This Week In #History … August 8th – August 14th

#TalkNerdyToMeLover’s @UlaVovk

Aug 8
1549 France declares war on England
1579 Cornerstone is laid for Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg observatory
1609 Venetian senate examines Galileo Galilei’s telescope
1709 1st known ascent in hot-air balloon, Bartolomeu de Gusmao (indoors)
1796 Boston African Society establishes with 44 members
1854 Smith and Wesson patents metal bullet cartridges
1876 Thomas Edison patents mimeograph
1900 1st Davis Cup tennis competition, named after Dwight Filley Davis, began at Longwood Cricket Club in Massachusetts, and won by U.S. 2 days later
1914 Montenegro declares war on Germany
1922 Italian general strike broken by fascist terror
1929 German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight
1940 Battle of Britain began as Germany launches air attacks
1953 U.S. and South Korea initial a mutual security pact
1964 Dutch Opera forms in Amsterdam
1977 Texas Rangers turn their 1st triple play (vs A’s)
1985 Japan launches Planet A, a probe to Halley’s comet
1993 Tropical storm Bret ravages Venezuela, about 100 killed
2010 Ongoing flooding and landslides in Gansu Province, China, kill 127 people and result in 2,000 missing

Aug 9
1638 Jonas Bronck of Holland becomes 1st European settler in Bronx
1726 Netherlands signs Covenant of Hannover
1790 Columbia returns to Boston after 3 year journey, 1st ship to carry U.S. flag around the world
1831 1st U.S. steam engine train run (Albany to Schenectady, New York)
1859 Elevator patented
1902 Edward VII of England crowned after death of his mother Victoria
1915 British attack at Chanak Bair at Gallipolis
1923 New York State Golf Association formed
1936 Jesse Owens wins 4th gold medal at Berlin Olympics
1946 1st time all major-league baseball games (8) are played at night
1956 1st state-wide, state-supported educational TV network, Alabama
1969 Manson family commits Tate-LaBianca murders
1974 Richard Nixon resigns presidency, Vice President Gerald Ford becomes 38th president
1988 Edmonton Oilers trade Wayne Gretzky to Los Angeles Kings for $15-$20 millions
1994 Phil Rizzuto Hall of Fame Night
2010 South Korea states that North Korea fired over 100 rounds of artillery into the Sea of Japan, signaling tension along the Korean Peninsula

Aug 10
843 Treaty of Verdun: Brothers Lotharius I, Louis the German and Charles the Bare divide France
1500 Diego Diaz discovers Madagascar
1519 Magellan’s 5 ship set sail to circumnavigate Earth
1774 1st Surinam newspaper (1st Wednesday Suriname) begins publishing
1831 Former slave Nat Turner leads uprising against slavery
1869 O. B. Brown patents moving picture projector
1897 Automobile Club of Great Britain established (now: Royal Auto Club)
1913 2nd Balkan War ends, Treaty of Bucharest, Bulgaria loses
1921 Franklin D. Roosevelt stricken with polio at summer home on Canadian Is of Campobello
1934 Babe Ruth announces this is his final season as full time player
1944 U.S. recaptures Guam from Japanese
1954 Netherlands Indonesian Union breaks up
1966 1st lunar orbiter launched by U.S.
1981 Richard Nixon Museum in San Clemente closes
1992 Satellite TOPEX/Poseidon launched
2010 More than 5,000 people lose their homes and crops when the Niger River bursts its banks

