August, The dog days of summer. The dog days or dog days of summer are the hot, sultry days of summer. They were historically the period following the heliacal rising of the star Sirius, which Greek and Roman astrology connected with heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck. They are now taken to be the hottest, most uncomfortable part of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
It is a perfect time to for some random evil.
Click on the date to read about what I did during August in past years.
Information about this month's Casino Devil Ramblings
Click on the computing devil to return here.
August 01, 1914
August 01, 1944
August 01, 1966
August 02, 1934
August 02, 1876
August 02, 1990
August 03, 1804
August 03, 1916
August 03, 1944
August 06, 1945
August 06, 1890
August 09, 1974
August 11, 1934
August 16, 1977
August 17, 1998
August 24, 1814
August 31, 1888
The Great War Erupts on August 1, 1914
Four days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Germany and Russia declared war
against each other, France mobilized, and the first German army units crossed into
Luxembourg in preparation for the German invasion of France. Over the next four days,
Russia, France, Belgium, and Great Britain all lined up against Austria-Hungary and
Germany, and Germany launched its invasion of Belgium. On June 28, 1914, in a event that
is widely regarded as sparking the outbreak of World War I, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir
to the Austrian-Hungarian empire, was shot to death along with his wife by a Serbian
nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Ferdinand had been inspecting his uncle's imperial armed
forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the threat of Serbian nationalists who wanted
the Austrian possessions to join newly independent Serbia. Austria-Hungary blamed the
Serbian government for the attack, and hoped to use the incident as justification for
settling the question of Slavic nationalism once and for all. However, as Russia supported
Serbia, an Austria-Hungary declaration of war was delayed until its leaders received
assurances from German leader Kaiser Wilhelm that Germany would support their cause in the
event of a Russian intervention. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and
the tenuous peace between Europe's great powers collapsed. Warfare began on August 1 with
the German invasion of Luxembourg, and in early September the massive German advance to
the sea was halted in the bloody Battle of the Marne. Though the Germans enjoyed greater
success on the Eastern Front, the conflict’s first major battle along the Marne
effectively decided the course of the war on the Western Front. World War I would be a
terrible war of attrition, won by whichever side was willing to commit the greater number
of men and resources to the lethal trenches.
Warsaw Revolt Begins on August 1, 1944
During World War II, an advance Soviet armored column under General
Konstantin Rokossovski
reached the Vistula River along the eastern suburb of Warsaw, prompting
the Poles in the
city to launch a major uprising against the Nazi occupation. The
revolt was spearheaded by
Polish General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, who was the commander of the
Home Army, an
underground resistance group made up of some 40,000 badly supplied
soldiers. In addition
to accelerating the liberation of Warsaw, the Home Army, which had ties
with the Polish
government-in-exile in London and was anti-Communist in its ideology,
and hoped to gain at
least partial control of Warsaw before the Soviets arrived.
Although the Poles in Warsaw
won early gains, and Soviet liberation of the city was inevitable, Nazi
leader Adolf
Hitler ordered his authorities to crush the uprising at all cost.
The elite Nazi SS
directed the German defense force, which included the Kaminiski Brigade
of Russian
prisoners and the Dirlewanger Brigade of German convicts. In
brutal street fighting, the
Poles were gradually overcome by the superior German weaponry. As
the rebels were slowly
suppressed, the Nazis deliberately razed large portions of the city and
massacred large
numbers of civilians. Meanwhile, the Red Army gained several
bridgeheads across the
Vistula River, but made no efforts to aid the rebels in Warsaw.
The British and Americans
asked the Soviets to allow them to drop much needed supplies to the Home
Army, and the
Soviets agreed; although they explained that they were too busy
resupplying their own
units to offer assistance themselves. Only a fraction of the
supplies from the West ever
reached the parts of Warsaw controlled by the Home Army, and the rebels
and the
city’s citizens soon ran out of medical supplies, food, and eventually
water. Finally, on October 2, the surviving rebels, including
Bor-Komorowski, surrendered. During
the sixtythree day ordeal, three fourths of the Home Army had
perished, along with
200,000 civilians. As a testament to the savagery of the
fighting, the Germans had also
suffered high casualties: 10,000 killed, 9,000 wounded, and 7,000
missing. Over the next
few months, German demolition squads destroyed what buildings remained
intact in Warsaw,
and all of its great treasures were looted or burned. The Red
Army remained dormant
outside of Warsaw until January of 1945, when the final Soviet
offensive against Germany
commenced. Warsaw, a city in ruins, was liberated on January 17.
