Namesday of the Queen in Sweden (On this day in 1901, the Swedish naming calendar, established by the Swedish Academy, was published. Namesday of the Queen, dedicated to this event, gained official status by 1972)
Wakulima ya Nane Nane Day in Tanzania (The local name of this holiday is Nane Nane, that in Swahili, the national language in Tanzania, means 'eight eight'. The day refers to the holiday's occurrence on the eighth day of the eighth month of the year.)
In 2017 Patagotitan mayorum, one of the largest ever dinosaurs, is officially named.
2007 – An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889.
2000 – Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence.
1974 – President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide television address, announces his resignation from the office of the President of the United States effective noon the next day.
1967 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
1946 – First flight of the Convair B-36, the world's first mass-produced nuclear weapon delivery vehicle, the heaviest mass-produced piston-engined aircraft, with the longest wingspan of any military aircraft, and the first bomber with intercontinental range.
1945 – The London Charter is signed by France, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, establishing the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg trials.
1908 – Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers' first public flight.
1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
1863 – American Civil War: Following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt).
1786 – Mont Blanc on the French-Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard.
1605 – The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.
Births
1990 – Parker Kligerman, American race car driver. He currently competes part-time in the NASCAR Gander RV & Outdoors Truck Series, driving the No. 75 Chevrolet Silverado for Henderson Motorsports and part-time in the NASCAR Cup Series, driving the No. 96 Toyota Camry for Gaunt Brothers Racing.
1989 – Anthony Rizzo, American baseball player. Anthony Vincent Rizzo (born August 8, 1989) is an American professional baseball first baseman for the Chicago Cubs of Major League Baseball (MLB).
1989 – Ken Baumann, American actor and author. Kenneth Robert Tuff "Ken" Baumann (born August 8, 1989) is an American actor, writer, publisher and book designer.
1988 – Laura Slade Wiggins, American actress and singer. She is most known for her roles in Stand, Shameless, The Tomorrow People, Starving in Suburbia and Rings.
1986 – Chris Pressley, American football player. Pressley's maximum back squat weight is 770 pounds (349 kg), and he has been videotaped squatting 605 pounds nine times in a row with no assistive equipment.
1986 – Pierre Garçon, American football player. Pierre Andre Garçon (/piˈɛər ɡɑːrˈsoʊn/; born August 8, 1986) is an American Football wide receiver who is currently a free agent.
1985 – Brett Ratliff, American football player. He played college football at Butte College and Utah.
1984 – Martrez Milner, American football player. He played college football at Georgia.
1982 – Ross Ohlendorf, American baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the New York Yankees, Pittsburgh Pirates, San Diego Padres, Washington Nationals, Texas Rangers, and Cincinnati Reds, and in the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
1981 – Meagan Good, American actress and producer. Beginning her career as a child actor, Good has appeared in numerous television shows, films, and music videos as both a child and adult.
1980 – Craig Breslow, American baseball player. Craig Andrew Breslow (pronounced BREHZ-loh; born August 8, 1980) is an American baseball executive serving as the Director of Strategic Initiatives for Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs in Major League Baseball (MLB), and a former professional baseball pitcher.
1980 – Jack Cassel, American baseball player. Joseph "Jack" Buren Cassel II (born August 8, 1980) is a former Major League Baseball pitcher for the San Diego Padres and Houston Astros organizations.
1980 – Michael Urie, American actor, director, and producer. James on the ABC dramedy television series Ugly Betty.
1980 – Mike Hindert, American singer and bass player. Michael "Dirt" Hindert (born August 8, 1980) is an American musician.
1980 – Pat Noonan, American soccer player. Pat Noonan (born August 2, 1980 in Ballwin, Missouri) is a former American soccer player who currently serves as an assistant coach for the Philadelphia Union.
1979 – Rashard Lewis, American basketball player. He rose to prominence in the NBA as a scorer with the Seattle SuperSonics, and was later a member of the Orlando Magic, Washington Wizards and Miami Heat.
