August 6 is:
Wiggle Your Toes Day
National Fresh Breath Day
National Root Beer Float Day
Hiroshima Day, anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb (Little Boy) on Hiroshima, Japan from a Boeing B-29 bomber, Enola Gay, in 1945. Around 70,000 people were killed instantly.
The Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus. According to legend, Jesus and three of his apostles, Peter, James, and John, went to a mountain. Jesus began to shine with bright rays of light. Moses and Elijah appear next to him. Jesus is called “Son” by a voice assumed to be God. The apostles consider this “transfiguration” as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.
August 6, 1806, Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicated, ending the Holy Roman Empire.
Birthday of Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt, (August 6, 1861), wife of Theodore Roosevelt, first lady 1901-1909. Roosevelt’s mother and his first wife, Alice, both died on the same day (Feb 14, 1884). He married Edith, a friend since childhood, in 1886. At one time he had asserted that “I utterly disbelieve in and disapprove of second marriages; I have always considered that they argued weakness in a man’s character.”
Birthday of Sir Alexander Fleming (August 6, 1881), Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin.
From Today in Science
In 1890, the electric chair was used for the first time. William Kemmler was executed with 1,300 volts of alternating current in Auburn, N.Y. for murdering a woman with an axe. The state had legalized death by electricity on 4 Jun 1888, which was upheld despite a legal challenge. The Medico-Legal Society was appointed to manage the technical details. Thomas Edison wished the public to associate AC with danger and death, and promoted the electric chair to discredit Tesla’s AC system of electricity which competed with his own DC system. The execution was botched. The first shock lasted only 17 seconds. As the body appeared to move, a much longer second jolt was given until it produced a smell of burning flesh.
1930 – Judge Joseph Force Crater stepped into a taxi in New York and disappeared, never to be seen again. He was a New York City trial court judge and his disappearance increased public unrest about corruption in the city government, leading to the downfall of the Tammany Hall political machine. Bank records revealed a cash withdrawal of $20,000 just prior to his appointment as a judge.
1965 – US President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
1991 – Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.