documents are to be written in French, not Latin.

1557 French troops are defeated by Emmanuel Philibert's Spanish army at St. Quentin, France.

1582 Russia ends its 25-year war with Poland.

1628 The Swedish warship Vasa capsizes and sinks in Stockholm harbor on her maiden voyage.

1779 Louis XVI of France frees the last remaining serfs on royal land.

1831 William Driver of Salem, Massachusetts, is the first to use the term "Old Glory" in connection with the American flag, when he gives that name to a large flag aboard his ship, the Charles Daggett.

1846 The Smithsonian Institution is established in Washington through the bequest of James Smithson.

1864 Confederate Commander John Bell Hood sends his cavalry north of Atlanta to cut off Union General William Sherman's supply lines.

1911 The House of Lords in Great Britain gives up its veto power, making the House of Commons the more powerful House.

1913 The Treaty of Bucharest ends the Second Balkan War.

1941 Great Britain and the Soviet Union promise aid to Turkey if it is attacked by the AxisPowers.

1950 President Harry S. Truman calls the National Guard to active duty to fight in the Korean War.

[Damelon]

Aug. 10, 1519: Magellan Sets Sail Into History

1519: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, having sworn allegiance to Spain, sets sail from Seville for what will be the first successful circumnavigation of the Earth. Magellan, however, will not complete the voyage.
Like Columbus before him, Magellan's primary objective was to open up a western trade route for Spain to Asia, since Spanish ships were barred by treaty with Portugal from using the route around Africa. Columbus' discovery of a new continent presented Magellan with the additional challenge of finding a passage through the new world to the Southeast Asian kingdoms, then referred to as the Spice Islands.
After crossing the Atlantic Ocean and coming to the coast of modern-day Brazil, Magellan and his squadron of five ships turned south. Surviving a mutiny and the wreck of one ship, Magellan sailed the length of South America until finding a deep-water strait near the tip of the continent -- the strait that now bears his name.
He lost another ship, which defected and returned to Spain, but passed through the 373-mile-long strait to become the first European to enter the Pacific Ocean from the east. Magellan himself christened it the Pacific Ocean ("Mar Pacifico") because of its relative placidness compared to the stormy Atlantic.
But it wasn't placid for long. After re-crossing the Equator and dropping anchor at the Marianas Islands and Guam, Magellan became the first European to make landfall in the Archipelago of San Lazaro, now the Philippine Islands. That was the end of the line for Magellan. After befriending the tribal chieftan of Cebu, Magellan joined forces with him in an attempt to subdue the natives on the neighboring island of Mactan. They objected, and Magellan was killed by poisoned arrows on April 27, 1521.
What remained of the squadron continued on to the Spice Islands, then headed home across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope. Of the 270 men who set sail with Magellan, only 18 actually completed the circumnavigation by returning to Spain. They reached Seville on Sept. 8, 1522 aboard the ship Victoria.

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August 11

991 Danes under Olaf Tryggvason kill Ealdorman Brihtnoth and defeat the Saxons at Maldon.

1492 Rodrigo Borgia is elected to the papacy as Pope Alexander VI.

1792 A revolutionary commune is formed in Paris, France.

1856 A band of rampaging settlers in California kill four Yokut Indians. The settlers had heard unproven rumors of Yokut atrocities.

1862 President Abraham Lincoln appoints Union General Henry Halleck to the position of general in chief of the Union Army.

1904 German General Lothar von Trotha defeats the Hereros tribe near Waterberg, South Africa.

1906 In France, Eugene Lauste receives the first patent for a talking film.

1908 Britain's King Edward VII meets with Kaiser Wilhelm II to protest the growth of the German navy.

1912 Moroccan Sultan Mulai Hafid abdicates his throne in the face of internal dissent.

1916 The Russia army takes Stanislau, Poland, from the Germans.

1929 Babe Ruth hits his 500th major league home run against the Cleveland Indians.

1941 Soviet bombers raid Berlin but cause little damage.

1942 The German submarine U-73 attacks a Malta-bound British convoy and sinks HMS Eagle, one of the world's first aircraft carriers.

1944 German troops abandon Florence, Italy, as Allied troops close in on the historic city.

1965 A small clash between the California Highway Patrol and two black youths sets off six days of rioting in the Watts area of Los Angeles.

