Wednesday

Aug. 20, 1997

Cutting Loose on an August Night

by Jonathan Holden

WEDNESDAY 8/20

Today's Reading: "Cutting Loose on an August Night" by Jonathan Holden from THE NAMES OF THE RAPIDS, published by University of Massachusetts Press.

Radar was used for the first time in 1940, by the British during World War II.

Also on this day in 1940, Winston Churchill made a radio broadcast during the Battle of Britain giving his famous homage to the Royal Air Force, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

In 1913, 700 feet above Buc, France, parachutist Adolphe Pegond became the first person in history to jump from an airplane and land safely.

Jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden was born in Vernon, Texas, in 1905.

Dublin's Abbey Theater was founded in 1904, an outgrowth of the Irish Literary Theater founded in 1899 by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory.

German-American philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich, an early critic of Hitler, was born in Starzeddel, Germany, in 1886.

The 23rd president of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, was born in North Bend, Ohio, in 1833.

Naval officer Oliver Perry, who in his report of the British surrender in the War of 1812, said "We have met the enemy and they are ours," was born in South Kingston, Rhode Island, 1785.

In 1741, Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering, commissioned by Peter the Great of Russia to look for land connecting Asia with North America, discovered Alaska.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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