1977 – Darren Manzella, American sergeant (d. 2013), was a United States Army Sergeant, Army medic and gay activist from Portland, New York, who was discharged under the Don't ask, don't tell policy. Manzella served in Iraq and Kuwait, and was stationed in Fort Hood, Texas.
1976 – Drew Lachey, American singer and actor. He is known as a member of 98 Degrees, the winner of the second season of Dancing with the Stars, and the younger brother of Nick Lachey.
1976 – JC Chasez, American singer and dancer. Joshua Scott "JC" Chasez (/ˈʃɑːzeɪ/; born August 8, 1976) is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, record producer, and occasional actor.
1974 – Manjul Bhargava, Canadian-American mathematician and academic. Brandon Fradd Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University, the Stieltjes Professor of Number Theory at Leiden University, and also holds Adjunct Professorships at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and the University of Hyderabad.
1973 – Scott Stapp, American singer-songwriter and producer. He has also fronted the band Art of Anarchy and has released three solo albums: The Great Divide (2005), Proof of Life (2013), and The Space Between the Shadows (2019).
1970 – Trev Alberts, American football player and journalist. Trev Kendall Alberts (born August 8, 1970) is an American sports administrator and the director of athletics at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
1968 – Huey Morgan, American singer-songwriter and guitarist. Huey Morgan is an American musician best known as the frontman of rock/hip hop band Fun Lovin' Criminals.
1967 – Marcelo Balboa, American soccer player, coach, and sportscaster. Marcelo Balboa (born August 8, 1967) is an American retired soccer defender who played in the 1990s for the U.S. national team, becoming its captain.
1966 – John Hudek, American baseball player and coach. John Raymond Hudek (born August 8, 1966) is a former Major League Baseball pitcher.
1964 – Anastasia M. Ashman, American blogger and author. Ashman (born 1964) is an American author and cultural producer, a digital strategist and cofounder of global personal branding startup GlobalNiche.net.
1964 – Scott Sandelin, American ice hockey player and coach. 5× NCAA Frozen Four Appearances (2004, 2011, 2017-2019) NCHC Tournament Champion (2017, 2019)
1963 – Jon Turteltaub, American director and producer. Jonathan Charles Turteltaub (born August 8, 1963) is an American film director and producer.
1963 – Ron Karkovice, American baseball player and manager. Ronald Joseph Karkovice (born August 8, 1963, in Union Township, Union County, New Jersey) is a former Major League Baseball catcher.
1962 – Kool Moe Dee, American musician, singer and actor. Mohandas Dewese (born August 8, 1963), better known by his stage name Kool Moe Dee, is an American hip hop MC prominent during the late 1970s through the early 1990s.
1961 – Daniel House, American bass player and producer. Daniel House (born August 8, 1961) is an American business owner / entrepreneur and musician who is best known for his contribution to the Seattle "grunge" music movement of the 1980s and ‘90s.
1961 – Rikki Rockett, American glam rock drummer (Poison). Richard Allan Ream (born August 8, 1961), better known by the stage name Rikki Rockett, is an American drummer for glam metal band Poison.
1961 – Ron Klain, American lawyer and politician, Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States. Klain (born August 8, 1961) is an American political operative and lawyer.
1958 – Deborah Norville, American journalist. She is a member of the board of directors of the Viacom Corporation.==She markets and sells a line of yarns (Deborah Norville Collection) for knit and crochet enthusiasts, manufactured by Premier Yarns.==Previously, she was an anchor and correspondent for CBS News and earlier co-host of Today on NBC.==Her book Thank You Power was a New York Times best-seller.
1957 – Dennis Drew, American keyboard player. Dennis Arnold Drew (born August 8, 1957) is the keyboardist for the American alternative rock band 10,000 Maniacs.
1953 – Don Most, American actor and director. Donald "Don" Most (born August 8, 1953) is an American actor and singer, best known for his role as Ralph Malph on the television series Happy Days.
1952 – Anton Fig, South African-American drummer. Anton Fig (born 8 August 1952 in Cape Town, South Africa), known as "The Thunder from Down Under", is a South African session drummer, perhaps best-known as the drummer and second-in-command for Paul Shaffer and the World's Most Dangerous Band.
