On August 22, 1780, the HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery arrive in England following a 3-year expedition to explore the Pacific Ocean. The ships were without their expedition commander, Captain James Cook, who was killed in Hawaii by natives 18 months earlier. Discovery's captain, Charles Clerke, took command of the expedition on Cook's death, but he died of tuberculosis on August 22, 1779 (his 38th birthday) as the ships sailed through the Bering Strait. John Gore (below), Resolution's first lieutenant and a veteran of Cook's first Pacific voyage took command and successfully guided both ships home. He died in 1790, having circumnavigated the globe four times. Gore Point in the Alaskan Kanai fjords is named for him. On August 22, 1953, the French government officially closes its penal colony of Cayenne, more commonly known as Devil's Island. Located in the Salvation Islands of French Guiana (off the South American mainland), the Devil's Island penal colony was established in 1852. Its inmates included political prisoners and exilees (most famously Captain Alfred Dreyfus, accused of spying for Germany) as well as France's most hardened criminals. The combination of harsh treatment and the brutal climate contributed to Devil's Island having a 75% prisoner mortality rate during its century of operation. There were several successful escapes, the most famous of which was by writer and convicted murderer Henri Charriere, who later wrote about the atrocities of Devil's Island in his (highly disputed by the French government) prison memoir, Papillon. The island is now a tourist attraction, and the prison has been depicted dozens of times in both dramatic and satirical fiction (Dreyfus on Devil's Island) On August 22, 1851, the America (below), a racing yacht of the New York Yacht Club, beats a fleet of 15 British yachts of the Royal Yacht Squadron in an invitational race off England's coast. Among the spectators was Queen Victoria, who presented the winner with a "ewer" (jug with a spout) as trophy. In 1857, the America's crew presented the ewer to the NYYC, along with a "Deed of Gift" that laid out the rules and guidelines by which foreign yacht clubs could challenge for the ewer. Today, the America's Cup is the world's oldest international sports competition. There is no set schedule, though the event happens roughly every 3-4 years. It is always a match race (the defending champion is the yacht club holding the Cup, and is not required to use the same yacht in defense of the championship). The NYYC successfully defended the Cup 24 times over 132 years (the longest, in time, win streak in sports history), until losing to the Royal Perth Yacht Club in 1983. The Cup is currently held by the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, and a defense is scheduled for this October.
On August 23, 1973, a bank robbery gone wrong creates a new psychological phenomenon. In Stockholm, Sweden, a convicted bank robber named Jan-Erik Olsson was on prison furlough when he attempted to rob the Norrmalmstorg Kreditbanken (below). Police arrived before he could flee and Olsson took four bank employees hostage. Olsson asked that Clark Olofsson, a friend of his from prison, be brought in with an escape vehicle and police complied. A 5-day standoff ensued before police launched tear gas into the bank, causing Olsson and Olofsson to surrender. None of the hostages were physically injured, but post-crisis interviews found that, either out of sympathy or fear of injury by the police, the hostages had begun to bond with their captors during the ordeal. Nils Berjerot, a Swedish psychiatrist and criminologist, would later label the phenomenon "Stockholm Syndrome." On August 23, 1923, Captain Lowell Smith and Lt. John Richter, pilots of the U.S. Army Air Service, perform the first successful mid-air refueling of an airplane. Flying identical De Havilland DH-4B's, the pilots transferred fuel from a hand-held fuel tank in one plane directly into the filler opening of the 2nd plane's tank by means of a hose strung between the two planes. A week later, Smith and Richter used their newly-proven technique to set a flight endurance record, keeping a DH-4B aloft for 37 hours, transferring nearly 700 gallons of fuel and 38 gallons of engine oil from 2 other planes over the course of 9 evolutions. On August 23, 1784, the residents of North Carolina's 8 westernmost counties declare themselves the Free Republic of Franklin. The rebellion was sparked by the state's offer to give the counties (representing all of North Carolina's territory west of the Allegheny - now the Appalachian - Mountains) to Congress as a means of helping the young nation pay off its war debt. The state government reneged on the offer a few months later, but the displeased residents of the region set out on their own, electing state officials (frontiersman John Sevier was elected governor) and applying for statehood in May, 1785. Seven states voted to admit what would be called Frankland as the 14th state, but this was short of the 2/3 majority called for by the Articles of Confederation. The citizens continued to govern themselves as an independent republic, rejecting an offer from the NC government to rejoin in 1786. They also began expanding westward, but after several battles with native Americans in their new frontier, Sevier negotiated a deal (in February '89) to rejoin North Carolina in exchange for militia aid. Incredibly, North Carolina gave the Franklin territory to Congress again in 1791; this time it would become the easternmost property of Tennessee when that state was admitted to the Union. Sevier would be elected first governor of Tennessee; the names Franklin and Frankland remain in prominent use throughout the region to this day.