1972 The last U.S. ground forces withdraw from Vietnam.

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August 12

1099 At the Battle of Ascalon 1,000 Crusaders, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, route an Egyptian relief column heading for Jerusalem, which had already fallen to the Crusaders.

1687 At the Battle of Mohacs, Hungary, Charles of Lorraine defeats the Turks.

1762 The British capture Cuba from Spain after a two month siege.

1791 Black slaves on the island of Santo Domingo rise up against their white masters.

1812 British commander the Duke of Wellington occupies Madrid, Spain, forcing out Joseph Bonaparte.

1863 Confederate raider William Quantrill leads a massacre of 150 men and boys in Lawrence, Kansas.

1864 After a week of heavy raiding, the Confederate cruiser Tallahassee claims six Union ships captured.

1896 Gold is discovered near Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada. After word reaches the United States in June of 1897, thousands of Americans head to the Klondike to seek their fortunes.

1898 The Spanish American War officially ends after three months and 22 days of hostilities.

1908 Henry Ford's first Model T rolls off the assembly line.

1922 The home of Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C. is dedicated as a memorial.

1935 President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Social Security Bill.

1941 French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain announces full French collaboration with Nazi Germany.

1961 The erection of the Berlin Wall begins, preventing access between East and West Germany.

1969 American installations at Quan-Loi, Vietnam, come under Viet Cong attack.

1972 As U.S. troops leave Vietnam, B-52's make their largest strike of the war.

1977 Steven Biko, leader of the black consciousness movement in South Africa, is arrested.

1992 The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is concluded between the United States, Canada and Mexico, creating the world's wealthiest trade bloc.

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August 13

1630 Emperor Ferdinand II dismisses Albert Eusebius van Wallenstein, his most capable general.

1680 War starts when the Spanish are expelled from Santa Fe, New Mexico, by Indians under Chief Pope.

1704 The Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Austria defeat the French Army at the Battle of Blenheim.

1787 The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.

1862 Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest defeats a Union army under Thomas Crittenden at Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

1881 The first African-American nursing school opens at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.

1889 The first coin-operated telephone is patented by William Gray.

1892 The first issue of the Afro American newspaper is published in Baltimore, Maryland.

1898 Manila, the capital of the Philippines, falls to the U.S. Army.

1910 British nurse Florence Nightingale, famous for her care of British soldiers during the Crimean War, dies.

1932 Adolf Hitler refuses to serve as Franz Von Papen's vice chancellor.

1948 During the Berlin Airlift, the weather over Berlin becomes so stormy that American planes have their most difficult day landing supplies. They deem it ‘Black Friday.’

1963 A 17 year-old Buddhist monk burns himself to death in Saigon, South Vietnam.

1989 The wreckage of a plane that carried U.S. congressman Mickey Leland and others on a humanitarian mission is found on a mountain side in Ethiopia; there are no survivors.

[Damelon]

Aug. 13, 1902: Birth Date of Rotary Engine's Inventor

1902: Felix Wankel, inventor of the rotary engine, is born in Lahr, Germany.
Lacking a degree, indeed a university education of any kind, Wankel nevertheless possessed a first-rate technical mind. While still in his early 20s, he conceived of a rotary engine that he hoped would replace the more complicated and less efficient reciprocating piston engine.
Wankel received the first patent for his engine design in 1929, but events were about to overtake him.
On the political front, Wankel couldn't catch a break. After an early flirtation with National Socialism, he ran afoul of the Nazis and was tossed into prison for a few months. Following his release, Wankel spent the prewar years working on rotary valves and sealing technology for several German firms.
He continued in that vein during the war, developing seals and valves for use in German aircraft and in naval torpedoes. That got him imprisoned again, this time by the Allied occupation authorities. They also closed his laboratory and confiscated his work.
By 1951, though, he was back in business and in 1957 finally produced the first prototype of the Wankel rotary engine that would find its way, after various refinements and licensing agreements, into automobiles, aircraft and motorcycles all over the world. At least one company, the Japanese automaker Mazda, built its reputation largely on the rotary engine and continues producing environmentally friendly models to this day.
Wankel (who, interestingly, never learned to drive) is also remembered for his passionate opposition to using animals in medical experimentation. There is even a Wankel prize awarded annually for outstanding research that simultaneously promotes the concept of animal protection in the laboratory.

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August 14

1457 The first book ever printed is published by a German astrologer named Faust. He is thrown in jail while trying to sell books in Paris. Authorities concluded that all the identical books meant Faust had dealt with the devil.

