August is . . . . National Catfish Month, National Golf  Month, National Eye Exam Month, National Water Quality Month, Romance Awareness Month, Peach Month, and Foot Health Month. The full moon has a few names; Sturgeon Moon - Reminds Professor Sy Yentz of the Madonna hit record, Like a Sturgeon.  It is  also called the Green Corn Moon or Grain Moon. Science Gnus is an Almanacish compendium  News of Science, History, Mathematics and Items of Interest with comment and elucidation for each day of the year.  It also contains Professor Sy Yentz, answering questions, Dr. Matt Matician connecting science and mathematics, the Activity of the Month, Factorinos, Trivia Questions, Bonus Trivia Questions, Extinct Kaput animals and plants, Jokes, Obscure Questions, Scientists of the Month, and the Flower, Rock and Words of the Month

1.     1291 - Happy Switzerland Day as  a pact was made to form the Swiss Confederation. The anniversary of this founding has been celebrated as National Day in Switzerland since 1891, the 600th anniversary of the Swiss Confederation.  But why does the cheese have holes in it? Actually it is because of the flatulence of bacteria...Really......see our trivia question for July.

         1498 - On his third voyage, with six ships, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set foot on the American mainland for the first time, at the Paria Peninsula in present-day Venezuela. Thinking it an island, he christened it Isla Santa and claimed it for Spain. Also see August 3 below.

      1770 - Happy Birthday, William Clark, American explorer of Lewis and Clark fame.

      1793- The first definition was made for the meter: 1/10 000 000 of the northern quadrant of the Paris meridian (5 132 430 toises of Paris, from the North Pole to the equator). You can figure it out because it makes no sense to Professor Sy Yentz.

        1774, Joseph Priestley, British Presbyterian minister and chemist, identified a gas which he called "dephlogisticated air" -- later known as oxygen (probably to the relief of Oprah Winfrey who would have had to name her television network, "Dephlogisticated Air" instead of Oxygen.

        1779 - Happy Birthday, Francis Scott Key author of The Star-Spangled Banner:, our national anthem

       1790 -The first American census was taken.........Presumably someone gave it back.

        1819-  Happy Birthday, Maria Mitchell, first professional woman astronomer in the United States, born Nantucket, Mass. On Oct. 1 1847, she first gained notice for the observation of a comet which she was first to report. She was also the first female member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences.

        1819- Same day as Maria Mitchell, Happy Birthday, Herman Melville, American author of Moby Dick and Billie Budd.

       1876 - Colorado entered the Union as the 38th state, the "Centennial State".

      1873-  A great day for present day San Francisco tourism. The first cable car was rolled out as British inventor Andrew Smith Hallidie revolutionized transportation methods in San Francisco when he successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city as a solution to the problem of providing mass transit up and down San Francisco's steep hills.

   1893, -Henry D. Perky of Colorado and William Ford of Watertown, NY, patented shredded wheat. This attractive breakfast treat  is composed of whole wheat which has been boiled, partially dried, then  pressed out into thin shreds and baked. Sounds as delicious as it looks.

     1960- Chubby Checker’s  recording of "The Twist" was released for the first time. A middling success  the first time, it was released for the second time in 1962 and became a monster hit record and resulted in the dance craze of the 1960s.

   1914 - Thanks to interlocking alliances and amazing diplomatic stupidity, on June 28, 1914,   Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was shot to death Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The event is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, On August 1, Four days after the assassination, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Germany and Russia declared war against each other, France ordered a general mobilization, and the first German army units crossed into Luxembourg in preparation for the German invasion of France. During the next three days, Russia, France, Belgium, and Great Britain all aligned against Austria-Hungary and Germany, and the German army invaded Belgium. World War 1, at that time it was called "the Great War", ensued and was a war of unprecedented destruction and loss of life, resulting in the deaths of some 20 million soldiers and civilians as military leaders fought with the same stupidity displayed by the diplomats.

