On August 24th these people were born ...
1724 George Stubbs, English painter.
1759 William Wilberforce, English philanthropist.
1816 Sir Daniel Gooch, laid first successful trans-Atlantic cables
1872 Max Beerbohm, English writer and caricaturist.
1886 William Francis Gibbs, naval architect, designed Liberty Ships
1903 Graham Sutherland, English painter.
1917 Charles Causley, English poet.
1934 Kenny Baker, actor.
1935 Paul Barker, writer and broadcaster.
1936 Antonia Byatt, writer.
1948 Jean-Michel Jarre, composer.
1953 Sam Torrence, golfer.
1957 Stephen Fry, English actor and writer.
1958 Steve Guttenburg, actor.
1981 Chad Murray, American actor, Lucas Scott in One Tree Hill).
1988 Rupert Grint, actor.
... and these people died ...
0079 Pliny the Elder, Roman naturalist and writer.
0410 Alaric I, King of the Visigoths.
1680 Thomas Blood, Irish adventurer.
1770 Thomas Chatterton, English poet.
1832 Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot, French physicist.
1942 Duke of Kent, King George VI brother, in a flying boat accident.
1957 Ronald Knox, British theologian.
2009 Larry Knechtel, keyboardist. (69)
2012 Jerry Nelson, muppeteer. (78)
... and these things happened - On August 24th
Belarus, Independence Day. ( 1991 )
Ukraine, Independence Day. ( 1991 )
79 Mt. Vesuvius erupts; Pompeii & Herculaneum are buried
0410 The Visigoths, led by Alaric, sacked Rome.
1572 Charles IX ordered the death of all Huguenots throughout France,
thousands were killed in 'the Massacre of St Bartholomew'.
1704 French were defeated by the English and Dutch, Battle of Malaga.
1814 British sack Washington, DC.
1869 The Waffle Iron is invented.
1875 Matthew Webb became the first man to swim the English Channel.
1891 The motion picture camera was patented by Thomas Edison.
1909 Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
1921 Turkish army drove back the Greeks, Battle of the Sakkaria River
1932 First transcontinental non-stop flight by a woman, AE Putnam
1939 Ribbentrop (Germany) and Molotov (USSR) sign non-agression treaty.
1943 Mountbatten made Allied Supreme Commander South-East Asia.
1947 First Edinburgh Festival.
1956 First non-stop transcontinental helicopter flight arrived Wash DC
1959 The Manchester Guardian was re-named The Guardian.
1960 Temp. drops to -88ø (-127øF) at Vostok, Antarctica (world record)
1965 A body 450 000 years old was found in a Hungarian limestone pit.
1989 Voyager II passes Neptune, Triton, finds rings here too.
1990 Hostage Brian Keenan released after 4 yrs by Arab terrorists.
1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Secretary Soviet Communist Party.
1995 Bill Gates Microsoft launches Windows 95 operating system.
2000 A Gulf Air Airbus crashed trying to land at Bahrein, 143 dead.
2000 Festival in Bunol, Spain, a fight with 120 tons of tomatoes.
2000 Volvo recalls 116 000 cars with a suspected suspension problem.
2001 Drugs worth £700 million seized by police in Melbourne
2001 Galileo sent views of Jupiter's Callista, it's all ice and dust.
2002 Microsoft announced more security flaws in IE6.
2002 Outbreak of salmonella at Disney World, Florida, 141 infected.
2003 Fernando Alonso (Renault) became youngest F1 GP winner (Hungary).
2003 Mars passed at it's closest point for 60k years - 34.5 mil miles.
2003 New Yorker Demetri Martin won Edinburgh 23rd Perrier Comedy Award
2004 Jessica's sister Ashlee Simpson was US No1 album - Autobiography.
2004 Wanadoo offered a 1 megabit broadband service for £17.99.
2005 Scott Mackenzie became World Flycasting Champion with a record cast of 205 ft.
2005 Text messaging in the UK reached a record 3 billion a month.
2006 Best Band and Album Awards went to The Lost Prophets at the 13th Kerrang Awards.
2006 Chinese authorities cracked down on the practice of hiring strippers for funerals.
2007 State run Spanish TV dropped live coverage of bullfighting, Pay TV will continue to show events.
2007 Ventriloquist Terry Fator and a menagerie of puppets won America's Got Talent and was handed $1 million in prize money.
2008 Authorities in Malaysia reversed a decision to cancel a concert by Avril Lavigne, they thought her act was “too sexy”.
2008 First ever Valenzia F1 GP was won by Phillipe Massa in a Ferrari.
2008 The Beijing Olympics ended by handing the Olympic flame to the UK - on a London double-decker bus.
2009 Comedian Dan Antopolski won the funniest joke of this year's Edinburgh Fringe. "Hedgehogs. Why can't they just share the hedge?".
2009 Oasis pulled out of their headline slot at the V Festival in Essex after Liam Gallagher contracted viral laryngitis. Snow Patrol took over.
2009 Thousands were forced to leave homes as wildfires that started near Marathon threatened Athens.
2010 Comedian Tim Vine won funniest joke of this year's Edinburgh Fringe; I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again.
2010 NHS County Durham piloted the free 111 number for non-emergency medical care, to act as an alternative to 999, half of which were non-emergency.
2011 Col Gaddafi was vowing martyrdom or victory after rebels took over Tripoli, he retreated to Sirte for tactical reasons.
2011 Hurricane Irene approached the eastern United States and a 5.8R earthuake hit from Georgia to New England.
2012 A Norwegian court delivered its verdict in the trial of mass killer Anders Behring Breivik; he was declared sane and sentenced to indefinite detention for the murder of over 70 people.
------- O ---------- O ---------- O --------- O ---------- O -------
Share your happiness with others today.
------- O ---------- O ---------- O --------- O ---------- O -------