On this day: August 31

August 31: Independence Day in Malaysia (1957) and Trinidad and Tobago (1962); National Heroes' Day in the Philippines (2015)

Sultan Abdul Hamid II

• 1813 – Peninsular War: At the Battle of San Marcial, the Spanish Army of Galicia under Manuel Alberto Freire turned back Nicolas Soult's last major offensive against Arthur Wellesley's allied army.
• 1876 – Abdul Hamid II (pictured) became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire when his brother Murad V was deposed.
• 1935 – In an effort to stay out of the growing European conflict, the United States passed the first of its Neutrality Acts.
• 1945 – The Liberal Party of Australia, one of the two major Australian political parties, was founded to replace the United Australia Party.
• 1965 – The Aero Spacelines Super Guppy, a large, wide-bodied cargo aircraft used for ferrying outsized cargo components, made its first flight.

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August 31 Wikipedia featured article

Carrow Road is a football stadium located in Norwich, Norfolk, England, and is the home of Norwich City Football Club. The stadium is on the east side of the city, not far from Norwich railway station and the River Wensum. The club originally played at Newmarket Road before moving to The Nest. When The Nest was deemed inadequate for the size of crowds it was attracting, the Carrow Road ground, named after the road on which it is located, was purpose-built by Norwich City in just 82 days and opened on 31 August 1935. The stadium has been altered and upgraded several times during its history, including after a devastating fire that destroyed the old City Stand in 1984. Having once accommodated standing supporters, the ground has been all-seater since 1992, with a current capacity of 27,244. The stadium's record attendance since becoming an all-seater ground is 27,036, set during a Premier League match versus Crystal Palace on 8 August 2015. When standing on the terraces was permitted, Carrow Road saw a crowd of 43,984 when hosting Leicester City for an FA Cup match in 1963. Carrow Road has also hosted under-21 international football and a number of concerts, including performances by Elton John and George Michael. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 30

August 30: Constitution Day in Kazakhstan (1995); St. Rose of Lima's Day in Peru; Victory Day in Turkey

Parliament House, Melbourne

• 1835 – European settlers landing on the north banks of the Yarra River in Southeastern Australia founded the city of Melbourne (Parliament House pictured).
• 1896 – Philippine Revolution: In the Battle of San Juan del Monte, the first real battle of the war, a Katipunan force temporarily captured a powder magazine before being beaten back by a Spanish garrison.
• 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Tannenberg resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army by the German Eighth Army.
• 1959 – The title of National Hero of Indonesia was first given, the recipient being the writer-cum-politician Abdul Muis.
• 1995 – Bosnian War: NATO began its bombing campaign against the Army of Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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August 30 Wikipedia featured article

Judah Benjamin (1811–1884) was a lawyer and United States Senator from Louisiana, a Cabinet officer of the Confederate States and, after his escape to the United Kingdom at the end of the American Civil War, an English barrister. He was the first person professing the Jewish faith to be elected to the Senate, and the first Jew to hold a cabinet position in North America. After attending Yale, Benjamin moved to New Orleans, where he read law and passed the bar. He rose rapidly both at the bar and in politics, becoming a wealthy slaveowner, and serving in both houses of the Louisiana legislature prior to his election to the Senate in 1852. There, he was an ardent supporter of slavery. When war began, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed him Attorney General, and later Secretary of War. Made Secretary of State in 1862, Benjamin unsuccessfully tried to gain recognition of the Confederacy by France and the United Kingdom. When Davis fled from Virginia in early 1865, Benjamin went with him. He escaped to Britain and settled there, becoming a barrister and again rising to the top of his profession before retiring in 1883. He died in Paris the following year. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 29

August 29: Raksha Bandhan (Hinduism, 2015); Feast day for the Beheading of St. John the Baptist (Gregorian calendar)