The Texas Tower Massacre on August 1, 1966
On the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, Charles Joseph Whitman, a
twentyfive year old architectural engineering student and ex-Marine, climbed to the
observation deck of the university’s tower and opened fire on the students,
professors, and staff below. By the time police stormed the deck and shot him to death,
Whitman had killed ten people and wounded thirtyone. Additionally, Whitman had killed his
mother and wife earlier in the morning, and had killed two people and wounded three,
including a receptionist who later died, on the tower’s twenty-eighth floor. The
final death toll was, including Whitman, seventeen killed and thirtytwo wounded. Charles
Whitman, born in Lake Worth, Florida, in 1941, served in the U. S. Marines in the early
1960s and periodically attended the University of Texas at Austin. In March of 1966,
Whitman sought medical and psychiatric advice at the university health center, complaining
of severe headaches and disorientation, but failed to return as directed for further
assistance. In the predawn hours of August 1, Whitman wrote a note that read: “I am
prepared to die. After my death, I wish an autopsy on me to be preformed to see if there
is any mental disorder.” Early that morning, he stabbed and shot his mother to death
at her house. Returning home, he fatally stabbed his wife and wrote a diatribe against his
abusive father that closed with me words. "Life is not worth living." At 11:30
a.m., armed with three rifles, seven hundred rounds of ammunition, and other weapons and
supplies, Whitman entered the university’s 231 foot tower. Climbing to the
twenty-eighth floor, he fatally beat the receptionist there, and then killed two people
who were coming up the stairs from the twenty-seventh floor and wounded two others. For
the next ninety minutes, Whitman, a skilled sniper, terrorized the university campus,
shooting anyone who dared appear in his line of sight. At 1:24 p.m., three policemen and a
deputized private citizen reached the observation deck, and one officer killed Whitman
with a shotgun blast. Sixteen people died as a result of Whitman’s twelve hour
killing spree, making it one of the largest mass murders in U. S. history. An autopsy on
Whitman's body revealed that he was suffering from a brain tumor.
Hitler becomes Fuhrer on August 2, 1934
Chancellor Adolf Hitler became sole master of Germany on August 2, 1934, following the
death of President Paul Von Hindenburg. The German Army swore allegiance to the Fuhrer,
who was intent on the rearmament of Germany and territorial expansion. In less than a
decade, the Nazis had risen from a splinter party to a dominant ruling party that had won
a ninety percent approval vote in 1932, allowing Hitler to seize powers previously divided
among president, chancellor, and the Reichstag.
Wild Bill Draws the Dead Man's Hand on August 2, 1876
Famed frontier lawman "Wild Bill" Hickock was shot from behind as he
played cards
in a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. He died
instantly. His assailant, Jack McCall,
was a local lowlife who had been enlisted by Deadwood's criminal
elements to murder
Hickock before he could become the town's marshal. Born in Troy
Grove, Illinois, in 1837, at age
eighteen James Butler Hickock set out for the West, where he took part
in the Kansas
struggle preceding the Civil War. During the war, he worked for
the Union in various
capacities, and earned the nickname "Wild Bill" for his daring style of
fighting
and living. Always in possession of two handsome ivory handled
revolvers,
Hickock earned a reputation as a formidable gunfighter. After the
war, he served as a
feared U. S. marshal in the Western territories. In 1871, he was
appointed marshal of
Abilene, Kansas, a frontier town regarded by many as the toughest in
the West. In several
well publicized incidents, Hickock, an exceptionally cool marksman,
drove notorious outlaws
out of Abilene the hard way, and cemented his place in the annals of
frontier legend. After clearing up Abilene, he drifted around the
West, and in 1873 toured with
"Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West Show for five months. Three years
later, he
married circus performer Agnes Lake, and soon after set off alone to
make enough money
prospecting and gambling for the two of them to settle down.
Always recognized wherever he
went, Hickock's presence in Deadwood, South Dakota, was not appreciated
by the town's
underworld. On August 2, 1876, during a poker game in Carl Mann's
Saloon No. 10, James
McCall shot him nearly point blank in the back of his skull.