1559 Spanish explorer de Luna enters Pensacola Bay, Florida.

1605 The Popham expedition reaches the Sagadahoc River in present-day Maine and settles there.

1756 French commander Louis Montcalm takes Fort Oswego, New England, from the British.

1793 Republican troops in France lay siege to the city of Lyons.

1900 The European allies enter Beijing, relieving their besieged legations from the Chinese Boxers.

1917 The Chinese Parliament declares war on the Central Powers.

1942 Dwight D. Eisenhower is named the Anglo-American commander for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa.

1945 Japan announces its unconditional surrender in World War II.

1947 Pakistan becomes an independent country.

1973 The United States ends the "secret" bombing of Cambodia.

[Damelon]

Aug. 14, 1901: Before the Wright Bros., There Was Gustave

1901: Gustave Whitehead purportedly travels a mile-and-a-half in the air aboard his birdlike monoplane. If he did, that means he flew nearly two-and-a-half years before the Wright Brothers' celebrated flight at Kitty Hawk.
There is evidence that several aviators on both sides of the Atlantic preceded Orville and Wilbur Wright into manned, heavier-than-air flight, although Whitehead's claim appears to be the best documented.
That few people outside of aviation buffs have ever heard of Whitehead (originally "Weisskopf" before he immigrated to America from Germany) can be attributed to several factors, including, his defenders say, the outright refusal of the Smithsonian Institution to even consider the possibility that anyone beat the Wright Brothers into the air.
Nevertheless, that's exactly what Whitehead appears to have done. Although there is an affidavit supporting Whitehead's claim to making a bona fide flight as early as April 1899 (filed by an assistant who said he was scalded by steam from the aircraft's motor), his August ascent was the first one clearly documented and witnessed by people not associated with the project.
The aircraft used for the Aug. 14 flight was named Number 21, since Whitehead rather unromantically christened his experimental craft in numerical order. Number 21 was built with bamboo ribbing and covered in silk. (Number 22, which would fly the following January, substituted steel tubing for bamboo.)
Four flights were reportedly made that day, the first coming before daybreak. Three others followed in the afternoon, including a mile-and-a-half journey where Whitehead reached an altitude of 200 feet. In contrast, Orville Wright's historic "first" flight on Dec. 17, 1903 lasted a mere 12 seconds while traveling 120 feet.

[Damelon]

Aug. 15, 1977: My, Earthling, What a Big Ear You Have

1977: The Big Ear Radio Observatory at Ohio State University picks up a strong signal that appears to come from outer space. Is it the first encounter with intelligent extraterrestrial life?
Whatever it was, it so startled Jerry Ehman, the volunteer who was monitoring the Big Ear when the signal came in, that he scrawled "Wow!" onto the computer printout, and astronomers ever since have referred to it as the "Wow! signal."
Astronomers immediately swung their telescopes to the point in the sky where the signal appeared to originate and searched for other evidence of an alien presence, but in vain. The failure to locate anything made a lot of people, including Ehman, skeptical.
"Even if it were intelligent beings sending a signal, they'd do it far more than once," Ehman told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in a 1994 interview. "We should have seen it again when we looked for it 50 times. Something suggests it was an Earth-bound signal that simply got reflected off a piece of space debris."
If intelligent life elsewhere does succeed in contacting us earthlings, it will have to be without the help of the Big Ear. The facility was closed in 1997, after nearly 40 years of operation, and demolished by developers to make room for a golf course and a bunch of houses.

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August 15

1261 Constantinople falls to Michael VIII of Nicea and his army.

1385 John of Portugal defeats John of Castile at the Battle of Aljubarrota.

1598 Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone, leads an Irish force to victory over the British at Battle of Yellow Ford.

1760 Frederick II defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Liegnitz.

1864 The Confederate raider Tallahassee captures six Federal ships off New England.

1872 The first ballot voting in England is conducted.

1914 The Panama Canal opens to traffic.

1935 American comedian and "cowboy philosopher" Will Rogers dies in an airplane accident, along with American aviation pioneer Wiley Post.

1942 The Japanese submarine I-25 departs Japan with a floatplane in its hold which will be assembled upon arriving off the West Coast of the United States, and used to bomb U.S. forests.

1944 American, British and French forces land on the southern coast of France, between Toulon and Cannes, in Operation Dragoon.