    1946 - Almost a year after World War II ended, Congress established the United States Atomic Energy Commission to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the Atomic Energy Act on  August 1 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands.

     1957- The Solar Building in Albuquerque NM, was the first commercial building to be heated by the sun's energy.

         1971- Speaking of disasters, the comedy variety show The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuted.  Sonny left us a while ago after skiing into a tree but Cher continues on.  She is currently on her 27th "Farewell" tour.

        1981-  " I want my MTV" -MTV (Music Television) made its debut at 12:01 a.m. The first music video shown on the rock-video cable channel was "Video Killed the Radio Star", by the Buggles. Remember, this was 1981 and MTV actually played music back then.

       2000- An Israeli man become the first recipient of the Jarvik 2000, the first total artificial heart that can maintain blood flow in addition to generating a pulse.

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2.     1754 -  Happy Birthday, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, architect, engineer, Revolutionary War officer who designed the plan for city of Washington D.C.

         1791, Samuel Briggs and his son, Samuel Briggs, Jr. became the first father-son pair to receive a joint patent. Their invention was a nail-making machine.

         1834 -  Happy Birthday, Frederic Bartholdi, French sculptor of the Statue of Liberty

          1835 - Happy Birthday, Elisha Gray a U.S. scientist and inventor who would have been known to us as the inventor of the telephone if Alexander Graham bell hadn't got to the patent office before him earlier that day, resulting in a famous legal battle, which he lost, over who would get the patent.

        1858 - The first street letter boxes were set up in Boston. Previously all letters had to be mailed at the Post Office.  

        1876 - William H. "Wild Bill" Hickok, one of the greatest gunfighters of the American West, was murdered in Deadwood, South Dakota. Wild Bill was playing poker and had Aces and Eights when he was shot from behind by one Jack McCall (later hanged for the crime). Hickok was 39. The hand of black Aces and Eights has come to be known as "the dead man's hand".

       1923 - President Warren G. Harding died of a stroke at the age of 58 in a hotel in San Francisco. Harding had just toured Alaska and the West Coast, a journey some believed he had taken to be as far as possible from Washington and the increasing rumors of corruption in his administration.

      1934 -   With the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler became absolute dictator of Germany under the title of Führer, or "Leader."

       1939 - German-born physicist Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging "watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action" on the part of the United States in atomic research. Einstein, a lifelong pacifist, feared that Nazi Germany had begun work on an atomic bomb.

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3.  1492- From the Spanish port of Palos, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus set sail in command of three ships--the Santa Marýa, the Pinta, and the Niýa--on a journey to find a western sea route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia. On October 12, the expedition sighted land, probably Watling Island in the Bahamas, and went ashore the same day, claiming it for Spain. Later that month, Columbus sighted Cuba, which he thought was mainland China, and in December the expedition landed on Hispaniola, which Columbus thought might be Japan. So basically, he had no idea where he was. He established a small colony there with 39 of his men. The explorer returned to Spain with gold, spices, and "Indian" captives in March 1493 and was received with t honors by the Spanish court of Ferdinand and Isabella. He was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century. Also see August 1 above.

     1769- The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California were first noticed by a Spanish expedition.  Juan Crespi, a Franciscan friar with the expedition of Gaspar de Portola, the first Spanish governor of the “Californias”, he wrote, "a most unusual creature emerged from the pits”……….”it claims it is called a "Paris Hilton". 

       1811- Happy Birthday, Elisha Otis, American inventor. Otis did not invent the elevator, he invented the automatic safety brake for elevators, which later made high-rise buildings practical. Prior to this many elevators ended their descent on impact.

      1880 - The American Canoe Association paddled into existence at Lake George, New York.

      1900 – Happy Birthday, John T. Scopes, high school teacher, actually working as a substitute biology teacher when accused of teaching evolution in early April of 1924 and subject of famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.

     1908-A nearly complete, buried, skeleton of a Neanderthal man was discovered in a cave at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France, by two young brothers Amédée and Jean Bouyssonie.  It was later identified as Larry King.