Hickock toppled over backward,
and the cards in his hand (a pair of aces and a pair of eights) dropped
to the floor. From
that time, in memory of Wild Bill Hickock, that combination of cards
has been known to
superstitious poker players as "the Dead Man's Hand."
Iraq Invades Kuwait on August 2, 1990
At about 2 am local time, Iraqi forces invaded Kuwait, Iraq's tiny,
oil rich neighbor. Kuwait's defense forces were rapidly
overwhelmed, and those that were not destroyed
retreated to Saudi Arabia. The emir of Kuwait, his family, and
other government leaders
also fled to Saudi Arabia, and within hours Kuwait City was captured
and the Iraqis
established a provincial government. The same day, the U. N.
Security Council unanimously
denounced the invasion, and demanded Iraq's immediate withdrawal from
Kuwait. On August 9,
Operation Shield, the American defense of Saudi Arabia, began as U. S.
forces raced to the
Persian Gulf. On November 29, 1990, the U. N. Security Council
passed a resolution
authorizing the use of force against Iraq if it failed to withdraw from
Kuwait by January
15, 1991. At 4:30 pm Eastern Standard Time on January 16, 1991,
Operation Desert Storm,
a massive U. S. led offensive against Iraq, began as the first fighter
aircraft were
launched from Saudi Arabia and off of U. S. and British aircraft
carriers in the Persian
Gulf. All evening, aircraft from the U. S. led military coalition
pounded targets in and
around Baghdad as the world watched the events transpire on television
footage transmitted
live via satellite from Baghdad and elsewhere. Operation Desert Storm
was conducted by an
international coalition under the command of U. S. General Norman
Schwarzkopf and featured
forces from thirty-two nations, including Britain, Egypt, France, Saudi
Arabia, and
Kuwait. Over the next six weeks, the allied force engaged in a
massive air war against
Iraq's military and civil infrastructure, encountering little effective
resistance from
the Iraqi air force. Iraqi ground forces were also helpless
during this stage of the war,
and Saddam Hussein's only significant retaliatory measure was the
launching of SCUD
missile attacks against Israel and Saudi Arabia. Saddam hoped
that the missile attacks
would provoke Israel, and thus other Arab nations, to enter the
conflict; however, at the
request of the U. S., Israel remained out of the war. On February
24, a massive coalition
ground offensive began and Iraq's outdated and poorly supplied armed
forces were rapidly
overwhelmed. By the end of the day, the Iraqi army had
effectively folded, ten thousand of
its troops were held as prisoners, and a U. S. air base had been
established deep inside
Iraq. After less than four days, Kuwait was liberated and the
majority of Iraq's armed
forces had either been destroyed, surrendered, or retreated to
Iraq. On February 28, U. S.
President George Bush declared a cease fire, and on April 3, the U. N.
Security Council
passed Resolution 687, specifying conditions for a formal end to the
conflict. According
to the resolution, Bush's cease fire would become official, some
sanctions would be
lifted, but the ban on Iraqi oil sales would continue until Iraq
destroyed its weapons of
mass destruction under U. N. supervision. On April 6, Iraq
accepted the resolution, and on
April 11, the Security Council declared it in effect; although in later
years Saddam
Hussein frequently violated the terms of the peace agreement. One
hundred and twenty-five
American soldiers were killed in the Persian Gulf War, with another
twenty-one reported as
missing in action.
Battle of the Gunboats on August 3, 1804
During the First Barbary War, U. S. warships and gunboats launched an
assault against
Tripoli harbor in present day Libya, and fell into hand to hand combat
with the Tripolitan
gunboats there. The Americans failed to seize control of the
harbor, but boarded and
captured several enemy gunboats in dramatic fighting while suffering
only moderate losses. Also known as the War with Tripoli, the
First Barbary War began in 1801, when U. S.
