August 16, 1940 - The first official US Army parachute jump.
August 17, 1969: Hurricane Camille strikes the Gulf Coast, making landfall in Waveland, Mississippi.
This is the second strongest hurricane to hit the U.S. mainland in recorded history. Winds were measured at 175 miles per hour before the measurement equipment was destroyed. Camille is one of only three Catagory 5 hurricanes to ever strike the United States. 143 died on the Gulf Coast.
August 17, 1915: Jewish American Leo Frank is lynched in Marietta, Georgia after a 13-year-old girl is murdered. Today, the consensus of researchers on the subject holds that Frank was wrongly convicted.
August 17, 1960: American pilot Francis Gary Powers pleads guilty at his Moscow trial for spying over the Soviet Union in a U-2 plane.
August 18, 1920: The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women’s suffrage.
August 18, 1947: The Cadiz Explosion in Spain kills officially 147 with another 5000 injured, but the actual death toll is probably much higher. The disaster occurred at a submarine base, where large amounts of mines and torpedoes detonated for unknown reasons.
I try not to post the same historical event that was posted another year, but I will make an exception for this because I live at ground zero for this event.
August 19, 1969: The remnants of Hurricane Camille kill over 1% of the population of rural Nelson County, Virginia.
Hurricane Camille had struck the Gulf Coast as a Catagory 5 storm. However after moving over land it was downgraded to tropical depression. The forecast in Virginia on the night of August 19th was for thunderstorms with clearing by morning. In Charlottesville, Virginia, about 25 miles to the north, that’s all it did. But in rural Nelson County at the foot of the mountains, the rains came in unbelievable amounts. During a 5 to 6 hour period, over 30 inches of rain fell. The rain occurred overnight, so many of the residents had already gone to bed.
Creeks didn’t just overflow. Whole mountainsides washed down creating rivers of mud and debris where normally small creeks gurgled. We know at least 31 inches of rain fell in places, but it was probably more as that measurement came from barrels that overran. Experts say it rained about as hard as theoretically possible. Birds are said to have drowned in trees. Others say it was like standing under a waterfall. The number of dead is estimated at 153, though many bodies were never found. A tractor trailer was washed off of Route 29. It has never been located.
I didn’t live here at the time. But the scars from that event are still visible today in the mountains of Nelson County.
This is Virginia’s deadliest natural disaster.
August 20, 1995: The Firozabad Rail Disaster occurs when a speeding train collides with a train that had stopped after hitting a cow in India. Between 350 and 400 passengers are killed and hundreds more are injured.
August 20, 2008: Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid, Spain to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. Of the 172 people on board, 146 die immediately, and eight more later die of injuries sustained in the crash.
I was in the Barajas Airport when this occurred.
August 20, 1910: The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the “Big Blowup” or the “Big Burn”) occurs in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana, burning approximately 3 million acres (12,000 km[sup]2[/sup]).
August 20, 1914: Brussels is captured during the German invasion of Belgium.
August 20, 1968: Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring. East German participation is limited to a few specialists due to memories of the recent war. Only Albania and Romania refuse to participate.
August 20, 1991: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union’s parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.
August 21, 1883: An F5 tornado strikes Rochester, Minnesota. 37 are killed and hundreds are injured. A third of the town is leveled.
There were no hospitals at this time in Rochester, so Dr. William Mayo and his sons were forced to care for the injured in a makeshift emergency room in a dance hall. Because of this disaster, the doctors decided a hospital was needed in Rochester. This would eventually become the world-famous Mayo clinic.
August 21, 2017: A total solar eclipse traverses the continental United States.
August 22, 1985: British Airtours Flight 28M catches fire during takeoff at Manchester International Airport. 53 passengers and 2 crew members die, mostly from smoke inhalation.
August 22, 1971: American anti-Vietnam War activists break into a draft board office in Camden, N.J. to destroy documents. They are later acquitted in a Federal trial.
August 22, 2003: Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building.
August 22, 1894: Mahatma Gandhi forms the Natal Indian Congress (NIC) in order to fight discrimination against Indian traders in Natal.
August 23, 1933: The Chesapeake Potomac hurricane kills 47 in Virginia.
August 24, 1921: British Airship R38 breaks up and crashes into the Humbar Estuary. 44 are killed. At the time of its construction the R38 had been the largest airship in the world.
August 24, 1456: The first printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
August 25, 1933: The Diexi Earthquake in China kills over 9000.