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Just Plain Fun

This Day in History – August 8, 2011

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1709 Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the King of Portugal in Lisbon 1786 Mont Blanc on the French Italian border is climbed for the first time by Jacques Balmat and Dr Michel-Gabriel Paccard. 1863 American Civil War: following his defeat in the Battle of Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis (which is refused upon receipt). 1876 Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph. 1908 Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse at Le Mans, France. It is the Wright Brothers’ first public flight. 1929 The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight. 1946 First flight of the Convair B-36, the world’s first mass-produce nuclear weapon delivery vehicle. 1963 Great Train Robbery: in England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal 2.6 million pounds in bank notes. 1973 Kim Dae-Jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped. 1974 Watergate scandal: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces his resignation, effective the next day. 1989 Space Shuttle program: STS-28 Mission Space Shuttle Columbia takes off on a secret five-day military mission. 2000 Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence and 5 years after being filmed by a dive team funded by novelist Clive Cussler. 2007 An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York State, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889.]]]]> ]]>

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