August 4th

August 3 is the 216th day of the year.  There are 150 days remaining until the end of the year.

1558 1st printing of Zohar (Jewish Kabbalah). Don’t mess with it.

1693 Dom Perignon invents champagne. One question – Why hasn’t this man been made a saint?

1844 YMCA forms

1862 US government collects its 1st income tax

1914 US declares neutrality in WW I

1917 Pravda calls for killing all capitalists, priests and officers

1922 Femalien 1st baseman Lizzie Murphy plays on AL all-star team.  Pussies.

1956 Wilhelm Herz rides a motorcycle at 210 mph/338 kph (~ 0.000000005MHz)

1964 Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E Chaney, bodies are discovered in an earthen Mississippi dam

1984 Prince's "Purple Rain" album goes to #1 and stays #1 for 24 weeks

1985 "Dreamgirls" closes at Imperial Theater New York City after 1522 performances

1994 Truck carrying 25 million bees overturns on New York parkway

2010 California's Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage passed by the state's voters in 2008, is overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

1952 Kristoffer Tabori [Christopher Donald Siegel], US actor 

1955 Billy Bob Thornton, US actor/writer 

1967 Timothy Adams, US actor 

1968 Marcus Schenkenberg [Marcus Lodewijk Schenkenberg van Mierop], Swedish/Dutch model/actor 

1981 Marques Houston, US singer/actor 

1981 Frederick Bousquet, French swimmer 

1982 Jean-Philippe Grandclaude, French rugger/Dieux du Stade model 

1982 Blake Aldridge, English synchronized diver 

1875 Hans Christian Andersen, bisexual Danish fairy tale writer, is sorry he put a finger in the dyke

1999 Victor Mature, actor (Samson and Delilah), gets a robe

2009 Blake Snyder, maybe gay US screenwriter (Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot), saves the cat.