August 29, 2005 On August 29, 1588, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, regent to the new emperor of Japan, orders the Sword Hunt Edict of 1588. Deciding that an armed citizenry would inevitably harm itself (and possibly threaten the emperor's power), soldiers were sent door-to-door to confiscate the people of Japan's swords - but only those of the common peasant class. The samurai and nobility were allowed to keep their weapons. Thus disarmed, the Japanese population lived in relative peace until Hideyoshi's death in 1597. But they also over time were robbed of their freedom to criticize the government, and were powerless to prevent Hideyoshi from subjugating the nation's growing Christian population, or his eventual outlawing of Christianity altogether. On August 29, 1952 at the Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock (!!), NY, pianist David Tudor first performs 4'33", the latest work from American experimental music composer John Cage. Cage was supposedly inspired by a visit to an anechoic chamber at Harvard. Expecting to hear nothing in the chamber, he heard two tones that he was later told were his blood flowing, and his nervous system in operation. Deducing from that experience that there is no such thing as total silence, he "wrote" 4'33", a composition in 3 movements for any solo musician or combination of musicians. The score instructs the musicians to do nothing; the ambient sound in the concert hall is the "music." The audience for that first performance was understandably perplexed; many thought it was a joke. Music professors, historians, etc, have spent the last 72 years trying to figure out what the hell Cage was trying to prove. (below: performance of 4'33" by the Berlin Philharmonic)
On August 30, 1836, the brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen (pictured) run advertisements in two Texas newspapers recruiting residents and businesses for their prospective town in southeast Texas. Four days earlier, the Allens bought a 2,200 acre tract of land at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou, paying $1,000 in cash and $4,000 in promisary notes. In the newspaper ads, they called their future town "Houston", naming it after General Sam Houston. Today, Houston is the 9th largest city in the nation in area, most populous city in Texas and 4th most populous in the United States. It is second only to NYC as home to Fortune 500 headquarters, with major players in the energy, aeronautics, manufacturing and healthcare sectors all based there. On August 30, 1992, Randy Weaver surrenders to US Marshalls, ending the Ruby Ridge siege. A former US Army soldier and survivalist, Weaver and his wife Vicki moved from Iowa to northern Idaho in 1983 to home school their 4 children and escape a "corrupted world." He came to the FBI and ATF's attention in '85 after making ties to neo-Nazis in the region, and for alleged threats against President Reagan. Eventually illegal weapons charges were filed against him, and when he failed to answer a summons, Marshalls began staking out the Weaver compound at Ruby Ridge. When confronted on August 21, he refused to surrender, leading to an 11-day siege in which Vicki, the Weaver's family dog and a Deputy Marshall were shot and killed, and Randy Weaver wounded. Civilian negotiators and an old Army buddy finally convinced Weaver and his surviving children to surrender; he was later acquitted of all charges compiled during the siege, but was found guilty of the original weapons charge and served 16 months. He later filed a $200 million wrongful death civil suit against the government, but settled out of court for $100,000 (his children received a million each). A Senate subcommittee would order extensive federal law enforcement reforms following Ruby Ridge and the Waco siege 6 months later. Weaver moved to Montana and resumed a survivalist existence until his death in 2022 at age 74. (Weaver carrying his 10-month old daughter moments before surrendering at Ruby Ridge)
On September 25, 1956, TAT-1, the first transatlantic telephone cable, is activated. It was conceived around the time the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid 100 years earlier, but it wasn't until the 1940's that telephone technology became advanced enough to make the transatlantic link feasible. Laid between Scotland and Newfoundland, TAT-1 could simultaneously transmit 35 telephone calls and 22 telegraph messages. It carried about 700 telephone calls in its first 24 hours of operation. TAT-1 was also the carrier for the first Washington-to-Moscow hotline, activated after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. With the laying of additional cables, TAT-1 was taken out of service in 1978 (photo shows a stripped- down section of the original TAT-1 cable) On September 25, 1974, Dr. Frank Jobe, an orthopedic surgeon and team physician of baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers, performs ulna collateral ligament reconstructive surgery on Dodgers' pitcher Tommy John. A 12-year veteran and 1968 All Star game selection, John tore the UCL in his left (pitching) elbow on July 17. In a technique that had been performed on injured hands and wrists but never on a professional baseball player's elbow, Jobe replaced the damaged ligament with a tendon from John's left leg. He sat out the 1975 season and spent most of the '76 season strengthening the arm, finally returning to the mound in a live game in September. Before Jobe perfected his surgical technique, an injury of this nature was almost always a career ender for a pitcher; John would pitch for 14 more seasons and was selected to 3 more All Star games. By 2012, one in 7 Major League pitchers had undergone "Tommy John surgery" at some point in their careers. Jobe died in 2014; premier sports orthopedist Dr. James Andrews called him "one of the founding fathers of modern sports medicine." A movement to have him inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame has been unsuccessful so far. On September 25, 1980, Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham is found unresponsive in his bed and pronounced dead at age 32. A post-mortem ruled his death accidental and determined he choked on his own vomit in his sleep; it was determined that in his last 24 hours, Bonham had consumed more than a liter of 80 proof vodka. Self-taught, Bonham played drums for several bands throughout the early '60s before joining a blues group called Crawling King Snakes, whose lead singer was Robert Plant. They parted company in 1967, but when the Yardbirds broke up a year later, guitarist Jimmy Page recruited Plant to start a "New Yardbirds"; Plant insisted on Bonham as drummer. The New Yardbirds soon became Led Zeppelin. Following his death, the surviving members of LZ announced they would disband rather than try to replace Bonham, who is universally considered one of the top 3 rock drummers (and usually named number 1) of all time.
