August 10

The Louvre opens in Paris (1793); HBD Smithsonian Institution (1846); Former President Herbert Hoover born (1874); HBD Kylie Jenner (1997); Jeffrey Epstein found dead in jail while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges (2019).

August 7

Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche born (1904); HBD actress Charlize Theron (1975); Operation Desert Shield preps US to enter Gulf War (1990); US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed, killing 224 and wounding 4,500 (1998); RIP journalist Peter Jennings (2005).

August 6

Iconic actress Lucille Ball born (1911); Pop artist Andy Warhol born (1928); Voting Rights Act signed (1965); Curiosity rover lands on Mars (2012).

Pete Hamill

Pete Hamill Dies: New York City Columnist, Editor And Author

Pete Hamill, on stage in New York City in 2009.

Legendary newspaperman and author Pete Hamill has died at the age of 85 in New York City, his hometown.

"He fell on Saturday and died this morning of heart and kidney failure," his longtime literary agent Esther Newberg told NPR in an email, adding, "One of a kind."

The high-school dropout and former newspaper delivery boy from Brooklyn scrapped his way up the tabloid ranks back when those newsrooms boasted reporters and columnists such as Nora Ephron and William F. Buckley, as Hamill told WHYY's Fresh Air in 2011.

"These were not people who thought the audience was stupid," he said. "They thought the audience was smart, and they wrote up to the audience instead of down. And I think that's the kind of paper fading mainly because editors are afraid of offending anyone and the result is often a bland kind of porridge."

AUTHOR INTERVIEWS

Pete Hamill Revisits The Newsroom In 'Tabloid City'

Hamill worked as a foreign correspondent in Spain before becoming a beloved reporter, editor and columnist at the New York Daily News and the New York Post. He covered everything from the civil rights movement to 9/11, wrote for most of the leading magazines of his day and authored twenty books, including his acclaimed 1995 memoir, A Drinking Life, that detailed his decision to quit alcohol.

Hamill is survived by two children and his wife, journalist Fukiko Aoki Hamill.

August 5

Space pioneer Neil Armstrong born (1930); RIP Marilyn Monroe (1962); US, UK, and Soviet Union sign Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963); RIP Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison (2019).

On this day in 1858, Canadian-American suffragist, abolitionist, mountaineer and journalist Julia Archibald Holmes became the first woman on record to summit Colorado's Pikes Peak. Pikes Peak is the highest point in the southern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains, with an elevation of 14,115 ft.

August 4

Jazz legend Louis Armstrong born (1901); Anne Frank and family are captured after two years hiding from Nazis (1944); HBD former President Barack Obama (1961); HBD Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex (1981); Rwanda peace treaty signed (1993).

August 3

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