August 7 - Tooth Time

Tooth Time

Family Birthdays

Cousin James Ryan

This Day In History

1420

Construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore begins in Florence.

1679

The brigantine Le Griffon, commissioned by René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, is towed to the south-eastern end of the Niagara River, to become the first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes of North America.

1782

George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.

1909

Alice Huyler Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York City to San Francisco.

1944

IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (known best as the Harvard Mark I).

1947

Thor Heyerdahl's balsa wood raft Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands after a 101-day, 7,000 kilometres (4,300 mi) journey across the Pacific Ocean in an attempt to prove that pre-historic peoples could have traveled from South America.

1955

Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, the precursor to Sony, sells its first transistor radios in Japan.

1959

Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1974

Philippe Petit performs a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air.

1976

Viking 2 enters orbit around Mars.

Famous Birthdays

1282

Princess Elizabeth of Rhuddlan (d. 1316)

1533

Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, Basque soldier and poet (d. 1595)

1560

Elizabeth Báthory, Hungarian countess and serial killer (d. 1614)

1742

Nathanael Greene, American Revolutionary general (d. 1786)

1877

Ulrich Salchow, Swedish figure skater (d. 1949)

1903

Louis Leakey, British archaeologist (d. 1972)

1913

George Van Eps, American guitarist (d. 1998)

1921

Manitas de Plata, French guitarist

1933

Jerry Pournelle, American writer

1942

Garrison Keillor, American writer and radio host

1956

Sharon Isbin, American classical guitarist, founder of Juilliard guitar department

1975

Charlize Theron, South African actress
1978
Cirroc Lofton, American actor