President Thomas Jefferson ordered U. S. Navy vessels to the
Mediterranean Sea in protest
of continuing raids against U. S. ships by pirates from the
Barbary states: Morocco,
Algeria, Tunis, and Tripolitania. American sailors were often
abducted along with the
captured booty and ransomed back to the U. S. at an exorbitant
price. After two years of
minor confrontations, sustained action began in June 1803 when a small
U. S. expeditionary
force attacked Tripoli harbor in present day Libya. In February
1804, a force of U. S. Marines under Lieutenant Stephen Decatur
led an expedition into Tripoli harbor to destroy
a captured American vessel; a mission that the famed British Admiral
Horatio Nelson later
called the "most daring act of the age." Six months later, Decatur
returned to
Tripoli Harbor as part of a larger American offensive, and emerged as a
hero again during
the so called "Battle of the Gunboats." In April of 1805, another
American
victory came during the Derna campaign, which was the first campaign
undertaken by U. S. land forces in North Africa. After
marching five hundred miles from Egypt, U. S. agent
William Eaton led a small force of U. S. Marines and Berber
mercenaries against the
Tripolitan port city of Derna. The Marines and Berbers were on a
mission to depose Yusuf
Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his
brother, Hamet
Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States.
Supported by the heavy guns
of the USS Argus and the USS Hornet, Marines and Arab
mercenaries under William
Eaton captured Derna and deposed Yusuf. However, much to Eaton's
dismay, the peace terms
agreed to in June failed to approve Hamet's restoration to the
throne. The U. S. government, which was anxious to reach a peace
agreement, decided to set aside Hamet's
claim in exchange for a promise by Tripoli to grant most favored
trading status to the
United States, to not molest American merchant vessels, and to forgo
demands for tribute
payments. The treaty, approved by Congress in 1806 after a long
and heated debate, was the
most favorable any nation had negotiated with a pirate state.
However, conflict with other
Barbary states continued for over a decade.
Sir Roger Casement Hanged on August 3, 1916
Sir Roger David Casement, the Irish born diplomat who in 1911 was
knighted by King George
V, was executed for his role in Ireland's Easter Rebellion.
Casement, an Irish Protestant
who served as a British diplomat during the early part of the twentieth
century, won
international acclaim after exposing the illegal practice of slavery in
the Congo and
parts of South America. Despite his Ulster Protestant roots, he
became an ardent supporter
of the Irish independence movement, and after the outbreak of World War
I, traveled to the
United States and then to Germany to secure aid for an Irish uprising
against the British. Germany, which was at war with Great
Britain, promised limited aid, and Casement was
transported back to Ireland in a German submarine. On April 21,
1916, just a few days
before the outbreak of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin, he landed in
Kerry, and was picked
up by British authorities almost immediately. By the end of the
month, the Easter
Rebellion had been suppressed, and the majority of its leaders were
executed. Casement was
tried separately because of his illustrious past, but nevertheless was
found guilty of
treason on June 29. On August 3, he was hanged in London.
Patton Strikes Hospitalized Soldier on August 3, 1944
During World War II, U. S. General George S. Patton slapped an Army
private hospitalized
for battle fatigue, accusing the young man of cowardice. After
the audacious general
struck another enlisted man suffering from a similar psychological
disorder, U. S. General
Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered him to apologize and temporarily
removed him from command. Born in San Gabriel, California, in
1885, Patton's family had a long history of military
service. After studying at West Point, he served as a tank
officer during World War I, and
these experiences, along with his extensive military study, led him to
become an advocate
of the crucial importance of the tank in future warfare. After
the American entrance into
World War II, Patton, who been placed in command of an important U. S.
tank division,
played a key role in the Allied invasion of French North Africa in
1942. In 1943, Patton
led the U. S. Seventh Army in its assault on Sicily, and won fame for
out-commanding
British General Bernard L. Montgomery in the so called "Race to
Messina."
Although Patton was one of the ablest American commanders from World
War II, he was also
one of the most controversial. He presented himself as a
modern day cavalryman, designed
his own uniform, and was known to make eccentric claims of his direct
descent from great
military leaders of the past through reincarnation. During the
Sicilian campaign, Patton
generated considerable controversy when he accused two U. S. soldiers
suffering from battle
fatigue of cowardice, and then personally struck them across the
face. The famously
profane general was forced to issue a public apology and was
reprimanded by General
Eisenhower. However, when time for the invasion of Western Europe
came, Eisenhower could
find no general as formidable as Patton, and the general was again
granted an important
military post. In 1944, Patton commanded the U. S. Third Army in
the invasion of France,
and in December of that year, his supreme expertise in military
movement and tank warfare
helped crush the German counteroffensive in the Ardennes during the
Battle of the Bulge. During one of his many successful campaigns,
General Patton was once said to have
declared, "Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to
insignificance." On December 21, 1945, Patton died in a hospital
in Germany from
injuries sustained in an automobile accident near Mannheim.