Flooded areas of New Orleans

• 1475 – After an invasion by England and the Duchy of Burgundy, France signed the Treaty of Picquigny with England, freeing Louis XI to deal with the threat posed by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
• 1842 – The Treaty of Nanking, an unequal treaty ending the First Opium War, was signed, forcing the Chinese Qing dynasty to give control of the island that is now the site of Hong Kong, and other concessions to the British.
• 1949 – The Soviet Union successfully conducted its first nuclear weapons test, exploding the 22-kiloton RDS-1.
• 1991 – Italian businessman Libero Grassi was killed by the Sicilian Mafia after taking a public stand against their extortion demands.
• 2005 – Storm surges of Hurricane Katrina caused multiple breaches in levees around New Orleans, flooding about 80% of the city (pictured) and surrounding areas for weeks.

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August 29 Wikipedia featured article

Birchington-on-Sea is a village and seaside resort in north-east Kent, England, with a population of around 10,000. It faces the North Sea, east of the Thames Estuary, between Herne Bay and Margate. Its main beach is Minnis Bay (pictured); three smaller beaches are surrounded by chalk cliffs, cliff stacks and caves. Roman and prehistoric artefacts indicate that the area was inhabited before the existence of the village, and Minnis Bay was once the site of an Iron Age settlement. The village was first recorded in 1240. Its parish church, All Saints', dates to the 13th century and its churchyard is the burial place of the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Quex Park, a local 19th-century manor house, is home to the Powell Cotton Museum and a twelve-bell tower built for change ringing. The museum displays stuffed exotic animals collected by Major Powell-Cotton on his travels in Africa, and houses artefacts unearthed in and around Birchington. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 28

August 28: Feast of the Assumption (Julian calendar)

2015 production of Lohengrin

• 1850 – German composer Richard Wagner's romantic opera Lohengrin (2015 production pictured), containing the Bridal Chorus, was first performed under the direction of Franz Liszt in Weimar, present-day Germany.
• 1861 – American Civil War: The Union Army successfully extended its blockage strategy by capturing two Confederate forts on North Carolina's Outer Banks.
• 1909 – A military coup d'etat against the government of Dimitrios Rallis began in the Goudi neighbourhood of Athens, Greece.
• 1955 – African American teenager Emmett Till was murdered near Money, Mississippi, for flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.
• 1973 – Swedish police used gas bombs to end a seven-day hostage situation in Stockholm; during the incident the hostages had bonded with their captors, leading to the term "Stockholm syndrome".

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August 28 Wikipedia featured article

The American twenty-cent piece was a coin struck from 1875 to 1878, but only for collectors in the final two years. In 1874 Nevada's newly elected senator, John P. Jones, began promoting his bill for a twenty-cent piece to alleviate the shortage of small change in the Far West. The bill passed Congress the following year, and Mint Director Henry Linderman ordered pattern coins struck. Although the new coin's edge was smooth rather than reeded, as with other silver coins, the new piece was close to the size of, and immediately confused with, the quarter. Adding to the bewilderment, the obverses (front faces) of the coins were almost identical. After the first year, in which over a million were minted, there was little demand, and the denomination was abolished in 1878. At least a third of the total mintage was later melted by the government. Numismatist Mark Benvenuto called the twenty-cent piece "a chapter of U.S. coinage history that closed almost before it began". (Full article...)

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Investir dans l’immobilier : les 8 verrous qui vous bloquent

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On this day: August 27

August 27: Independence Day in Moldova (1991)

Moscow's Ostankino Tower burning

• 1810 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Navy defeated the Royal Navy, preventing them from taking the harbour of Grand Port on Île de la Passe.
• 1832 – Black Hawk, leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrendered to US authorities, ending the Black Hawk War.
• 1928 – Over sixty nations signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.
• 1957 – The Constitution of Malaya came into force, three days before the Federation of Malaya achieved formal independence from the United Kingdom.
• 2000 – Moscow's Ostankino Tower caught fire (pictured), killing three people and disrupting television and radio signals around the city.

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August 27 Wikipedia featured article

Jim Thome (born 1970) played Major League Baseball for 22 years, starting with the Cleveland Indians in 1991 and joining the Philadelphia Phillies in 2002. Traded to the Chicago White Sox before the 2006 season, he won the American League Comeback Player of the Year Award that year. After back pain limited him to being a designated hitter, he had stints with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Minnesota Twins, Indians and Phillies before ending his career with the Baltimore Orioles. A prolific power hitter, Thome hit 612 home runs during his career—the seventh-most of all time. He was a member of five All-Star teams and won a Silver Slugger Award in 1996. One of his trademarks was his unique batting stance, pointing the bat at right field before the pitcher threw, something he first saw in the film The Natural. He was known for his consistent positive attitude and gregarious personality. An active philanthropist during his playing career, he was honored with two Marvin Miller Man of the Year Awards and a Lou Gehrig Memorial Award. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 26

August 26: Heroes' Day/Herero Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Day in the United States

Eruption of Krakatoa

• 1071 – Byzantine–Seljuq Wars: Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan captured Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert.
• 1789 – French Revolution: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, defining a set of individual and collective rights of the people, was approved by the National Constituent Assembly.
• 1883 – A massive eruption destroyed the volcanic island of Krakatoa, ejecting so much ash that average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) over the next year.
• 1968 – The US Democratic Party's National Convention began at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, sparking four days of clashes between anti–Vietnam War protesters and police.
• 1977 – The National Assembly of Quebec declared French to be the only official language of Quebec.

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August 26 Wikipedia featured article

Satyajit Ray

Pather Panchali is a 1955 Bengali drama film adapted from Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay's 1929 Bengali novel of the same name. The debut film of the Indian director Satyajit Ray, it depicts the lives of a family from a poor Indian village with two children, Apu (Subir Banerjee) and his elder sister Durga (Uma Dasgupta). The film, shot mainly on location in rural India, took nearly three years to complete. Sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar composed the score. After a screening in May at New York's Museum of Modern Art, it was officially released in Kolkata on August 26, 1955, and was enthusiastically received after a slow start. Many critics have praised the film's realism and humanity, though a few have found fault with its slow pace; other critics have condemned it, claiming it romanticizes poverty. The tale of Apu's life is continued in Aparajito (The Unvanquished, 1956) and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959). The three films constitute the Apu Trilogy. Pather Panchali was a pioneer film of the Parallel Cinema movement and was the first film from independent India to attract major international attention, winning a number of awards and establishing Ray as a major director. It has been featured in lists of the greatest films ever made. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 25

August 25:

Juan Antonio Lavalleja

• 1248 – Ommen in the Netherlands received city rights and fortification rights from Otto III, the Archbishop of Utrecht, after the town was pillaged at least twice by a local robber baron.
• 1609 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telescope, a device that became known as a terrestrial or spyglass refracting telescope, to Venetian lawmakers.
• 1825 – The Thirty-Three Orientals, a revolutionary group led by Juan Antonio Lavalleja (pictured), declared Uruguayan independence from the Empire of Brazil.
• 1920 – Polish forces under Józef Piłsudski successfully forced the Russians to withdraw from Warsaw at the Battle of Warsaw, the decisive battle of the Polish–Soviet War.
• 1967 – Founder of the American Nazi Party George Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated by John Patler, a former member of his group.

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August 25 Wikipedia featured article

Caloboletus calopus, known as the bitter beech bolete, is a fungus of the bolete family, found in Asia, Northern Europe and North America. Appearing in coniferous and deciduous woodland in summer and autumn, the stout mushrooms are attractively coloured, with a beige to olive cap up to 15 cm (6 in) across, yellow pores, and a reddish stalk up to 15 cm (6 in) long and 5 cm (2 in) wide. The pale yellow flesh stains blue when broken or bruised. Christian Persoon first described Boletus calopus in 1801. Modern molecular phylogenetics has shown that it is only distantly related to the type species of Boletus, and it was placed in a new genus as the type species of Caloboletus in 2014. It is not an edible mushroom, rendered unpalatable by its intensely bitter taste, which does not disappear with cooking. Its red stalk distinguishes it from edible species such as Boletus edulis. (Full article...)

