Born in 1951. Slim Dunlap, American singer-songwriter and guitarist for the Replacements.
Born in 1899. Alfred Hitchcock, English-American director and producer.
30 BC. Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last ruler of the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty, commits suicide, allegedly by means of an asp bite.
”Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, That sucks the nurse asleep?”
Previously: Arvydas Sabonis
Erwin Chargaff, born in 1905. An Austrian-American biochemist whose two rules helped lead to the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
He said:
“The Nazi experiment in eugenics – ‘the elimination of racially inferior elements’ – was the outgrowth of the same kind of mechanistic thinking that, in an outwardly very different form, contributed to what most people would consider the glories of modern science.”
“One of the most insidious and nefarious properties of scientific models is their tendency to take over, and sometimes supplant, reality.”
“Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question ‘how?’ but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question ‘why?’“
“Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable.”
Today in 1945: Nagasaki was devastated when an atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped by the United States B-29 Bockscar. 39,000 people were killed outright.
Photo: Nagasaki in 2012.
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.
In 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, giving President Johnson broad powers in dealing with reported North Vietnamese attacks on United States forces.
Joseph Force Crater disappeared August 6, 1930. Crater was a 41-year-old New York City judge who vanished while out for a night on the town. He was last seen leaving a restaurant on West 45th Street, and became known as the “The Missingest Man in New York.” No trace of him was ever found, and nine years later he was legally presumed dead.
Wendell Berry, American author, poet, and farmer. Born in 1934.
“Better than any argument is to rise at dawn and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup.”
Number 5 