August 23
1966
Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photo of Earth as seen from lunar orbit. While a remarkable image at the time, the full resolution of the image was never retrieved from the data stored from the mission. In 2008, this earthrise image was restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project at NASA Ames Research Center. They obtained the original data tapes from the mission (the last surviving set) and restored original FR-900 tape drives to operational condition using both 60s era parts and modern electronics.
2000
Richard Hatch, a 39-year-old corporate trainer from Rhode Island, won the season-one finale of the reality television show Survivor and took home the promised $1 million prize. Survivor, whose slogan is “Outwit, Outplay, Outlast,” was a huge ratings success and spawned numerous imitators in the reality-competition genre. Produced by Mark Burnett (The Voice, The Apprentice), Survivor premiered on May 31, 2000, on CBS. The show centers around a group of sixteen strangers who are stranded for 39 days in a remote location where they must fend for food, water and shelter and compete in various challenges to win rewards and immunity from being voted out of the competition by their fellow contestants.
2008
The star-studded American women's basketball team led by the likes of Lisa Leslie, Sue Bird & Diana Taurasi win the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics with a convincing 92-65 win over Australia. The US women's team blew away their competition by an average margin of victory of 37.6 points a game en route to an unblemished 8-0 slate. In capturing the 2008 gold medal, the USA became the first women's traditional team sport to claim four straight gold medals, cementing USA Basketball's place as the most dominant program in women's U.S. Olympic Team history. Further, the win extended the USA's Olympic winning streak to 33 games, dating back to 1992 bronze medal victory over Cuba, and marked the USA's third straight victory over Australia in the Olympic gold medal game.
August 24
1873
William Henry Jackson became the first person to photograph Colorado’s elusive Mount of the Holy Cross, a natural cross of snow that lay hidden high in the rugged mountains of Colorado. The subject of myths and legends for years, the photo provided reliable proof of its existence and, to some, the mountain top became a religious symbol of Manifest Destiny. After thousands of years of erosion, two deep ravines have formed in the steep rocky face of the mountain peak. Intersecting at a 90-degree angle, the ravines shelter the winter snow from the sun well after the rest of the mountain snow has melted away. For a brief time, a nearly perfect cross of snow appears on the rock face, though it often melts away later in the summer.
1981
Mark David Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder of John Lennon, a founding member of The Beatles. On December 8, 1980, Chapman shot and killed the 40-year-old singer, songwriter and peace activist, outside Lennon’s New York City apartment building, the Dakota, where he lived with his wife Yoko Ono and their young son Sean. Chapman initially entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity; however, he later decided to drop the insanity defense and plead guilty to second-degree murder. At his sentencing hearing on August 24, 1981, Chapman read from The Catcher in the Rye. Chapman’s requests for parole have all been denied and he continues to serve time in prison in New York.
1992
Hurricane Andrew made landfall in South Florida after causing extensive damage in the Bahamas. The Category 5 storm had sustained wind speeds as high as 165mph and gusts up to 174mph. Causing $27.3 billion in damages, Andrew was the costliest hurricane to hit the US until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In the United States alone, the powerful storm took the lives of 65 people, destroyed 63,500 homes while damaging 124,000 more and felled 70,000 acres of trees in the Everglades. Hurricane Andrew remains only one of four tropical cyclones to make landfall in the continental United States as a Category 5.
August 25
1916
The National Park Service was established as part of the Department of the Interior when the National Park Service Organic Act was signed by Woodrow Wilson. The National Park Service established by the Act "shall promote and regulate the use of the Federal areas known as national parks, monuments, and reservations hereinafter specified by such means and measures as conform to the fundamental purpose of the said parks, monuments, and reservations, which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations".
1950
President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order putting US railroads under the control of the Army to prevent a strike proposed by two enormous labor unions. Truman’s intervention was critical, as he had just ordered American troops into a war against North Korean communist forces in June. Since much of America’s economic and defense infrastructure was dependent upon the smooth functioning of the railroads, the 1950 strike proposed would have been catastrophic to the war effort. In a public statement that day, Truman insisted that “governmental seizure [of the railroads] is imperative” for the protection of American citizens as well as “essential to the national defense and security of the Nation.” He used the same justification for seizing control of steel plants when the United Steel Workers union struck later in the year.
2009
Edward “Ted” Kennedy, the youngest brother of President John F. Kennedy and a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, died of brain cancer at age 77. One of the longest-serving senators in American history, he was a leader of the Democratic Party and a spokesman for liberal causes who was also known for his ability to work with those on both sides of the political aisle. After JFK was elected the 35th US President, Ted won the special election to serve out the remainder of his brother’s Senate term, ending in January 1965. Massachusetts voters re-elected Kennedy to the seat eight more times. Kennedy was buried at Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery, near the graves of his brothers John and Robert.
August 26
1794
In response to the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent uprising of farmers and distillers in western Pennsylvania in protest of a whiskey tax enacted by the federal government to cover debts of the Revolutionary War, President George Washington writes to Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, Virginia’s governor and a former general, that he had no choice but to act to subdue the “insurgents,” fearing they would otherwise “shake the government to its foundation.” This was the first great test of Washington’s authority as president of the United States. The president mounted his horse on September 30 to lead a force of 13,000–larger than any American army amassed in one place during the Revolution–to quell the uprising. The rioters dispersed in the presence of the federal troops and bloodshed was averted.
