A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on August 19th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On August 19, 1612, three women from Samlesbury in Lancashire, England were put on trial for witchcraft. A letter written on August 19, 1665 or 1666 was found inside the cover of The Voynich manuscript, an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. On August 19, 1839, the government of France announced that the “Daguerreotype process,” an invention of Louis Daguerre as…
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A Brief History On August 19, 1991, leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under arrest while on vacation in Foros, Ukraine. This first step in the action called “The August Coup” was the first step that resulted in the dissolution of the largest country in the world. Digging Deeper The USSR was formed in 1922 from the Russian Empire that disintegrated during World War I and included much of the old empire plus new territory to create a giant communist country consisting of a federation of 15 national republics. The Western democracies had an uneasy relationship with the…
A Brief History On August 19, 1839, the government of France announced that the “Daguerreotype process,” an invention of Louis Daguerre as an early form of photography, would be available for free to the entire world. Digging Deeper The Daguerreotype style of photographic process would soon be superseded by more advanced methods that cost less and produced better photographs, such as the ambrotype, but nonetheless, the gesture of goodwill by Daguerre and his country of France was a boon to civilization, a gesture only sometimes repeated by other inventors. Another example of such inventive largesse was the work of Philo…
A Brief History On August 19, 2020, we got the opportunity to screen The Stranger, a nifty movie cobbled together from a series of short segments that originally appeared on Quibi, a short form streaming service. If you are into the pulse pounding, high tension drama of life, death, murder and intrigue, this series/film is for you! Digging Deeper The series consisted of 13 episodes, each about 9 or 10 minutes long, with each episode representing an hour in a day from hell for a young Kansas woman working as a ride share driver in Los Angeles. Starting at 7…
A Brief History On August 19, 1940, the B-25 Mitchell was flown for the first time. Although its service life did not extend as long as many other airplanes, this medium bomber was adapted for a huge variety of uses and configurations, making it one of the most versatile aircraft ever. We started a previous article about versatile aircraft with the first flight of the B-25, and today we take a look at another group of incredibly versatile aircraft that have made their mark in aviation history. As always, we invite you to nominate those aircraft you believe belong on…
