August 8th in History
1549 Henry II of France declares war on England and orders the siege of Boulogne.
1609 Galileo Galilei presents his telescope to the Venetian Senate in Venice
1655 City of Vilnius, capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, falls to Muscovite forces, who pillage it with such ferocity that fires burn for two weeks.
1758 British troops occupy and plunder Cherbourg.
1914 Ernest Shackleton's ship "Endurance" leaves Plymouth, England, on the final major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
1940 The German "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel to mobilize German forces in the East before the start of Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union.
2008 Russia launches a full-scale land, air, and sea invasion of Georgia, referring to it as a "peace enforcement" operation after Georgia responds to aggression from South Ossetia
1966 South African Broadcasting bans the playing of all Beatles songs due to John Lennon's remark that the band is "more popular than Jesus".
1969: Photographer Iain MacMillan shoots the iconic photograph of all four Beatles walking across the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios. It's used on the cover of the band's last recorded album Abbey Road.
Radio
1991: The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest land-base construction ever built, suffers a catastrophic failure caused by an error in exchanging the guy-wires and collapses. At 2,120.7 ft (646.38 metres) its 2 megawatt longwave transmitters had covered the entire globe.
1609 Galileo Galilei presents his telescope to the Venetian Senate in Venice
1655 City of Vilnius, capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, falls to Muscovite forces, who pillage it with such ferocity that fires burn for two weeks.
1758 British troops occupy and plunder Cherbourg.
1914 Ernest Shackleton's ship "Endurance" leaves Plymouth, England, on the final major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.
1940 The German "Aufbau Ost" directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel to mobilize German forces in the East before the start of Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union.
2008 Russia launches a full-scale land, air, and sea invasion of Georgia, referring to it as a "peace enforcement" operation after Georgia responds to aggression from South Ossetia
1966 South African Broadcasting bans the playing of all Beatles songs due to John Lennon's remark that the band is "more popular than Jesus".
1969: Photographer Iain MacMillan shoots the iconic photograph of all four Beatles walking across the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios. It's used on the cover of the band's last recorded album Abbey Road.
Radio
1991: The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest land-base construction ever built, suffers a catastrophic failure caused by an error in exchanging the guy-wires and collapses. At 2,120.7 ft (646.38 metres) its 2 megawatt longwave transmitters had covered the entire globe.
61-69, M