Aug 11
1304 Sea battle of Zierikzee
1597 Germany throws out English sales people
1674 1st Battle of at Seneffe (Louis II Conde vs Willem III)
1874 Harry S. Parmelee patents sprinkler head
1884 1st double-century stand in Test cricket, McDonnell/Murdoch 207 Australia
1904 German-ltalian General Von Trotha defeats Herero in SW Africa
1914 John Wray patents animation
1924 1st newsreel pictures of presidential candidates were taken
1934 1st federal prisoners arrive at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay
1943 Red Army recaptures Tchukujev, at Kharkov
1954 Formal peace takes place, ending 7+ years of fighting in Indochina between French and Communist Vietminh
1966 Last Beatle concert tour of U.S. begins
1975 U.S. vetoes proposed admission of North and South Vietnam to U.N.
1987 France and Great Britain send minesweepers to Persian Gulf
1997 Benin legalizes Jan 10th as a voodoo holiday
2010 Two days after Rwanda’s presidential election, Kigali, Rwanda reports that a grenade attack occurred during rush hour

Aug 12
1099 Crusaders are victorious at Battle of Ascalon
1508 Juan Ponce de Leon arrives in Puerto Rico
1658 1st U.S. police corps forms (New Amsterdam)
1851 Isaac Singer patents sewing machine
1877 Thomas Edison invents Edisonphone, a sound recording device
1901 Boer general Kritzinger driven out of Cape colony
1914 Great Britain declares war on Austria-Hungary
1923 Enrico Tiraboschi is 1st to swim English Channel westward
1933 Cuban dictator Machado y Morales flees after military coup
1940 Netherlands starts rationing textile
1953 Soviet Union conducts secret test of its 1st hydrogen bomb
1962 1st time 2 people in space
1972 Last American combat ground troops leave Vietnam
1981 IBM introduces PC and PC-DOS version 1.0
1990 Iraq President Saddam Hussein says he is ready to resolve Gulf crisis if Israel withdraws from occupied territories
2010 Director of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, announces plans to release remaining Afghan War Diary documents from War in Afghanistan

Aug 13
1521 Spanish conquerors Tenochtitlan (Mexico City) from Aztecs
1608 John Smith’s story of Jamestown’s 1st days submitted for publication
1651 Litchfield, CT founded
1792 Revolutionaries imprison French royals including Marie Antoinette
1831 Nat Turner leads uprising of slaves in Virginia
1889 William Gray patents coin-operated telephone
1902 England beat Australia by one wicket at The Oval Famous victory
1914 Carl Wickman begins Greyhound, the 1st U.S. bus line, in Minnesota
1923 Germany: Gustav Stresemann becomes premier of coalition government
1933 Jacques van Egmond becomes world champion amateur cyclist
1943 Red army recaptures Spas-Demensk
1951 Great Britain and Iraq sign new oil contract
1961 Construction on Berlin Wall begins in East Germany
1971 Paul and Linda McCartney release “Back Seat of My Car”
1980 Suriname president Johan Ferrier ousted
1993 U.S. Court of Appeals rules congress must save all E-Mail
2010 The German economy reports 2.2 percent quarterly growth, the fastest quarterly growth in over 20 years

Aug 14
1248 Construction of Cologne Cathedral begun
1457 Oldest known exactly dated printed book (c 3 years after Gutenberg)
1585 Queen Elizabeth I refuses sovereignty of Netherlands
1762 English fleet occupies Havana
1820 1st U.S. eye hospital, the New York Eye Infirmary, opens in New York City
1876 Prairie View State University forms
1900 2,000 marines land to capture Beijing, ending Boxer rebellion
1911 General Leconte appointed temporary President of Haiti
1922 1st “old time” musicians broadcasted on radio (Jenkins-WSB Atlanta)
1936 1st Olympic basketball game (Berlin)
1944 Operation Tractable: new Canadian offensive
1958 Canadian Football League plays 1st game (Winnipeg 29, Edmonton 21)
1966 Cleveland Stadium’s 1st rock concert is held, featuring Beatles
1976 10,000 Northern Ireland women demonstrate for peace in Belfast
1984 IBM releases PC DOS version 3.0
1995 Shannon Faulkner becomes 1st woman to attend the Citadel
2010 Abd-al-Rahman Awad, the suspected leader of Fatah al-Islam, the radical Sunni Islamist group, is fatally shot and killed by Lebanon