1952 – Robin Quivers, American nurse, radio host/personality, and author. Robin Ophelia Quivers (born August 8, 1952) is an American radio personality, author, and actress, best known for being the long-running news anchor and co-host of The Howard Stern Show.
1951 – Martin Brest, American director, producer, and screenwriter. Martin Brest (born August 8, 1951) is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer.
1951 – Randy Shilts, American journalist and author (d. 1994). He worked as a reporter for both The Advocate and the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as for San Francisco Bay Area television stations.
1948 – Margaret Urban Walker, American philosopher. Before her appointment at Marquette, she was the Lincoln Professor of Ethics at Arizona State University, and before that she was at Fordham University.
1947 – Larry Wilcox, American actor, director, and producer. Larry Wilcox (born August 8, 1947) is an American actor best known for his role as California Highway Patrol officer (later captain) Jonathan "Jon" Baker in television series CHiPs, which ran from 1977 to 1983.
1946 – Joe Bethancourt, American singer-songwriter (d. 2014), was an American folk musician.
1940 – Dennis Tito, American engineer and businessman, founded Wilshire Associates. Dennis Anthony Tito (born August 8, 1940) is an American engineer and entrepreneur, most widely known as the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space.
1938 – Connie Stevens, American actress and businesswoman. Connie Stevens (born Concetta Rosalie Ann Ingoglia; August 8, 1938) is an American actress, director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer, editor and singer.
1937 – Dustin Hoffman, American actor and director. He is the recipient of numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards (including the Cecil B.
1937 – Sheila Varian, American horse breeder (d. 2016), was a breeder of Arabian horses who lived and worked at the Varian Arabians Ranch near Arroyo Grande, California. She grew up with a strong interest in horses, and was mentored in horsemanship by Mary "Sid" Spencer, a local rancher and Morgan horse breeder who also introduced Varian to the vaquero or "Californio" tradition of western riding.
1935 – Donald P. Bellisario, American director, producer, and screenwriter. Donald Paul Bellisario (born August 8, 1935) is an American television producer and screenwriter who created and sometimes wrote episodes for the TV series Magnum, P.I. (1980), Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982), Airwolf (1984), Quantum Leap (1989), JAG (1995), and NCIS (2003).
1933 – Joe Tex, American soul singer-songwriter (d. 1982), was an American singer and musician who gained success in the 1960s and 1970s with his brand of Southern soul, which mixed the styles of funk, country, gospel, and rhythm and blues.
1932 – Mel Tillis, American singer-songwriter and guitarist, was an American country music singer and songwriter. Although he recorded songs since the late 1950s, his biggest success occurred in the 1970s, with a long list of Top 10 hits.
1930 – Jerry Tarkanian, American basketball player and coach (d. 2015), was an American basketball coach. He coached college basketball for 31 seasons over five decades at three schools.
1930 – Terry Nation, Welsh-American author and screenwriter (d. 1997), was a Welsh television writer and novelist.
1927 – Johnny Temple, American baseball player and coach (d. 1994), was a Major League Baseball second baseman who played for the Redlegs/Reds (1952–59; 1964); Cleveland Indians (1960–61), Baltimore Orioles (1962) and Houston Colt .45s (1962–63). Temple was born in Lexington, North Carolina.
1927 – Maia Wojciechowska, Polish-American author (d. 2002), was a Polish-American writer best known for children's and young adult fiction. Her first book and two books for adults were published under her married name Maia Rodman.
1926 – Richard Anderson, American actor and producer (d. 2017), was an American film and television actor. Among his best-known roles was his portrayal of Oscar Goldman, the boss of Steve Austin (Lee Majors) and Jaime Sommers (Lindsay Wagner) in both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman television series between 1974 and 1978 and their subsequent television movies: The Return of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1987), Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman (1989) and Bionic Ever After? (1994).
1922 – Gertrude Himmelfarb, American historian, author, and academic. She was a leader of conservative interpretations of history and historiography.
