August 2 is:
National Ice Cream Sandwich Day
Olivier de Clisson, was found guilty of treason and was beheaded in 1343 at Les Halles in Paris. As a result, his wife, Jeanne de Clisson, (also known as the Lioness of Brittany), sold their holding, bought a fleet of ships, and took to the sea as a pirate to seek revenge against the French King and nobility.
1610 – Henry Hudson sailed into what is now known as Hudson Bay. He thought he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.
Birthday of Pierre Charles L’Enfant (August 2, 1754), French army engineer and an officer of the American Revolutionary army; honored as the designer of the plans for the city of Washington, D.C.
Quote from Bartleby.com
After much menutial search for an eligible situation, prompted I may say from a fear of being prejudiced in favour of a first opinion I could discover no one so advantageously to greet the congressional building as is that on the west end of Jenkins heights which stand as a pedestal waiting for a monument, and I am confident, were all the wood cleared from the ground no situation could stand in competition with this. some might perhaps require less labour to be rendered agreeable but after all assistance of arts none ever would be made so grand and all other would appear but of secondary nature.
1870 – Tower Subway, the world’s first underground tube railway, opened in London, England, United Kingdom in 1870.
The Clay Street Hill Railroad began operating the first cable car in San Francisco’s famous cable car system in 1873.
1923-Death of Warren Gamaliel Harding, twenty-ninth President of the United States. (He was president 1921-1923) He died in San Francisco, California age age 57. In June of 1923 Harding set out on a cross-country trip to “renew his connection with the people”. Arriving in San Francisco, Harding developed pneumonia and it is believed he died of heart failure. Mrs. Harding refused to grant permission for an autopsy. Vice president Calvin Coolidge became the 30th President of the United States.
In 1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg. He joinied the offices of President and Chancellor into Führer.
August 2, 1990 – Iraq invaded Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.
From Today in Science
Birthday of John Tyndall (2 Aug 1820) British physicist who demonstrated why the sky is blue. His initial scientific reputation was based on a study of diamagnetism. He became known to the scientific world in 1848 as the author of a substantial work on Crystals. In 1856 he traveled with Professor Huxley to Switzerland, after which he co-authored On the Structure and Motion of Glaciers. He also published Heat as a Mode of Motion (1863), On Radiation (1865), followed by Sound, then in 1870 he published Light. Included in these works were studies of acoustic properties of the atmosphere and the blue color of the sky, which he suggested was due to the scattering of light by small particles of water.
He carried out research on radiant heat, studied spontaneous generation and the germ theory of disease, glacier motion, sound, the diffusion of light in the atmosphere and a host of related topics. He showed that ozone was an oxygen cluster rather than a hydrogen compound, and invented the fireman’s respirator and made other less well-known inventions including better fog-horns. One of his most important inventions, the light pipe, has led to the development of fibre optics.
“It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.” John Tyndall 1879