On September 26, 1687, the Parthenon in Athens, Greece is partially destroyed in a bombardment by Venetian troops. Completed as a temple to the goddess Athena in 432BC, the Parthenon sits atop the Acropolis - the highest point in Athens - and is considered by many to be the most perfect work in the history of architecture. During the Morean War, Ottoman troops occupying the city fortified the Acropolis, using the Parthenon as a gunpowder magazine and a shelter. A single mortar round from the nearby Hill of Philopappos ignited the powder and destroyed the center portion of the building. An estimated 300 people were killed by falling and flying marble debris. One historical account of the incident suggests that a captured Turk told the Venetian commander that his superiors put the Parthenon to military use believing the enemy would never intentionally fire on the historic structure, and they responded by doing just that. On September 26, 1933 (legend has it), FBI agents get a nickname. Special Agents had been dispatched to Memphis, TN, where they were tipped off they would find George "Machine Gun" Kelly, a bootlegger and gangster wanted in the kidnapping of a wealthy Oklahoma man two months earlier. Arriving at the site where Kelly and his wife were hiding out, the agents rushed the residence in the early morning hours and made the arrest. The story goes, Kelly was caught completely by surprise and, thus unarmed, repeatedly shouted, "Don't shoot, G-Men!" Though the story is likely a fabrication (it was definitely used in a biography of Al Capone written 3 years prior), "G-Man" (Government Man) soon became popular slang for the FBI.
On September 30, 1968, Boeing Aircraft Corp. unveils the prototype for its new wide bodied jet airliner, the 747. Requested a decade earlier by Pan Am, which wanted an airliner with 30% more passenger capacity than the 707, the 747 would exceed any aircraft in service at the time, both in terms of speed and capacity. It was far too big for Boeing's Seattle factory, so Boeing built a new factory in nearby Everett, WA that was the world's largest building by volume. The 747 could seat 366 passengers in its original configuration and cruise at Mach .85 (490 knots). The distinctive bubble behind its nose was Boeing foresight; anticipating it could soon be made obsolete by supersonic liners, the 747 was designed to easily convert into a cargo carrier, with the nose being designed as a cargo door. The last 747 (of 1,574) to be built was delivered last year. On September 30, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates Boulder Dam, on the Colorado River near the Nevada/Arizona border. Authorized for construction by President Herbert Hoover following decades of study on how to control flooding, expand irrigation and provide hydroelectric power to the region, the project was named for Hoover at its outset, but the name changed to Boulder (the project site was Boulder Canyon), obstensibly because of the dislike for Hoover at the outset of the Great Depression. Congress would change the name back to Hoover Dam in 1947. Completed six years ahead of schedule by a consortium of six companies, Hoover Dam cost $49 million to build ($790 million in today's dollars). 112 workers lost their lives during construction.
Still hard to get on the site to contribute from my home computer, so I couldn't do the following on Saturday: On October 5, 1969, BBC1 debuts a new program, Monty Python's Flying Circus. The product of five English comics (Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Michael Palin and Terry Jones) and American Terry Gilliam, Monty Python was a sketch comedy program, but not your ordinary sketch comedy program. A non-stop flurry of oddball sketches, sight gags, thematic entries that carried over from program to program, and of course, those animated shorts, it was, to borrow from a program catchphrase "something completely different." (In a 1998 interview, Terry Jones said their goal was to produce a show that was completely undefinable, and the fact that the word "Pythonesque" is now in the Oxford English Dictionary proves how badly they failed.) The troupe (the six met through a variety of situations and never did any professional work together before creating the show) did 45 episodes through four seasons before turning their attention to feature films. A public TV station in Dallas was the first in America to get positive ratings on the show. Monty Python won four British Academy Film & Television Awards during its airtime, and is regularly included in best TV comedy lists of all time. Little Known Fact: the use of the word "spam" as applied to annoying, repetitive email or other unwanted electronic messages is a reference to one of my favorite Python sketches:
