August 8
1576: Construction began on the
Uraniborg Observatory,
Hveen Island, Denmark. 1854: Metal bullet "Volcanic" cartridges were patented by
Smith & Wesson.
1876: Thomas Edison received
a patent for his mimeograph. 1901:
Ernest Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron, and after whom the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
was named, was born. 1902: English physicist
Paul Dirac, who shared a Nobel Prize with
Erwin Schrödinger, and after whom the
Dirac delta
function is named, was born. 1911:
Patent #1,000,000 was issued to Francis Holton for a vehicle tire.
1940: The German
Luftwaffe
began a series of daylight air raids on Great Britain, aka the
Battle of Britain. 1945: The Soviet Union declared war against
Japan during WWII. 1963: The "Great
Train Robbery" took place in Britain, where a gang of 15 thieves stole 2.6 million
pounds in bank notes. 1979: The temperature hit a high of 88°F on 8/8/88 in NY City.
1991: British countryman
John McCarthy was set free after being held captive in Lebanon
by Islamic Jihad for over five years. 1991: The
Warszawa Radio mast, the tallest structure in the world, collapsed
during maintenance. 1996:
Sir Frank
Whittle, aircraft jet propulsions pioneer, died. 2008:
Harry B. Smith, the "father of pulse Doppler radar, died.
| Jan
| Feb | Mar |
Apr | May |
Jun | Jul |
Aug | Sep |
Oct | Nov |
Dec |
Note: These
historical tidbits have been collected from various sources, mostly on the Internet.
As detailed in
this article, there
is a lot of wrong information that is repeated hundreds of times because most websites
do not validate with authoritative sources. On RF Cafe, events with
hyperlinks have been verified. Many years ago,
I began commemorating the birthdays of notable people and events with
special RF Cafe logos.
Where available, I like to use images from postage stamps from the country where
the person or event occurred. Images used in the logos are often from open source
websites like Wikipedia, and are specifically credited with a hyperlink back to
the source where possible.
Fair Use laws permit
small samples of copyrighted content.
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