This Day In History

This is a little python script that I wrote, which parses the History.com RSS feed, and creates a simple gemini page. If you see any errors on the page, or it is not updated with today's date, please feel free to contact me at lunchboxhero (a@t) sdf (d.t) org.

Today's Date is: 2021-08-10

This page was last updated at: 16:46:57

This Day in History - HISTORY

0: Temperatures in UK top 100 F for first time during European heat wave

On August 10, 2003, the United Kingdom records its first-ever temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Throughout the month, an intense heat wave scorched the European continent, claiming more than 35,000 lives. August 2003 was the hottest August ever recorded in the northern hemisphere and ...

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1: Son of Sam serial killer is arrested

On August 10, 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested and charged with being the “Son of Sam,” the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year, killing six young people and wounding seven others with a .44-caliber revolver. Because Berkowitz generally ...

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2: Louvre Museum opens

After more than two centuries as a royal palace, the Louvre is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government. Today, the Louvre’s collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture. ...

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3: Smithsonian Institution created

After a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James K. Polk signs the Smithsonian Institution Act into law on August 10, 1846. In 1829, James Smithson died in Italy, leaving behind a will with a peculiar footnote. In the ...

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4: Pete Rose sets National League hits record

On August 10, 1981, Pete Rose of the Philadelphia Phillies gets the 3,631st hit of his baseball career, breaking Stan Musial’s record for most hits by a National Leaguer. The record-breaking hit came in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, the team with whom Musial had spent his entire career, ...

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5: Virginia and Leonard Woolf marry

On August 10, 1912, Virginia Stephen, 30, marries Leonard Woolf, 31, at a registry office in London. Virginia Woolf, born in 1882, grew up surrounded by intellectuals. Her father was a writer and philosopher, and her mother was a British aristocrat. In 1902, Virginia’s father died, and Virginia ...

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6: First-ever electric guitar patent awarded to the Electro String Corporation

Versatile, inexpensive and relatively easy to play, the acoustic guitar was a staple of American rural music in the early 20th century, particularly black rural music such as the blues. But a significant physical limitation made it a poor fit in ensembles made up of brass, woodwind and orchestral ...

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7: "Red Dawn," first PG-13 movie, is released

On August 10, 1984, the action thriller Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, opens in theaters as the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system, had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that same ...

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8: Child found decapitated

The severed head of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who disappeared from a shopping mall two weeks earlier, is found in a canal in Vero Beach, Florida. Two years later, career criminal Ottis Ellwood Toole, then an inmate at a Raiford, Florida, prison, confessed to Adam’s abduction and murder. However, ...

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9: Fatal Ford Pinto crash in Indiana

On August 10, 1978, three teenage girls die after their 1973 Ford Pinto is rammed from behind by a van and bursts into flames on an Indiana highway. The fatal crash was one of a series of Pinto accidents that caused a national scandal during the 1970s. The small and economical Pinto, which debuted ...

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10: London learns of American independence

On August 10, 1776, news reaches London that the Americans had drafted the Declaration of Independence. Until the Declaration of Independence formally transformed the 13 British colonies into states, both Americans and the British saw the conflict centered in Massachusetts as a local uprising ...

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11: Japan accepts Potsdam terms, agrees to unconditional surrender

On August 10, 1945, just a day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan submits its acquiescence to the Potsdam Conference terms of unconditional surrender, as President Harry S. Truman orders a halt to atomic bombing. Emperor Hirohito, having remained aloof from the daily decisions of prosecuting the ...

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