1945 Gasoline and fuel oil rationing ends in the United States.

1947 Britain grants independence to India and Pakistan.

1950 Two U.S. divisions are badly mauled by the North Korean Army at the Battle of the Bowling Alley in South Korea, which rages on for five more days.

1969 Over 400,000 young people attend a weekend of rock music at Woodstock, New York.

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August 16

1513 Henry VIII of England and Emperor Maximilian defeat the French at Guinegatte, France, in the Battle of the Spurs.

1777 France declares a state of bankruptcy.

1780 American troops are badly defeated by the British at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina.

1812 American General William Hull surrenders Detroit without resistance to a smaller British force under General Issac Brock.

1858 U.S. President James Buchanan and Britain's Queen Victoria exchange messages inaugurating the first transatlantic telegraph line.

1861 Union and Confederate forces clash near Fredericktown and Kirkville, Missouri.

1863 Union General William S. Rosecrans moves his army south from Tullahoma, Tennessee to attack Confederate forces in Chattanooga.

1896 Gold is discovered in the Klondike of Canada's Yukon Territory, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.

1914 Liege, Belgium, falls to the German army.

1945 Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese on Corregidor on May 6, 1942, is released from a POW camp in Manchuria by U.S. troops.

1965 The Watts riots end in south-central Los Angeles after six days.

1977 Elvis Presley dies of a heart attack in the upstairs bedroom suite area of his Graceland Mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.

[Damelon]

Aug. 17, 1807: 'Fulton's Folly' Steams Up the Hudson

1807: Robert Fulton's steamboat Clermont leaves New York harbor for a trip up the Hudson River to Albany, New York. It is carrying paying passengers, marking the first commercial use of an invention that has more detractors than defenders.
Fulton didn't invent the steamboat, as he is often credited with doing, but he was the first to make a commercial success with this odd, somewhat ungainly vessel.
Originally intent on becoming a painter, Fulton was studying art in London and Paris but drawing few commissions so, to avoid becoming the proverbial starving artist he indulged in another passion: engineering. While in Paris, he designed an experimental submarine that impressed Robert Livingston, the American ambassador to France. With Livingston's backing, Fulton also designed a small steamboat that was tested on the Seine River.
After Fulton married the ambassador's niece, Livingston told him, in effect, "You should be back home designing steamboats."
So he went.
Steamboats had existed for a while but were considered dangerous and unstable, making them basically unsuitable for anything beyond their novelty value. Napoleon had dismissed the idea of steam-powered ships when Fulton broached the subject while still in France.
Nevertheless, he persevered and by 1807 "Fulton's Folly," as the local wags christened the Clermont, was ready to sail. It was a leisurely trip, taking 32 hours to reach the state capitol while steaming along at about 5 mph.
In fact, the main problem with early steamboats was their tendency to be grossly underpowered. Newer boats, equipped with bigger engines, were not only capable of faster speeds but now had the power to navigate the swells and eddies of America's inland rivers, their primary stomping grounds. Fulton was out of the game by then, though, a respectable East Coast businessman.

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August 17

1590 John White, the leader of 117 colonists sent in 1587 to Roanoke Island (North Carolina) to establish a colony, returns from a trip to England to find the settlement deserted. No trace of the settlers is ever found.

1743 By the Treaty of Abo, Sweden cedes southeast Finland to Russia, ending Sweden's failed war with Russia.

1812 Napoleon Bonaparte's army defeats the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk during the Russian retreat to Moscow.

1833 The first steam ship to cross the Atlantic entirely on its own power, the Canadian ship Royal William, begins her journey from Nova Scotia to The Isle of Wight.

1863 Union gunboats attack Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, for the first time.

1942 Marine Raiders attack Makin Island in the Gilbert Islands from two submarines.

1943 Allied forces complete the conquest of Sicily.

1944 The mayor of Paris, Pierre Charles Tattinger, meets with the German commander Dietrich von Choltitz to protest the explosives being deployed throughout the city.

1945 Upon hearing confirmation that Japan has surrendered, Sukarno proclaims Indonesia's independence.

1960 American Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty at his Moscow trial for spying over the Soviet Union in a U-2 plane.

1978 Three Americans complete the first crossing of the Atlantic in a balloon.

1987 93-year-old Rudolf Hess, former Nazi leader and deputy of Hitler, is found hanged to death in Spandau Prison.

1988 Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq is killed in an airplane crash suspected of being an assassination.

