August 30

Baseball great Ted Williams born (1918); Warren Buffett born (1930); Thurgood Marshall becomes first Black Supreme Court justice (1967); Cameron Diaz born (1972); Guion Bluford becomes first Black person in space (1983).

August 29

"Casablanca" actress Ingrid Bergman born, dies (1915, 1982); Senator John McCain born (1936); Michael Jackson born (1958); Netflix is founded (1997); Hurricane Katrina makes landfall in Louisiana, kills more than 1,800 (2005).

August 28

Black teenager Emmett Till is brutally lynched after wrongfully being accused of offending a white woman (1955); MLK delivers "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, DC (1963); Shania Twain born (1965); Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorce (1996); Actor Chadwick Boseman dies (2020).

August 27

Krakatoa volcano eruption, among the largest in recorded history, kills around 40,000 (1883); President Lyndon B. Johnson born (1908); "Guinness Book of World Records" first published (1955); Sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois dies (1963); American vaudevillian Gracie Allen dies (1964).

August 26

Mother Teresa born (1910); 19th Amendment, granting US women right to vote, takes effect (1920); First televised Major League Baseball game (1939); 13 US military personnel, more than 169 Afghans killed during suicide bombing at Kabul airport (2021); Television host Bob Barker dies (2023).

Julius Caesar

"Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman who played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire."

https://www.unrv.com/julius-caesar/index.php?utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=UNRV+Roman+History+Newsletter+-+Issue+081+-+7423123&sh_kit=64a20f24338333901e4cb7afc40a3cfae56c6770df59fc13cf25a5ce36d78b01

August 24

Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing up to 15,000 people (79); Thomas Edison files patent for the Kinetoscope, an early motion-picture viewer (1891); Brazilian author Paulo Coelho born (1947); Windows 95 released (1995).

August 23

Actor River Phoenix born (1970); Salad Bowl strike begins; largest farmworker strike in US history (1970); Kobe Bryant born (1978); 12-time Olympic swimming medalist Natalie Coughlin born (1982); World Wide Web opens to the public (1991).

August 22

First Geneva Convention held (1864); American poet Dorothy Parker born (1893); Cadillac Motor Co. founded (1902); Althea Gibson is first African American to compete in a US national tennis tournament (1950); Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton is murdered (1989).

August 21

Nat Turner leads rebellion of enslaved people (1831); "Mona Lisa" stolen from The Louvre Museum, is recovered two years later (1911); Basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain born (1936); Hawaii becomes 50th US state (1959); Usain Bolt born (1986).

August 20

First around-the-world telegram sent (1911); "Valley of the Dolls" author Jacqueline Susann is born (1918); Actress Amy Adams born (1974); NASA launches Viking 1 probe toward Mars (1975); Comedian Jerry Lewis dies (2017).

August 19

Fashion designer Coco Chanel born (1883); Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500, hosts first race (1909); Former President Bill Clinton born (1946); Comedian Groucho Marx dies (1977); Final US combat brigade leaves Iraq (2010).

August 17

Actress Mae West born (1893); Robert De Niro born (1943); George Orwell's "Animal Farm" published (1945); President Bill Clinton admits to improper relationship with Monica Lewinsky (1998); Michael Phelps becomes first person to win eight gold medals in single Olympics (2008).

August 16

Gold is discovered in Canada’s Yukon Territory, sparks Klondike gold rush (1896); Babe Ruth dies (1948); Sports Illustrated is first published (1954); Madonna is born (1958); Elvis Presley dies (1977); Aretha Franklin dies (2018).

August 15

Napoleon Bonaparte born (1769); Iconic chef and TV host Julia Child born (1912); Panama Canal opens (1914); Woodstock music festival begins (1969); Civil rights activist Julian Bond dies (2015).

August 14

Steve Martin born (1945); Magic Johnson born (1959); Halle Berry born (1966); Blackout in the US and Canada affects 53 million (2003); US Embassy in Cuba opens for first time in 54 years (2015).