1939
The first televised Major League baseball game was broadcast on station W2XBS, the station that was to become WNBC-TV. Announcer Red Barber called the game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York. In 1939, the World’s Fair—which was being held in New York—became the catalyst for the historic broadcast. The television was one of the fair’s prize exhibits, and organizers believed that the Dodgers-Reds doubleheader on August 26 was the perfect event to showcase America’s grasp on the new technology. Today, televised sports is a multi-billion dollar industry, with technology that gives viewers an astounding amount of visual and audio detail. Cameras are now so precise that they can capture the way a ball changes shape when struck by a bat, and athletes are wired to pick up field-level and sideline conversation.
1968
Democratic National Convention was besieged by thousands of anti-Vietnam War demonstrators. During the violent four-day convention, police and National Guardsmen clashed with protesters outside the International Amphitheater, and hundreds of people, including innocent bystanders, were beaten by the Chicago police. Even CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace was punched in the face by a guard. In the convention’s aftermath, a federal commission investigating the convention described one of the confrontations as a “police riot” and blamed Chicago Mayor Richard Daley for inciting his police to violence. Nevertheless, eight political radicals—the so-called "Chicago Eight"—were arrested on charges of conspiring to incite the violence, and in 1969 their trial began in Chicago, sparking new waves of protests in the city.
August 27
1921
J E Clair of Acme Packing Co of Green Bay granted an American Football Professional Association (AFPA, forerunner to NFL) franchise, becoming the Acme Packers. Due to roster cheating and financial woes, the team franchise was revoked a year later. The team was reformed in 1923 as the Green Bay Packers and run by a group known as the Green Bay Football Corporation. The Packers are now the only publicly owned company with a Board of Directors in American professional sports.
1953
American romantic comedy "Roman Holiday," was released. Audrey Hepburn starred as a bored and sheltered princess who escaped her guardians to fall in love with an American newsman in Rome, played by Gregory Peck. Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress while the film also won for best screenplay and best costume design. In 1999, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
1967
Naomi Sims became the first African-American model on the cover of a US magazine when she graced the cover of Fashions of the Times, a supplement to The New York Times Magazine. Her early attempts to get modeling work through established agencies were frustrated by racial prejudice, with some agencies telling her that her skin was too dark. Her first career breakthrough came after she decided to sidestep the agencies and go directly to fashion photographers and Gösta Peterson, a photographer for The New York Times, who agreed to photograph her for the cover of the paper's August 1967 fashion supplement. Sims is considered the first African American supermodel.
August 28
1774
Elizabeth Ann Bayley was born in New York City. Seton taught in order to support her family and believed in free education for all children, male and female. In pursuit of this goal, she founded the nation’s first Catholic school in Baltimore, which had been the capital of the Catholic colony of Maryland. The school, St. Joseph’s Academy and Free School, would eventually become part of Mount Saint Mary’s University. In 1809, Seton took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, along with the moniker “Mother Seton.” She then founded the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, also in Maryland. Her efforts to establish Catholic institutions in the new United States, protected by the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of freedom of religion, saw her beatified in 1963, and canonized in 1975. Seton Hall University in New Jersey was named in her honor.
1963
On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washing, D.C., the African American civil rights movement reached its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to about 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The demonstrators—Black and white, poor and rich—came together in the nation’s capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination. The peaceful rally was the largest assembly for a redress of grievances that the capital had ever seen, and King was the last speaker.
1970
"I'll Be There" was released by The Jackson 5. It was their fourth straight number one hit and is the Billboard Song of the Year. "I'll Be There" is also notable as being the most successful single released by Motown during its "Detroit era" (1959–72). Mariah Carey brought the song back into prominence two decades after its initial release when she recorded it for MTV Unplugged in 1992. It would once again become a #1 hit and Carey's sixth #1 overall. "I'll Be There" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame of 2011.
August 29
1898
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co was founded in Akron, Ohio by Frank Sieberling and named for Charles Goodyear, the man who developed vulcanized rubber. They initially focus on the manufacturing of bicycle and buggy tires, as well as rubber horseshoes. As of 1901, Goodyear was a supplier of racing tires for Henry Ford, who’s ground-breaking 1908 Model T was equipped with Goodyear tires. The company became the world’s biggest tire manufacturer in 1926 and remains a successful company to this day, with worldwide tire sales that surpass the 20 billion dollar mark.
1965
Astronauts L. Gordon Cooper Jr. and Charles “Pete” Conrad Jr complete d120 Earth orbits in Gemini 5, marking the first time the US set an international duration record for a manned space mission. The primary goals of Project Gemini included proving the techniques required for the Apollo Program to fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the 1960s. Paramount among the techniques demonstrated during Project Gemini was rendezvous and docking necessary to implement the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous method NASA chose for the Moon landing mission.
2005
Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana as a Category 3 hurricane backed by 145-mile-an-hour-winds. The storm killed more than 1,700 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others. Causing billions of dollars of damage, Katrina ranks as one of the costliest storms in American history. The surges overwhelmed the levees that protected New Orleans, with 80 percent of the city flooding up to the rooftops of many homes and small buildings. In a 2006 federal report, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers admitted that the flood-control complex surrounding New Orleans had been incomplete, insufficient and improperly maintained. "The hurricane protection system in New Orleans and southeast Louisiana was a system in name only," said the report.