Hiroshima Bombed on August 6, 1945
On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a U. S. B-29 bomber, dropped the first atomic
weapon ever used in combat on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Within minutes the massive
blast and the firestorm it produced destroyed the majority of the city and killed almost
100,000 people, a third of Hiroshima's population. Three days later, the major coastal
city of Nagasaki was hit, prompting Japan's unconditional surrender and bringing the most
costly war in human history to an end. Both cities were rebuilt, but the horror of the
world's only nuclear attacks remains. By the end of 1945, a total of some 200,000 people
had perished as a result of the bombings. Many of those who survived faced a future of
disease and premature death.
First Execution by Electric Chair on August 6, 1890
At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in
history was carried
out against William Kemmler, convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda
Ziegler, with an
ax. Electrocution as a more humane means of execution was first
suggested in 1881 by Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist.
Southwick had witnessed an elderly drunkard
"painlessly" killed after touching the terminals of an electrical
generator in
Buffalo, New York. In 1889, New York's Electrical Execution Law,
the first of its kind in
the world, went into effect, and Edwin R. Davis, the Auburn Prison
electrician, was
commissioned to design an electric chair. Closely resembling the
modern device, Davis's
chair was fitted with two electrodes, which were composed of metal
disks sandwiched
between a rubber holder and covered with a damp sponge. The
electrodes were to be applied
to the criminal's head and back. On August 6, 1890, William
Kemmler, convicted of
first degree murder, became the first person to be sent to the
chair. After he was
strapped in, a charge of approximately 700 volts was delivered to
Kemmler for only
seventeen seconds before the current failed. Although witnesses
reported smelling burnt
clothing and charred flesh, Kemmler was far from dead, and a second
shock was prepared. The second charge was 1030 volts and applied
for about two minutes, whereupon smoke was
observed coming from the head of Kemmler, who was clearly
deceased. An autopsy showed that
the brain below the headpiece had hardened and the flesh under the
electrode on the back
had burned through to the spine. Dr. Alfred P. Southwick
applauded Kemmler's execution
with the declaration, "We live in a higher civilization from this day
on," while
American inventor George Westinghouse, an innovator of the use of
electricity, remarked,
"They would have done better with an ax."
First Civilian Prisoners Land on
Alcatraz on August 11, 1866
A group of federal prisoners classified as "most dangerous" arrived at
Alcatraz
Island, a twenty-two acre rock outcropping located 1.5 miles offshore
in San Francisco
Bay. The convicts, who were transferred from McNeil Island Prison
in Washington, joined a
handful of military prisoners left over from the island's days as a U.
S. Army prison. Alcatraz was an uninhabited seabird haven when it
first explored by the Spanish in the
eighteenth century. They named it Isla de los Alcatraces, or
"Island of the
Pelicans." Fortified by the Spanish, Alcatraz came under U. S. control
in 1851, and
from 1859 was used to house American military criminals. In the
early 1930s, Alcatraz was
fortified into a high security federal penitentiary designed to hold
the most dangerous
prisoners in the U. S. penal system. The first shipment of
civilian prisoners arrived on
August 11, 1934. Later that month, another shipload arrived,
featuring, among other
convicts, infamous monster Al Capone. In September, George
"Machine Gun" Kelly,
another luminary of organized crime, landed on Alcatraz. Over the
next three decades, over
1,500 men would do time within the prison's walls. Although many
attempted, no prisoner
was known to have successfully escaped "The Rock." However, the bodies
of
several escapees believed drowned in the treacherous waters of San
Francisco Bay were
never found. Only one man, John Paul Scott, was recorded to have
reached the mainland, but
he came ashore exhausted at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge and was
immediately
arrested. In 1963, U. S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
ordered Alcatraz closed, citing
the high expense of its maintenance. In 1972, Alcatraz was opened
to the public as part of
the newly created Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is
maintained by the
National Park Service.