            1908- And on the same day, and still underground -  the Philadelphia Subway opened. It was also known as Tube Transportation. The original 1908 section was built with private funds by the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company and  ran east and west under Market Street from 15th Street to 2nd Street; Municipal funds were not used until a subsequent line that opened in 1928

      1933 - The infamous Mickey Mouse Watch was introduced. It sold for $2.75. A Mickey Mouse Clock sold for $1.50 but then it was harder to keep it on your wrist.

      1958 -  Leaving from Point Barrow, Alaska, the USS Nautilus (named after the submarine piloted by Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)  became the first submarine to travel under the geographic North Pole as it then continued on to Greenland

       1996 - A sacred day in the history of wedding receptions as the Macarena by Los Del Rio, hit #1 on "Billboard". It stayed and stayed at the top -- for 14 smash weeks. It will never leave us.  It will be played and played forever................isn't that a violation of the Geneva Convention about cruel punishment? Or is We’ve Only Just Begun even worse?

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4.  

1693 -Champagne was invented by Dom Perignon. Well, not so fast there pilgrim....the English rather than the French were the ones who invented Champagne in the 17th century. And  the word "invented"  means making sparkling wine deliberately, and through a reproducible process. The first French documents that refer to Champagne date from 1718. These papers report that the first time this happened was around 20 years earlier (bringing the date to circa 1698). In England however, Sir George Etheredge made mention of sparkling wine as early as 1676. Source - http://www.champagneinfo.net/Productie/ChampagneHistorie/tabid/174/Default.aspx. ..... Dom Perignon was a was a Benedictine monk frequently credited (erroneously) with the invention of champagne. The Méthode champenoise was developed by him. The cuvée of champagne Dom Pérignon is named after him and if the wine is good, what does it matter?

     1755 - Happy Birthday, Nicolas Jacqes Conte, the French inventor of the modern pencil.

     1792 - Happy Birthday, Percy Byssche Shelley, English Romantic poet  of, among others, his masterpiece Prometheus Unbound , Ode to the West Wind, and To a Skylark.

       1892 -"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her father 40 whacks and when she was done, she gave her mother forty-one..".   Someone killed Andrew and Abby Borden of Fall River, Mass..  Couldn't have been daughter Lizzie who just happened to be in the house when it happened, and was seen burning the dress she wore that day. She was a “sweet young woman” and the jury acquitted her in 90 minutes.  Probably the only 12 people in the universe that didn't think she did it.

      1912 - See below 1944 - on the same day Anne Frank would be arrested - Happy Birthday, Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish humanitarian who rescued at least 100,000 Jews from certain death in World War II. He died in a Communist (Russia) prison July 17, 1947)

     1922 - As opposed to the rest of the time when your phone goes dead, this time phone service was shut down on purpose as every telephone in the U.S. and Canada went dead when AT&T and the Bell System shut down all its switchboards and switching stations for one minute in memory of Alexander Graham Bell, who had died two days earlier. During this time, none of the 13 million telephones in operation could be used.

      1944 -Acting on tip from a traitorous Dutch informer, the Nazi Gestapo captured 15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. The Franks had been hidden there in 1942 because of fear of deportation to a Nazi concentration camp.  The Franks were initially imprisoned in Auschwitz, Anne and her sister, Margot were then sent to Bergen-Belson death camp where they died in early 1945, just 2 months before the liberation of the camp by the allied army.

        1952 - The first transatlantic helicopter flight was made  by two US Air Force H-19s.  They flew from Massachusetts to Weisbaden, Germany in 51 hours, 55 minutes.  The luggage was lost.

       1964 - The murdered bodies of three civil rights workers were found buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner had disappeared June 21, not long after they had been held for six hours in the Neshoba County, Mississippi jail on charges of speeding.

         1983 - Ornithologicide!! New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield was arrested after a game by Toronto police (who presumably had nothing better to do) after he threw a baseball during warm ups and accidentally killed a seagull. Question if the bird lived near a bay would it be called a baygull (with cream cheese)?