1998 President Bill Clinton admits to the American public that he had affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

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Today in History
1587 In the Roanoke Island colony, Ellinor and Ananias Dare become parents of a baby girl whom they name Virginia, the first English child born in what would become the United States.

1698 After invading Denmark and capturing Sweden, Charles XII of Sweden forces Frederick IV of Denmark to sign the Peace of Travendal.

1759 The French fleet is destroyed by the British under "Old Dreadnought" Boscawen at the battle of Lagos Bay.

1782 Poet and artist William Blake marries Catherine Sophia Boucher.

1862 Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart's headquarters is raided by Union troops of the 5th New York and 1st Michigan cavalries.

1864 Union General William T. Sherman sends General Judson Kilpatrick to raid Confederate lines of communication outside Atlanta. The raid is unsuccessful.

1870 Prussian forces defeat the French at the Battle of Gravelotte during the Franco-Prussian War.

1898 Adolph Ochs takes over the New York Times, saying his aim is to give "the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that is permissible in good society, and give it early, if not earlier, than it can be learned through any other medium."

1914 Germany declares war on Russia while President Woodrow Wilson issues his Proclamation of Neutrality.

1920 Tennessee becomes the thirty-sixth state to ratify the nineteenth amendment granting women's sufferage, completing the three-quarters necessary to put the amendment into effect.

1929 The first cross-country women's air derby begins. Louise McPhetride Thaden wins first prize in the heavier-plane division, while Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie finishes first in the lighter-plane category.

1939 The film The Wizard of Oz opens in New York City.

1942 Japan sends a crack army to Guadalcanal to repulse the U.S. Marines fighting there.

1943 The Royal Air Force Bomber Command completes the first major strike against the German missile development facility at Peenemunde.

1963 James Meredith, the first African American to attend University of Mississippi, graduates.

1965 Operation Starlite marks the beginning of major U.S. ground combat operations in Vietnam.

1966 Australian troops repulse a Viet Cong attack at Long Tan.

1969 Two concert goers die at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, New York, one from an overdose of heroin, the other from a burst appendix.

1991 A group of hard-line communist leaders unhappy with the drift toward the collapse of the Soviet Union seize control of the government in Moscow and place President Mikhail S. Gorbachev under house arrest

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August 19

1493 Maximilian succeeds his father Frederick III as Holy Roman Emperor.

1587 Sigismund III is chosen to be the king of Poland.

1692 Five women are hanged in Salem, Massachusetts after being convicted of the crime of witchcraft. Fourteen more people are executed that year and 150 others are imprisoned.

1772 Gustavus III of Sweden eliminates the rule of parties and establishes an absolute monarchy.

1779 Americans under Major Henry Lee take the British garrison at Paulus Hook, New Jersey.

1812 The USS Constitution earns the nickname "Old Ironsides" during the battle off Nova Scotia that saw her defeat the HMS Guerriere.

1914 The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) lands in France.

1934 38 million Germans vote to make Adolf Hitler the official successor to President von Hindenburg.

1936 Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca is shot by Franco's troops after being forced to dig his own grave.

1942 A raid on Dieppe, France by British and Canadian commandos is repulsed by the German Army.

1944 In an effort to prevent a communist uprising in Paris, Charles DeGualle begins attacking German forces all around the city.

1950 Edith Sampson becomes the first African-American representative to the United Nations.

1957 The first balloon flight to exceed 100,000 feet takes off from Crosby, Minnesota.

1965 U.S. forces destroy a Viet Cong stronghold near Van Tuong, in South Vietnam.

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August 20

917 A Byzantine counter-offensive is routed by Syeon at Anchialus, Bulgaria.

1619 The first group of twenty Africans is brought to Jamestown, Virginia.

1667 John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.

1741 Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering, commisioned by Peter the Great of Russia to find land connecting Asia and North America, discovers America.

1794 American General "Mad Anthony" Wayne defeats the Ohio Indians at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in the Northwest territory, ending Indian resistance in the area.

1847 General Winfield Scott wins the battle of Churubusco on his drive to Mexico City.

1904 Dublin's Abbey Theatre is founded, an outgrowth of the Irish Literary Theatre founded in 1899 by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory.

1908 The American Great White Fleet arrives in Sydney, Australia, to a warm welcome.

1913 700 feet above Buc, France, parachutist Adolphe Pegond becomes the first person to jump from an airplane and land safely.