August 13

Sharpshooter Annie Oakley born (1860); Florence Nightingale, pioneer of modern nursing, dies (1910); Fidel Castro born (1926); Construction of the Berlin Wall begins (1961); Baseball great Mickey Mantle dies (1995); Celebrity chef Julia Child dies (2004).

Queen Elizabeth II

"Few figures loom larger in modern history than Queen Elizabeth II, who died at age 96 on September 8, 2022, after reigning for a record-setting 70 years."

https://interestingfacts.com/queen-elizabeth-facts/

August 12

Egyptian queen Cleopatra dies by suicide (30 BCE, estimated); James Bond creator Ian Fleming dies (1964); IBM personal computer is released (1981); Largest ever Tyrannosaurus rex discovered (1990); Hollywood icon Lauren Bacall dies (2014).

August 10

The Louvre opens in Paris (1793); Smithsonian Institution established (1846); Former President Herbert Hoover born (1874); "Hunger Games" author Suzanne Collins born (1962); Jeffrey Epstein found dead in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges (2019).

Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus

"Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, better known as Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, was the last emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty to rule the Roman Empire."

https://www.unrv.com/early-empire/nero.php?utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=UNRV+Roman+History+Newsletter+-+Issue+077+-+7369720&sh_kit=64a20f24338333901e4cb7afc40a3cfae56c6770df59fc13cf25a5ce36d78b01

August 9

The US drops atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing over 40,000 (1945); Whitney Houston born (1963); Actress Sharon Tate, four others murdered by Manson Family (1969); Gerald Ford becomes US president as Richard Nixon resigns (1974); Musician Jerry Garcia dies (1995).

August 8

Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph (1876); Writer Shirley Jackson dies (1965); President Richard Nixon announces his resignation (1974); Roger Federer born (1981); Olivia Newton-John dies (2022). 

August 7

Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche born (1904); Operation Desert Shield preps the US to enter Gulf War (1990); US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed, killing 224 and wounding 4,500 (1998); Track and field star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone born (1999); Journalist Peter Jennings dies (2005).

August 6

Actress Lucille Ball born (1911); Pop artist Andy Warhol born (1928); "Little Boy" atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, killing more than 70,000 (1945); Actress Michelle Yeoh born (1962); Voting Rights Act signed (1965); Curiosity rover lands on Mars (2012).

August 5

Space pioneer Neil Armstrong born (1930); Marilyn Monroe found dead in her Los Angeles home (1962); The US, the UK, and the Soviet Union sign Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963); Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison dies (2019).

August 3

Singer Tony Bennett born (1926); Martha Stewart born (1941); Rival basketball leagues merge to form the NBA (1949); Tom Brady born (1977); 23 killed and 23 injured in mass shooting in El Paso, Texas (2019).

August 2

Declaration of Independence is signed (1776); American actress Myrna Loy born (1905); Alexander Graham Bell dies (1922); Author and activist James Baldwin born (1924); Iraq invades Kuwait, leading to Gulf War (1990).

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci is among the most talented and insightful individuals to ever share our planet. His indelible legacy as a masterful painter persists to this day, as works such as the “Mona Lisa” and “The Last Supper” can attest. In addition to being a prolific Renaissance artist, Leonardo was also a brilliant theorist. His views on the human condition were ahead of their time and remain as relevant today as they were more than 500 years ago. Leonardo kept an extensive series of notebooks and journals to chronicle his thoughts on topics such as painting, anatomy, botany, and paleontology, to name just a few. These original sources provide us with an invaluable direct look into the mind of this great polymath, whose brilliant philosophical observations have inspired countless others over the centuries.

August 1

"Moby-Dick" author Herman Melville born (1819); American frontierswoman Calamity Jane dies (1903); Sniper kills 14, wounds 31 at University of Texas (1966); MTV launches with "Video Killed the Radio Star" as first video (1981).