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 5.    1858 – The first trans-Atlantic cable. In 1854, Cyrus West Field had conceived the idea of the telegraph cable across the ocean  and obtained a charter to lay a line across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. He made four unsuccessful attempts, beginning in 1857.  Evidently they could not obtain a 2,000 mile long extension cord.  Ha ha ha Professor Sy Yentz has his extensive sense of humor.  In July 1858, howver, four British and American vessels--the Agamemnon, the Valorous, the Niagara, and the Gorgon--met in mid-ocean for the fifth attempt.  On August 5, the cable had been successfully laid, stretching nearly 2,000 miles across the Atlantic at a depth often of more than two miles. On August 16, President James Buchanan and Queen Victoria exchanged formal introductory and complimentary messages. He asked her for a date and then they went to see the Broadway musical, Grease.  Unfortunately, the cable proved weak and the electric current insufficient and by the beginning of September had ceased functioning.  They didn’t get a permanent cable until 1866.

      1861 – The Income tax was first passed into law in 1861, NOT 1913. The text of the law read: SEC. 89 And be it further enacted, That for the purpose of modifying and reenacting, as hereinafter provided, so much of an act, entitled "An act to provide increased revenue from imports to pay interest on the public debt, and for other purposes," approved fifth of August, eighteen hundred and sixty-one, as relates to income tax;... They kept calling it a duty not a tax.

            1864 - The spectrum of a comet was observed by Giovanni Donati, who concluded that comets are, at least in part, gaseous. Between 1854 and 1864 he discovered six new comets, the brightest of which, found in 1858, became known as Donati’s Comet.

          1864- "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" said Union Admiral David Farragut as he lead his flotilla to victory at the Battle of Mobile, Alabama.  With the loss of one of its last major Southern ports, the fall of Mobile Bay was a huge blow to the Confederacy, and the victory was the first in a series of military successes that aided the reelection of Abraham Lincoln over George McClellan in 1864.

       1884 - The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty was laid at Bedloe’s Island (now called Liberty Island), New York. The actual statue, designed by Fredric Bartholdi, was accepted as a gift to the United States from the people of France by U.S. President Grover Cleveland on October 28, 1886. 

       1914 - Traffic lights were installed Cleveland, OH.  They had red and green lights and buzzers. The American Traffic Signal Co. turned over to the City of Cleveland on, the first set of traffic signals, which were installed at East 105th street and Euclid avenue. They cleverly placed the signals in operation at five p. m – rush hour.

       1930- "That's one small step for (a) man..........."  Happy Birthday, Neil Armstrong, born in Wapakoneta, OH.  The first man to walk on the moon.  Commander Armstrong’s first space flight occurred in 1966 aboard Gemini 8. During this flight, he and fellow astronaut David Scott successfully performed the first docking in space between two vehicles – a necessary step for the moon landings to come when the lunar module would have to dock with the command module…..and make sure that no aliens jumped out of people’s stomachs.

    1948 - An earthquake occurred just about 100 miles from Quito,  Ecuador killing 6,000 people and injuring another 20,000.  The 6.7-magnitude tremor was particularly deadly for its size because of the landslides it set off.

            1957 –American Bandstand, hosted by Dick Clark and featuring lip-synching recording artists and dance trend setting teens, made it’s network debut on  ABC. Bandstand began as a local program on WFIL-TV (now WPVI), Channel 6 in Philadelphia on October 7, 1952. Then it was hosted by Bob Horn and was called Bob Horn's Bandstand. After a brief scandal involving the host and underage girls, the show got a new host in July 1965, clean-cut 26 year old Dick Clark. When ABC picked the show up, it was renamed American Bandstand, and made it's first national show debut on this day in  1957. The show was moved to Los Angeles in 1964. ….where either it lost its soul or Professor Sy Yentz had moved on musically and didn’t care anymore. From 1963 to 1987 Bandstand was on only once a week, on Saturday. Briefly it was part of the USA Network with new host David Hirsh but went off the air in 1989.