1914 Russia wins an early victory over Germany at Gumbinnen.

1940 After a previous machine gun attack failed, exiled Russian Leon Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City, with an alpine ax to the back of the head.

1940 Radar is used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain. Also on this day, in a radio broadcast, Winston Churchill makes his famous homage to the Royal Air Force: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

1941 Adolf Hitler authorizes the development of the V-2 missile.

1944 United States and British forces close the pincers on German units in the Falaise-Argentan pocket in France.

1971 The Cambodian military launches a series of operations against the Khmer Rouge.

[Damelon]

Aug. 20, 1953: Soviets Say, 'We've Got the H-Bomb, Too'

1953: The Cold War shifts into overdrive with the public acknowledgement by the Soviet Union that it has successfully tested its first hydrogen bomb.
The detonation, which occurred Aug. 12 at the Semipalatinsk test site on the Kazakhstan steppe, allowed the Soviets to draw even in the arms race again. The United States had detonated its first hydrogen bomb the previous November out in the Pacific atolls.
Physicist Andrei Sakharov, who would eventually become one of the USSR's most famous dissidents, was one of the chief designers of its hydrogen bomb. That weapon carried the explosive power of 400 kilotons of TNT, making it roughly 26 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima eight years earlier.
Thus began a long rivalry of bomb-test one-upmanship between the world's two superpowers, dragging on through the 1950s into the '60s.
The Soviets, especially, developed a fondness for the hydrogen bomb and tested increasingly powerful versions. The tests culminated in 1961 with the dropping of the so-called Tsar bomb, packing a 60-megaton wallop, making it the most powerful thermonuclear device ever detonated.
There were repercussions far from the testing grounds, too, as both sides became more and more fearful and paranoid of the other. In the United States, within days of the initial Soviet H-bomb announcement, President Eisenhower stripped J. Robert Oppenheimer of his security clearances, believing that the father of the U.S. atomic bomb harbored communist sympathies. Ike also sacked a few thousand government employees who seemed a little too pink for his liking.

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August 21

1129 The warrior Yoritomo is made Shogun without equal in Japan.

1525 Estavao Gomes returns to Portugal after failing to find a clear waterway to Asia.

1794 France surrenders the island of Corsica to the British.

1808 Napoleon Bonaparte's General Junot is defeated by Wellington at the first Battle of the Peninsular War at Vimiero, Portugal.

1831 Nat Turner leads a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia that kills close to 60 whites.

1858 The first of a series of debates begins between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. Douglas goes on to win the Senate seat in November, but Lincoln gains national visibility for the first time.

1863 Confederate raiders under William Quantrill strike Lawrence, Kansas, leaving 150 civilians dead.

1864 Confederate General A.P. Hill attacks Union troops south of Petersburg, Va., at the Weldon railroad. His attack is repulsed, resulting in heavy Confederate casualties.

1915 Italy declares war on Turkey.

1942 U.S. Marines turn back the first major Japanese ground attack on Guadalcanal in the Battle of Tenaru.

1944 The Dumbarton Oaks conference, which lays the foundation for the establishment of the United Nations, is held in Washington, D.C.

1945 President Harry S. Truman cancels all contracts under the Lend-Lease Act.

1959 Hawaii is admitted into the Union.

1963 The South Vietnamese Army arrests over 100 Buddhist monks in Saigon.

1968 Soviet forces invade Czechoslovakia because of the country's experiments with a more liberal government.

1996 The new Globe theater opens in England.

[Damelon]

Aug. 21, 1993: Mars Probe Disappears, Never To Be Found

1993: NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer, a scientific probe sent to study the geology and climate of the red planet. Contact with the craft is never re-established, and the reasons for its disappearance remain a mystery.
The Mars Observer, launched on Sept. 25, 1992, was supposed to be the first of a three-probe series for NASA's Planetary Observer project -- the others were bound for Mercury and the moon -- but its failure resulted in scrubbing the other two missions.
Contact was lost with the Mars Observer only three days before it was to enter its Martian orbit.
Had the spacecraft attained a successful orbit, the primary objectives for the mission included determining the elemental makeup of the Martian surface, studying the planet's magnetic and gravitational fields, establishing the nature of its atmospheric circulation, and evaluating the topography.
All of that would have to be left to future missions, and the Mars Observer goes into NASA's annals as a major failure. If anything was gained from the $980 million project, the scientific instruments developed for Observer were used by subsequent orbiters.