August 12

I doubt that there is anyone who considers telephone service to anywhere on the planet anything other than a commonplace. It is taken for granted that with a cell phone no one is ever unreachable. A great deal of this is due to the presence of communication satellites orbiting high over our heads. Carried into orbit by a Delta Rocket, Echo I the first communications satellite, entered into service on the 12th in 1960. Echo 1 was a Mylar balloon with a thickness of 0.127 mm and a diameter of 100 feet which was given the nickname of ‘sateloon.’

August 11

Born in New York on the 11th in 1833, Robert Green Ingersoll was a colonel in the Union Army during the American civil war. After the war, he entered into the political life of his adopted state, Illinois. He was a man of many talents, but he was a particularly gifted orator during the Golden Age of Freethought in the late 19th century. He must have been an easy-going and well-liked man whose glowing reputation spread across the nation he so selflessly served, which can be the only explanation for the naming, in his honor, of Colonel Bob Mountain, which is conveniently located in the Colonel Bob Wilderness Area on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.

August 10

On the 10th in 1519, Ferdinand Magellan left Seville, Spain with five ships that had been given to him by Ferdinand and Isabella, the King and Queen of Spain. Magellan had been given the task of discovering a safe passage from Spain to the lucrative Spice Islands in Indonesia. Things got a bit out of hand at one point and in the Philippines Magellan was killed by a native. Juan Sebastian Elcano took the helm and continued with the voyage. When the remains of Magellan’s fleet and what was left of the crew finally made it back to Spain on September 6, 1522, they had unintentionally made the first circumnavigation of the planet. Only 18 of the original 270 officers and crew of Magellan’s fleet made it home again.

August 9

Pope Damasus II died on the 9th in 1048. He had been elected to the seat of St. Peter on July 17, 1048. Only six other popes have had a briefer reign and no pope has had a shorter time at the helm of the Roman Catholic Church since the 16th century.

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives a less than glowing commentary on Damascus and his papacy, his entry reading ‘After the death of Pope Clement II (1046–47) in July 1047, the Tusculan faction reasserted its power in Rome, and, with the secret aid of Boniface, Margrave of Tuscany, restored its wretched creature Pope Benedict IX (1032–44, 1045, 1047–48), who continued in his wonted manner to disgrace the papacy for a further period of eight months before disappearing entirely from history.” But really, what could you expect from someone whose name at birth was Poppo?

August 8

After fleeing Iran in the face of outrageous persecution because of his opposition to the Shah of Iran, Iranian national Merhan Karimi Nasseri sought and received refugee status in Belgium. After some time in Belgium, Nasseri for some reason thought it would be a good idea to move to France. On the 8th in 1988, Nasseri arrived at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris. When asked for his passport he claimed that his identification papers had been lost when he was the victim of a mugging and he was refused admission to France. Now in addition to being a refugee from his own country he found himself in a very gray area. He couldn’t go back or forward and having no other attractive alternative, Nasseri chose to remain in the airport’s main terminal building until August 2006.

August 7

Squadron Commander Edwin Harris Dunning, of the British Air Force, died when he crashed his plane, a Sopwith Pup, on the 7th in 1917. The crash occurred when he was attempting to land the plane for a second time on the deck of the HMS Furious in the water around the Orkney Islands, Scotland. He should have quit when he was ahead, because he had become the first person to successfully land an airplane on a moving ship five days earlier.

August 6

At 7:05 in the morning on the 6th in 1926, Gertrude Caroline Ederle slipped into the water at Cap Gris-Nez, France. She emerged 14 hours, 30 minutes later at Kingsdown, England making her the first woman to swim the English Channel. Her record would stand until August 8, 1950 when Florence May Chadwick swam the channel in 13 hours and 20 minutes.