Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong was born on the 4th of August, 1901 in New Orleans. He gets a mention in my post on Hoagy Carmichael and James Bond, but deserves more. He grew up in extreme poverty in a rough neighbourhood known as “The Battlefield.” His early life was marked by...
Jesse Owens

Jesse Owens

On the 3rd of August, 1936, Jesse Owens won the 100 metres sprint at the Berlin Olympic Games, shattering Hitler’s myth of Aryan supremacy. Jesse Owens was one of the most remarkable athletes of the twentieth century, a man whose achievements on the track transcended...
Battle of Cannae

Battle of Cannae

The Battle of Cannae is one of the most studied and devastating military engagements in history, a masterpiece of tactical brilliance that resulted in the near-annihilation of a Roman army at the hands of Carthage. It was fought on the 2nd of August, 216 BCE, during...
Octavian

Octavian

On the 1st of August 30 BCE Octavian, the first Roman emperor, entered Alexandria and executed Marcus Antonius Antyllus, the son of Mark Antony by his third wife, Fulvia, who had travelled with his father to Alexandria and lived there with him and Cleopatra....
USS Nevada

USS Nevada

The event that catches my attention for the 31st of July is the sinking of the USS Nevada. The phrase that caught my attention is: “USS Nevada is sunk by an aerial torpedo after surviving hits from two atomic bombs (as part of post-war tests) and being used for target...