1962 - Movie actress Marilyn Monroe was found dead, an apparent suicide, in her home in Los Angeles. And on the same day in 1984, British actor, Richard Burton died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

            1962 -And, speaking of stars, on this day in  Australian radio astronomers fixed the location of the previously known radio source 3C 273, in the constellation Virgo. In 1963 this became the first member of a new class of object eventually to be called quasars or "quasi-stellar radio sources." An optical telescope at the Hale Observatory saw it as a faint star-like object with a visible jet. Quasars radiate as much energy per second as a hundred or more galaxies. 3C273 is the still brightest quasar known.

                  1963- The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed.  It banned nuclear weapons tests "or any other nuclear explosion" in the atmosphere, in outer space, and under water. They could, however, still be tested underground.

      1969 - Mariner 7 flew past Mars. It took quite a few pictures and made several Martian atmospheric readings regarding temperature and composition. August 5 almost had another Martian experience. See below.

       1973 -The USSR launched Mars 6, which unfortunately made it to Mars but the data sent back was unreadable because of a flawed computer chip. And of course in that Communist Utopia , no one ever bothered to mention the failure.

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6.   1181- A supernova was observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers. 

     1667- Happy Birthday, Johann Bernoulli major member of the Bernoulli family of Swiss mathematicians. He investigated the then new math of calculus, which he applied to the measurement of curves, to differential equations, and to mechanical problems.

    1753- In a shocking experience, Professor Georg Richmann of St. Petersburg, Moscow, was killed by his experiment with lightning. One year after Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment, Richmann attached a wire to the top of his house and led it down to an iron bar suspended above "the electric needle" and a bowl of water partly filled with iron filings. It was reported that during a storm, Richmann was struck while about a foot from the bar, and closely observing the needle. "A globe of blue and whitish fire about four inches in diameter" came from the bar struck Richmann's forehead" with "an explosion like that of a small cannon." That was the end of Dr. Richmann.  He did, however get to join the “circuits”.

     1809 - " Half a league, Half a league, Half a league onward.  Into the valley of death  road the six hundred.... Happy Birthday, Alfred Tennyson, English poet and author of The Charge of the Light Brigade among many others.

      1881 - Happy Birthday, Sir Alexander Fleming, Scottish bacteriologist, who discovered penicillin. In 1928, while working on influenza virus, he observed that mold had developed accidentally on a staphylococcus culture plate and that the mold had created a bacteria-free circle around itself. He experimented further and he found that a mold culture prevented growth of staphylococci, even when diluted 800 times. The  substance, which he named Katie Couric……no no no, he named it penicillin, began the highly effective practice of antibiotic therapy for infectious diseases.

    1890 - Continuing with our electrical theme from 1753, the electric chair was used for the first time - to execute the murderer, William Kemmler, in New York..

    1911 - I Love Lucy.  Happy Birthday comedienne Lucille Ball, born near Jamestown, NY.

    1926 - Gertrude Ederle became the first American woman to swim the English Channel.  It took 14 hours and 34 minutes.  She had just missed the ferry, dove in and never did catch it.

     1928 - Happy Birthday, Andy Warhol, one of the most influential artists of the latter part of the 20th century. He was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania1

     1945, - Seeking a quick end to World War II and prevent perhaps a million casualties that an invasion of Japan would incur, an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, by the American B-29, Enola Gay (named after pilot, Lt. Col. Paul Tibbett's mother).

      1985 - The 19th space shuttle mission, Challenger landed at Edwards AFB.  The Challenger's next flight, January 28, 1986 would be the disaster 73 seconds after take-off that took the lives of 7 astronauts.

        1996 - NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin announced the discovery of evidence of a primitive life form on Mars. The evidence came from a fossil found on a meteorite in Antarctica believed to have come from Mars billions of years ago.  The primitive life was later identified as Richard Nixon or possibly Al Gore.

