Born in 1876. Ivan Bilibin, Russian illustrator.

Previously: E.F. Schumacher

August 15 is the first day of two week celebration of Wafaa El-Nil, or the Flooding of the Nile. Rains in the southern mountains bring the annual flood, keeping the land fertile.

For ancient Egyptians, the rising waters came from the tears of Isis, weeping for her dead husband, Osiris.

Born in 1951. Slim Dunlap, American singer-songwriter and guitarist for the Replacements. 

Born in 1899. Alfred Hitchcock, English-American director and producer.

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.” 

1965.Toumani Diabaté, Malian kora player, born today.

Listen here.

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.

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.”