Elvis Presley dies on August 16, 1977
Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977, at the age of forty-two. The death of the king of rock and roll brought legions of mourning fans to Graceland, his home in Memphis, Tennessee. Doctors claimed he died of a heart attack induced by barbiturates; although some later reports suggested suicide. Elvis recorded twenty-five golden records, nine more than the Beatles, which is why "Long Live the King" remains a fitting epitaph.
Clinton Admits to Lewinsky Affair on August 17, 1998
Contrary to his testimony in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case,
President Bill
Clinton acknowledged to prosecutors from the office of Independent
Counsel Ken Starr that
he had had an extramarital affair with ex-White House intern Monica
Lewinsky. In four
hours of closed door testimony, conducted in the Map Room of the White
House, Clinton
spoke live via closed circuit television to a grand jury in a nearby
federal courthouse. He was the first sitting president to ever
testify before a grand jury investigating his
conduct. That evening, President Clinton also gave a four minute
televised address to the
nation in which he admitted he had an inappropriate relationship with
Monica Lewinsky. In
the brief speech, which was wrought with legalisms, the word "sex" was
never
spoken and the word "regret" was only used in reference to his
admission that he
misled the public and his family. In November of 1995, Clinton
began his affair with Ms. Lewinsky, a twenty-one year old unpaid
intern. Over the next year and a half, the
president and Lewinsky had nearly a dozen sexual encounters in the
White House, eight
while she worked there and two thereafter. In April of 1996,
Lewinsky was transferred to
the Pentagon. That summer, she first confided in Pentagon
co-worker Linda Tripp about her
sexual relationship with the president. In 1997, with that
relationship ended, Tripp began
to secretly record conversations with Lewinsky in which she gave
details about the affair. In December, Lewinsky was subpoenaed by
lawyers for Paula Jones, who was suing the
president on sexual harassment charges. On January 7, 1998,
allegedly under the
recommendation of the president, Lewinsky filed an affidavit in which
she denied ever
having a sexual relationship with President Clinton. Just five
days later, Tripp contacted
the office of Whitewater Independent Counsel Ken Starr to talk about
Lewinsky and the
tapes she made of their conversations. Tripp, wired by FBI agents
working with Starr, met
with Lewinsky again on January 13, 1998, and on January 16, Lewinsky
was taken by the FBI
agents and U. S. attorneys to a hotel room, where she was questioned
and offered immunity
if she cooperated with the prosecution. A few days later, the
story broke, and Clinton
publicly denied the allegations, saying, "I did not have sexual
relations with that
woman, Ms. Lewinsky." In late July, lawyers for Lewinsky and Starr
worked out a full
immunity agreement covering both Lewinsky and her parents, who Starr
had all threatened
with prosecution. On August 6, Lewinsky appeared before the grand
jury to begin her
testimony, and on August 17, President Clinton testified. Less
than a month later, on
September 9, Kenneth Starr submitted his report and eighteen boxes of
supporting documents
to the House of Representatives. Released to the public two days
later, the Starr Report
outlined a case for impeaching Clinton on eleven grounds, including
perjury, obstruction
of justice, witness tampering, and abuse of power, and also provided
explicit details of
the sexual relationship between the president and Ms. Lewinsky.
On October 8, the House
authorized a wide ranging impeachment inquiry, and on December 11, the
House Judiciary
Committee approved three articles of impeachment. On December 16,
the eve of the House
impeachment debate, U. S. and British forces attacked Iraq in
retaliation for its failure
to cooperate with U. N. weapons inspectors. During the two days
of coordinated air strikes,
Iraqi officials reported that at least twenty-five people were killed
in Baghdad alone. On
December 19, after thirteen and a half hours of debate, the House
approved two articles of
impeachment, charging President Clinton with lying under oath to a
federal grand jury and
obstructing justice. Clinton, the second president in American
history to be impeached,
vowed to finish his term. On January 7, 1999, in a congressional
procedure not seen since
the 1868 impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, the trial of
President Clinton got
underway in the Senate. As instructed in Article 1 of the U. S.