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7.    1782- George Washington created the Order of the Purple Heart, a decoration to recognize merit in enlisted men and noncommissioned officers.  At his headquarters in Newburgh, New York, Washington devised a  badge, for "any singularly meritorious Action," was the "Figure of a Heart in Purple Cloth or Silk edged with narrow Lace or Binding." This device, the Badge of Military Merit, was affixed to the uniform coat above the left breast and permitted its wearer to pass guards and sentinels without challenge and to have his name and regiment inscribed in a Book of Merit.  It fell out of used after the Revolution until 1931 when General Douglas MacArthur, reopened work on a new design. His object was medal issued on the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth.Miss Elizabeth Will, an Army heraldic specialist in the Office of the Quartermaster General, was named to redesign the newly revived medal, which became known as the Purple Heart.

            1794- Angry farmers in the Monongahela Valley of Pennsylvania rebelled against the federal tax on liquor and stills. This was the Whiskey Rebellion as the farmers demonstrated their anger by torching tax collector's homes, as well as "tarring and feathering revenue officers." The government moved quickly to quell the rebellion: President Washington called in 12,900 Federal troops from to surrounding states to forcefully usher the farmers back to their homes where everyone had a shot of Jack Daniels’ and then another and then another and then they for got what they were angry about.

                1869- You’ve seen versions eclipses of the Sun saving explorers or soldiers in many movies but on this day, George Davidson, a prominent astronomer and explorer was exploring the Chilkat Valley in Alaska and correctly predicted an eclipse of the Sun.  It may have saved his life.  He had been warned that the Chilkat Indians were angry because of previous provocations and might be hostile. His initial meeting with the Chilkat on August 6 was tense. Davidson explained that he had come for purely scientific reasons, and he meant them no harm. Understandably, because of previous treatment from white folks, the Indians were skeptical.  Chilkat said that he was especially anxious to observe a total eclipse of the sun that he predicted would occur the following day. The Indians didn’t believe him, but they left the party in peace for the time being.Sure enough on August 7,  the sky grew dark over the Chilkat Valley as the moon eclipsed the sun, as Davidson had predicted. The Chilkat fled to the woods. Thereafter, they left Davidson and his party alone, leading one historian to speculate that the astronomer's prediction may have saved the entire team from attack.

            1876 – Happy Birthday, Mata Hari.  Mata Hari  was the stage name of the Dutch exotic dancer and prostitute Gertrud Margarete Zelle, who was shot by the French as a spy on October 15,  1917.
            1888 - Theophilus Van Kannel of Philadelphia received a patent for the revolving door.  He had actually tried several times but  he kept going around in circles. There were several problems connected to conventional push/pull open doors. Van Kannel’s revolving door served as an airlock, preventing the rapid influx of cold air into warm buildings on chilly, windy days. The revolving door also kept out street noises and fumes. The door proved particularly useful in skyscrapers, where the pressure differences created by a large column of warm air inside the building and the outside cold air made conventional doors difficult to open or close.  You’ve all seen those doors that “refuse to close” on a windy day.

      1896- Happy Birthday, Luis Allen Hazeltine, of Morristown, NJ, invented the neutrodyne circuit.  This circuit made commercial radio possible…….. considering the quality of commercial radio that  we hear today...............was this a good thing?

     1903 – Happy Birthday, Louis Leakey, British archaeologist and anthropologist born in Kabete, Kenya.. Leakey was largely responsible for convincing scientists that Africa, rather than Java or China, was the most significant area to search for evidence of human origins. Louis Leakey, his wife Mary, and their second son Richard made the key discoveries that have shaped our understanding of the first men, including Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Larry King, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, Dick Clark and Barbara Walters.

            1915 -Driving a Peugeot, race-car driver Dario Resta broke the 100mph speed barrier in a race in Chicago.  Nowadays people routinely top 100mph as they race to the last parking space in a mall parking lot during Christmas shopping season.