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Qui veut gagner 20 euros ?

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On this day: August 24

August 24: Independence Day in Ukraine (1991)

Lance Armstrong

• 410 – Rome was sacked for the first time in 800 years, by the Visigoths under Alaric I.
• 1456 – The oldest known version of the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book produced on a printing press, was completed.
• 1821 – The Treaty of Córdoba was signed in Córdoba, Veracruz, ratifying the Plan of Iguala and concluding Mexico's War of Independence from Spain.
• 1941 – Adolf Hitler ordered the official termination of the T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and disabled, although killings continued in secret for the remainder of the war.
• 2012 – American cyclist Lance Armstrong (pictured) was banned from all competitions and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles by the United States Anti-Doping Agency for using illicit performance-enhancing drugs.

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August 24 Wikipedia featured article

Jethro Sumner (c. 1733 – 1785) was an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. After serving in Virginia's Provincial forces in the French and Indian War and later as Sheriff of Bute County, North Carolina, he became a strident Patriot, and was elected to North Carolina's Provincial Congress. He was named the commanding officer of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment in the Continental Army in 1776, seeing action in the Southern theater and Philadelphia campaign. One of five brigadier generals from North Carolina, he served with distinction in the battles of Stono Ferry and Eutaw Springs, but recurring bouts of poor health often forced him to play an administrative role, or to convalesce back home. Following a drastic reduction in the number of North Carolinians serving with the Continental Army, Sumner became a general in the state's militia, but resigned in protest after the state Board of War awarded overall command of the militia to William Smallwood, a Continental Army general from Maryland. In 1783 Sumner helped establish the state chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati, and became its first president. He died in 1785 with extensive landholdings. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 23

August 23: Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism/Black Ribbon Day in Canada, the European Union and the United States

Sacco and Vanzetti

• 1572 – The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, a wave of Catholic mob violence against the Huguenots, began, lasting for several months and resulting in an estimated tens of thousands deaths across France.
• 1650 – General George Monck founded "Monck's Regiment of Foot", the predecessor to the Coldstream Guards, in England's New Model Army, making the regiment the oldest one in the Regular Army in continuous active service.
• 1896 – Andrés Bonifacio and his Katipunan comrades in modern-day Quezon City rose up in revolt against Spanish rule, marking the beginning of the Philippine Revolution.
• 1927 – After a controversial trial, and despite worldwide protests, Italian-born American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti (both pictured) were executed via electrocution in Massachusetts for the charges of murder and theft.
• 1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a 10-year, mutual non-aggression treaty, which also included a secret protocol dividing Northern and Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.

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August 23 Wikipedia featured article

The highway in Hamilton

The Queen Elizabeth Way is a 400-Series highway in the Canadian province of Ontario linking Toronto with the Niagara Peninsula and Buffalo, New York. The freeway begins at the Peace Bridge in Fort Erie and travels 139.1 kilometres (86.4 mi) around the western shore of Lake Ontario, ending at Highway 427, where the roadway continues as the Gardiner Expressway into downtown Toronto. The freeway's history dates back to 1931, when work began to widen the Middle Road as a relief project during the Great Depression, to bring it up to the quality of the nearby Dundas Highway and Lakeshore Road. In 1934, the design was modified to resemble German autobahns. When it was initially opened in 1937, it was the first intercity divided highway in North America and featured the longest stretch of consistent illumination in the world. While not a true freeway at the time, it was gradually upgraded, widened and modernized beginning in the 1950s, taking on more or less its current form by 1975. Since then, various projects have continued to widen the route. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 22

August 22: Feast day of the Queenship of Mary (Roman Catholic Church); Madras Day in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

Chennai skyline

• 1138 – English forces repelled a Scottish army at the Battle of the Standard near Northallerton in Yorkshire.
• 1639 – The East India Company bought a small strip of land on what is today Chennai (modern skyline pictured), the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, from the King of the Vijayanagara Empire, Peda Venkata Raya.
• 1791 – A slave rebellion erupted in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, starting the Haitian Revolution.
• 1910 – Japan annexed Korea with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.
• 2012 – A series of ethnic clashes between the Orma and Pokomo tribes of Kenya's Tana River District resulted in the deaths of at least 52 people.

