The Great American Eclipse Occurs (2017)
The solar eclipse of August 21, 2017, dubbed the „Great American Eclipse“ by some media, was a total solar eclipse visible within a band that spanned the contiguous United States…
Viking 1 is Launched to Mars (1975)
Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft, along with Viking 2, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, sent to Mars as part of NASA’s Viking program. The…
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Opens for Racing (1909)
The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a motor racing circuit located in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana. It is the home of the Indianapolis 500 and…
Happy Name Day Ellen (18/08)
Every person’s name has a corresponding name day. As a car and movie fan, I have taken the 2000 movie Gone in 60 seconds, starring Nicolas Cage an inspiration. In…
Happy Birthday Didier Auriol (1958)
Didier Auriol (born 18 August 1958) is a French former rally driver. Born in Montpellier and initially an ambulance driver, he competed in the World Rally Championship throughout the 1990s.…
Happy Birthday Margaret Hamilton (1936)
Margaret Hamilton (born August 17, 1936) is an American computer scientist. She directed the Software Engineering Division at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, where she led the development of the on-board…
Happy Birthday Russell Brookes (1945)
Russell Brookes (16 August 1945 – 30 October 2019) was a British rally driver. He won the British Rally Championship with a Ford Escort RS1800 in 1977 and with an…
The iMac is Launched (1998)
The iMac is a series of all-in-one computers from Apple Inc., sold as part of the company’s Mac family of computers. First introduced in 1998, it has remained a primary…
Maiden Flight of the Panavia Tornado
The Panavia Tornado is a family of twin-engine, variable-sweep wing multi-role combat aircraft, jointly developed and manufactured by Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany. There are three primary Tornado variants:…
BMW is Established as a Public Company (1918)
The Bayerische Motoren Werke Aktiengesellschaft, trading as BMW Group), is a German multinational manufacturer of luxury vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The company was founded in 1916…
First Free Flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise (1977)
The final phase of flight testing involved free flights. These saw Enterprise mated to the SCA and carried to a launch altitude, before being released to glide to a landing…
Happy Name Day Susan (11/08)
Every person’s name has a corresponding name day. As a car and movie fan, I have taken the 2000 movie Gone in 60 seconds, starring Nicolas Cage an inspiration. In…
Happy Birthday „Babe“ Ruth (1895)
George Herman „Babe“ Ruth (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through…
The Magellan Space Probe Reaches Venus (1989)
The Magellan spacecraft was a 1,035-kilogram (2,282 lb) robotic space probe launched by NASA on May 4, 1989. Its mission objectives were to map the surface of Venus by using…
Happy Birthday Gillian Anderson (1968)
Gillian Anderson, OBE (born August 9, 1968) is an American actress. Her credits include the roles of FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the series The X-Files, ill-fated socialite Lily…
First Ascent of Mont Blanc (1786)
Mont Blanc is a mountain in the Alps, rising 4,805.59 m (15,766 ft) above sea level, located right at the Franco-Italian border. It is the highest mountain in Europe outside…
STS-85 Launch of Shuttle Discovery (1997)
STS-85 was the 23rd flight of Space Shuttle Discovery that performed multiple space science packages. It was launched from Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on 7 August 1997. The main STS-85…
Tim Berners Lee Releases the WWW (1991)
The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT…
Happy Birthday Neil Armstrong (1930)
Neil Alden Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012) was an American astronaut and aeronautical engineer who, as the commander of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, became the first…
Happy Birthday Barack Obama (1961)
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic…
Firestone Tyres are Founded (1868)
Firestone Tire and Rubber Company is an American tire company founded by Harvey S. Firestone (1868–1938) in 1900 initially to supply solid rubber side-wire tires for fire apparatus, and later,…
Clay Street Hill Railroad is First Operated (1873)
The Clay Street Hill Railroad was the first successful cable hauled street railway. It was located on Clay Street, a notably steep street in San Francisco in California, United States,…
Happy Birthday Joseph Priestley (1733)
Joseph Priestley FRS (24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, Unitarian, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator and classical liberal political theorist. He published over…
Happy Birthday Mikko Hirvonen (1980)
Mikko Hirvonen (born 31 July 1980) is a Finnish former rally driver, and a current Rally-Raid driver, who drove in the World Rally Championship. He placed third in the drivers‘…
The Last Original VW Beetle is Produced (2003)
On 30 July 2003 at 9:05 a.m., at the Puebla plant in Mexico, Volkswagen produced the final Type 1, after 21,529,464 examples were produced globally during its tenure.[ Its production…
Happy Birthday Stig Blomquist (1946)
Stig Blomqvist (born 29 July 1946) is a retired Swedish rally driver. He made his international breakthrough in 1971. Driving an Audi Quattro for the Audi factory team, Blomqvist won…
Happy Name Day Kimberley (28/07)
Every person’s name has a corresponding name day. As a car and movie fan, I have taken the 2000 movie Gone in 60 seconds, starring Nicolas Cage an inspiration. In…
USS Constellation is Commissioned (1854)
USS Constellation is a sloop-of-war, the last sail-only warship designed and built by the United States Navy. She was built at the Gosport Shipyard between 1853 and 1855. She was…
Bugs Bunny Goes on the Air (1940)
Bugs Bunny is a cartoon character created in the late 1930s at Warner Bros. Cartoons (originally Leon Schlesinger Productions) and voiced originally by Mel Blanc. Bugs is best known for…