1922 – Rory Calhoun, American actor (d. 1999), was an American film and television actor, screenwriter and producer. He starred in numerous Westerns in the 1950s and 1960s, and appeared in supporting roles in films such as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
1922 – Rudi Gernreich, Austrian-American fashion designer, created the Monokini (d. 1985), was an Austrian-born American fashion designer whose avant-garde clothing designs are generally regarded as the most innovative and dynamic fashion of the 1960s. He purposefully used fashion design as a social statement to advance sexual freedom, producing clothes that followed the natural form of the female body, freeing them from the constraints of high fashion.
1921 – Esther Williams, American swimmer and actress (d. 2013), was an American competitive swimmer and actress. Williams set multiple national and regional swimming records in her late teens as part of the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team.
1921 – Webb Pierce, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1991), was an American honky tonk vocalist, songwriter and guitarist of the 1950s, one of the most popular of the genre, charting more number one hits than any other country artist during the decade.
1921 – William Asher, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2012), was an American television and film producer, film director, and screenwriter. He was one of the most prolific early television directors, producing or directing over two dozen series.
1920 – Jimmy Witherspoon, American jump blues singer (d. 1997). Witherspoon was born in Gurdon, Arkansas.
1911 – Rosetta LeNoire, American actress (d. 2002), was an American stage, screen, and television actress, as well as a Broadway producer and casting agent. LeNoire is known to contemporary audiences for her work in television.
1910 – Sylvia Sidney, American actress (d. 1999), was an American actress of stage, screen, and film, with a career spanning over 70 years, who first rose to prominence in dozens of leading roles in the 1930s. Sidney later came to be known for her role as Juno, a case worker in the afterlife, in Tim Burton's film Beetlejuice.
1908 – Arthur Goldberg, American jurist and politician, 6th United States Ambassador to the United Nations (d. 1990), was an American statesman and jurist who served as the 9th U.S. Secretary of Labor, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the 6th United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
1907 – Benny Carter, American saxophonist, trumpet player, and composer (d. 2003), was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone.
1902 – Paul Dirac, English-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984), was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century.
1901 – Ernest Lawrence, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1958), was a pioneering American nuclear scientist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron. He is known for his work on uranium-isotope separation for the Manhattan Project, as well as for founding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
1896 – Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, American author and academic (d. 1953), was an American author who lived in rural Florida and wrote novels with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same name.
1884 – Sara Teasdale, American poet and educator (d. 1933), was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St.
1876 – Varghese Payyappilly Palakkappilly, Indian-Syrian priest, founded the Sisters of the Destitute (d. 1929). Syro-Malabar Catholic, Syro-Malankara Catholic, Latin Catholic
1866 – Matthew Henson, American explorer (d. 1955), was an American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together.
1839 – Nelson A. Miles, American general (d. 1925), was an American military general who served in the American Civil War, the American Indian Wars, and the Spanish–American War. From 1895 to 1903, he served as the last Commanding General of the United States Army before the office was abolished.
1822 – George Stoneman, Jr., United States Army cavalry officer (d. 1894), was a United States Army cavalry officer, trained at West Point, where his roommate was Stonewall Jackson. In the Civil War he became Adjutant to George B.
1814 – Esther Hobart Morris, American lawyer and judge (d. 1902), was the first woman justice of the peace in the United States. She began her tenure as justice in South Pass City, Wyoming, on 14 February 1870, serving a term of nearly 9 months.
Deaths
2017 – Glen Campbell, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (b. 1936)
2015 – Sam S. Walker, American general (b. 1925)
2014 – Red Wilson, American football and baseball player (b. 1929)
2013 – Karen Black, American actress (b. 1939)
2013 – Regina Resnik, American soprano and actress (b. 1922)
2012 – Fay Ajzenberg-Selove, German-American physicist and academic (b. 1926)
2010 – Patricia Neal, American actress (b. 1926)
2008 – Orville Moody, American golfer (b. 1933)
2007 – Melville Shavelson, American director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1917)
2005 – Barbara Bel Geddes, American actress (b. 1922)
2005 – Dean Rockwell, American commander, wrestler, and coach (b. 1912)
2005 – Gene Mauch, American baseball player and manager (b. 1925)
2005 – John H. Johnson, American publisher, founded the Johnson Publishing Company (b. 1918)
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