Constitution, Supreme Court
chief justice William Rehnquist was sworn in to preside and the
senators were sworn in as
jurors. Five weeks later, on February 12, 1999, the Senate voted
on whether or not to
remove Clinton from office. Clinton was acquitted on both
articles of impeachment. The
prosecution needed a two thirds majority to convict, but failed to
achieve even a bare
majority. Rejecting the first charge of perjury, forty-five
Democrats and ten Republicans
voted "not guilty," and on the charge of obstruction of justice, the
Senate was
split 50-50. After the trial concluded, President Clinton said he
was "profoundly
sorry" for the burden he imposed on Congress and the American people.
British Capture and Burn Washington on August 24, 1814
During the War of 1812, British forces under General Robert Ross
overwhelmed American
militiamen at the Battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, and marched
unopposed into Washington,
DC. Most congressmen and officials fled the nation's capital as
soon as word came of the
American defeat, but President James Madison and his wife Dolly escaped
just before the
invaders arrived. Earlier in the day, Madison had been present at
the Battle of
Bladensburg, and had at one point actually taken command of one of the
few remaining
American batteries, thus becoming the first and only president to
exercise in battle his
authority as commander-in-chief. The British army entered
Washington in the late
afternoon, and General Ross and British officers dined that night at
the deserted
Executive Mansion. Meanwhile, the British troops, ecstatic that
they had captured their
enemy's capital, began setting the city aflame in revenge for the
burning of Canadian
government buildings by U. S. troops earlier in the war. The
White House, a number of
federal buildings, and several private homes were destroyed. The
still uncompleted Capitol
building was also lit, and the House of Representatives and the Library
of Congress were
gutted before a torrential downpour doused the flames. On August
26, General Ross,
realizing his untenable hold on the capital area, ordered a withdrawal
from Washington. The next day, President Madison returned to a
smoking and charred Washington, and vowed to
rebuild the city. James Hoban, the original architect of the
Executive Mansion, completed
reconstruction of the White House in 1817.
Jack the Ripper Claims First Victim on August 31, 1888
Prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, the first victim of London serial killer
"Jack the
Ripper," was found murdered and mutilated in Whitechapel's Buck's
Row. The East End
of London would see four more victims of the murderer over the next few
months, but no
suspect would ever be found. In Victorian England, London's East
End was a teeming slum
occupied by nearly a million of the city's poorest citizens. For
a single woman, a widow,
or the wife of an unemployed laborer, prostitution was one of the only
reliable means
through which she could pay her room and board. In 1888, there
were over 1,000 prostitutes
in Whitechapel, but others, including several of Jack the Ripper's
victims, only resorted
to prostitution in times of severe economic crisis. On September
8, the killer claimed his
second victim, Annie Chapman, and on September 30, two more
prostitutes (Liz Stride and
Kate Eddowes) were murdered and carved up on the same night. By
then, London's police had
determined the pattern of the killings. The murderer, offering to
pay for sex, would lure
his victims onto a secluded street or square and then slice their
throats. As the women
rapidly bled to death, he would then brutally mutilate them with the
same six inch knife. The police, who lacked modern forensic
techniques such as fingerprinting and blood typing,
were at a complete loss for suspects. Dozens of letters allegedly
written by the murderer
were sent to the police, although the vast majority of these were
immediately deemed
fraudulent. However, two letters, written by the same
individual, alluded to crime facts
known only to the police and the killer. These letters, signed
"Jack the
Ripper," gave rise to the serial killer's popular nickname. On
November 7, after a
month of silence, Jack took his fifth and last victim, Irish born Mary
Kelly, an
occasional prostitute. Of all his victims' corpses, Kelly's was
the most hideously
mutilated. In 1892, with no leads found and no more murders
recorded, the Jack the Ripper
file was closed.
President Nixon Resigns on August 9, 1974
On August 5, Nixon made public the transcripts of three recorded conversations. At the same time he admitted that he had been aware of the Watergate cover up shortly after the break in occurred and that he had tried to halt the Federal Bureau of Investigation's inquiry into the break in. On August 9, Nixon resigned and was succeeded by Gerald R. Ford. President Ford issued a pardon to Nixon for any and all crimes that he might have committed while President. Nixon's chief associates, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell, were among those convicted for their role in the affair. In addition to the governmental upheaval that resulted from the Watergate affair, the scandal provoked widespread loss of confidence in public officials and tended to foster a general suspicion of government agencies.
I often think of this as some of my best work.