                1928- Deflation!  The dollar went to a "shrink"! The dollar was left in the pants pocket and put in the dryer and it shrank.  Nah, Professor Sy Yentz has his laundromatic humor. On this day the day the dollar literally shrank. The Treasury unveiled a new version of the note that was one third smaller than its predecessor.  All the other bills shrank too.  Shrink shrank shrunk. Now everyone had to change to a new size wallet.

            1937 - Happy Birthday, William R. Maples (had a large and syrupy family tree did Dr. Maples), American forensic anthropologist who examined and identified the skeletons of a number of historical figures, including Czar Nicholas II and other members of the Romanov family killed in 1918 by the Bolsheviks, Vietnam MIAs, conquistador Francisco Pizarro, President Zachary Taylor -to determine if he had been poisoned, as had been proposed by some at the time. Test results showed that he had not been, and in 1994 helped convict Byron De La Beckwith of the 1963 murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Author of Dead Men Do Tell Tales.

       1942 – Nine months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. forces landed at Guadalcanal, marking the start of the first major allied offensive in the Pacific during World War II.

            1947 - In a remarkable feat of navigation in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, the wooden raft Kon-Tiki, which carried Thor Heyerdahl and five companions more than 4,000 miles from Peru, made landfall on a reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands – near Tahiti in Polynesia. Some people will do anything to avoid the fares on the cruise ships.  The raft was later entered in a race,  the Kon Tiki Derby.

      1959 -  The first photograph ever taken of the earth by a U.S. satellite showed a crescent shape of part of the planet in sunlight. Visible was Mexico taken from 17,000 miles above by the Explorer 6 satellite. The picture took 40 minutes to transmit or about the same time it takes "dial up" internet users to download a picture today.

        1998 - Islamic terrorists set off a pair of major explosions near U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing 224 people, including 12 Americans.

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8.   1886- Happy Birthday, Matthew Henson, the African-American explorer who accompanied Admiral Peary to the North Pole in 1909.  After a disagreement over who would sit on Santa's lap, they went for a ride on Blitzen.

       1901- Happy Birthday, Ernest Lawrence, the South Dakota born physicist (Somehow "Lawrence of South Dakota" does not have the same resonance as Lawrence of Arabia) winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for Physics for his invention of the cyclotron  in 1929.  The cyclotron is a device for accelerating nuclear particles to very high velocities without the use of high voltages. The swiftly moving particles are used to bombard atoms of various elements, disintegrating the atoms to form, in some cases, completely new elements. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Element 103  were named lawrencium (Lr) in his honor.

     1931 – Happy Birthday, Sir Roger Penrose, English mathematician who, with his father Lionel, developed the Penrose stairs, Penrose triangle, and Penrose tiles (think Escher).  He  also calculated the basic features of black holes….namely they are like Robert Frost’s woods – “dark and deep”.

             1948 - Happy Birthday, Svetlana Savitskaya , a Russian cosmonaut, the second woman in space .  She was selected as a cosmonaut in 1980, as part of a female team selected to upstage pending U.S  female astronaut flights on the space shuttle. She became the second woman in space in 1982, seven months before Sally Ride became the first American female astronaut in space  She also became the first woman to walk in space. Her later command of an all-female crew to Salyut 7 on the occasion of International Woman's Day was cancelled due to problems with the space station, a limited number of Soyuz T spacecraft available for docking with the station, who got to use the bathroom first thing in the morning, whose eye shadow was whose, and who got control of the remote so she could watch Oprah.

        1974 -   President Richard M. Nixon announced his intention to become the first president in American history to resign. He was threatened with impeachment and the release of self-incriminating White House tapes involving him in the scandal to cover up the infamous Watergate burglary of the Democratic National Committee in 1972. Just before noon the next day, August 9, Nixon officially handed in his papers and ended his term as the 37th president of the United States.  Gerald Ford (not the sharpest knife in the drawer), who had been appointed Vice President when Spiro T. Agnew resigned, became the 38th president (a word that Ford could probably not even spell).

       2005 -