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August 22 Wikipedia featured article

Art Spiegelman

Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman (pictured in 2007), serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The book is self-referential and postmodern—most strikingly in its depiction of Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and non-Jewish Poles as pigs. The narrative consists mostly of flashbacks to the war years, framed by the interview that takes place in 1978 in the Rego Park section of New York City. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, and the impact of his mother's suicide when he was 20. The book uses a minimalist drawing style with innovative page and panel layouts, pacing, and structure. Maus was serialized as an insert in Raw, an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly. It was one of the first graphic novels to receive significant academic attention in the English-speaking world, and in 1992 became the first to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Full article...)

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On this day: August 21

August 21: Youth Day and King Mohammed's Birthday in Morocco; Ninoy Aquino Day in the Philippines

Lincoln

Douglas

• 1689 – Jacobite risings: Jacobite clans supporting the deposed king James VII of Scotland clashed with a government regiment of Covenanters supporting William of Orange, in the streets around Dunkeld Cathedral, Dunkeld, Scotland.
• 1858 – The first of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas (both pictured), candidates for an Illinois seat in the United States Senate, was held in Ottawa, Illinois.
• 1945 – American physicist Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a delta phase plutonium bomb core and exposed himself to a lethal dose of neutron radiation, becoming the first known fatality to due a criticality accident 25 days later.
• 1986 – A limnic eruption of a cloud of carbon dioxide from Lake Nyos in Cameroon killed up to 1,700 people and 3,500 livestock in nearby villages.
• 2013 – Syrian Civil War: Rockets containing sarin struck the opposition-controlled portions of the Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, resulting in at least 281 deaths.

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August 21 Wikipedia featured article

Seorsumuscardinus, a genus of European dormice identified by fossils, lived around 17 million years ago during the early Miocene. Fossils from one species, S. alpinus, have been taken from rock strata in Oberdorf am Hochegg in Austria, Karydia in Greece, and Tägernaustrasse in Switzerland. A second species, S. bolligeri, was found at a single site in Affalterbach, Germany. Identified from many isolated teeth, both species were medium-sized dormice, with flat teeth characterized by long transverse crests coupled with shorter ones. Seorsumuscardinus may be related to Muscardinus, the genus of the living hazel dormouse, which appears in the fossil record at about the same time, and the older Glirudinus. Because the two known species lived at different times, the paleontologist Jerome Prieto has suggested that the genus may be useful for biostratigraphy, the use of fossils to determine the age of deposits. (Full article...)

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August 20 Wikipedia featured article

Combat de Grand Port; Gilbert

The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle between frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy, fought in August 1810 to control the harbour of Grand Port on Isle de France (now Mauritius) during the Napoleonic Wars. The British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade the port, but four of the five French ships managed to break past the blockade. They took shelter in a protected anchorage that was only accessible through a series of complicated reefs and sandbanks, requiring an experienced harbour pilot. When the British commander, Samuel Pym, ordered his frigates to attack, they became trapped in the narrow channels of the bay: two were irretrievably grounded, a third was outnumbered and defeated, and a fourth, unable to close within effective gun range, was later seized as it left the harbour. Although the French ships were also badly damaged, the defeat was the worst the Royal Navy suffered during the entire war, and it left the Indian Ocean and its vital trade convoys exposed to attack from Commodore Jacques Hamelin's frigates. In December a strong British battle squadron under Admiral Albemarle Bertie rapidly invaded and subdued Isle de France. (Full article...)

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