Trivia Of The Day August 8

In 1973, Mao Zedong told Henry Kissinger that China had an excess of females and offered the U.S. 10 million Chinese women.

Cacti are native to the Americas, the only exception being the Rhipsalis baccifera, found in Africa and Sri Lanka.

Rhipsalis baccifera By Frank Vincentz Wikipedia

The San Francisco cable cars are the only mobile national monuments in the United States.

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Happy Birthday August 8

Roger Federer was born at the Basel Cantonal Hospital in Basel, Switzerland on August 8, 1981 to a Swiss father Robert Federer and South African mother, Lynette Federer (born Durand), whose ancestors were Dutch and French Huguenots. Roger Federer holds both Swiss and South African citizenships.

By Sirquine - Own work, CC BY 3.0, $3

Federer became the #1 ranked men's singles player on February 2, 2004, a position he would hold for a record 237 weeks. He has won 20 Grand Slam singles titles—the most in history for a male player.

For more August 8 anniversaries, including the first Spanish settlement on Puerto Rico, the birth of modern mountaineering. and the Battle of Amiens, check out OnThatDay. 

Today Is August 8

Today is International Cat Day.

Pixiebay

International Cat Day a celebration that takes place on August 8 every year was created in 2002 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The day raises awareness for cats and educates us in ways to help and protect them. 

The earliest authenticated record of the domestication of the cat in ancient Egypt dates from 1500 BC, although the cat was proclaimed to be sacred in that country about 1,000 years earlier. The actual domestication of cats probably came about when the Egyptians noticed that cats protected their granaries from rodents.

The ancient Egyptians 'created' the modern house cats we know today through selective breeding; choosing the most sociable and friendly ones to reproduce.

Cats can comfortably withstand high external temperatures ranging up to 126° F to 133° F before showing any signs that they are hot. This is thought to be a remnant of the fact that they were once probably desert animals.

The cat that holds the world record for amount of mice killed is Towser (1963-1987) who lived in the still house, Glenturret Distillery in Scotland for almost 24 years. She caught 28,899 mice in her lifetime. Her life and exploits are commemorated by a bronze statue at the 'Famous Grouse Experience' visitor centre on the Glenturret site and her paw prints are marked on every bottle of Fairlie’s Light Highland Liqueur.

On This Day August 8

A scandal called "Watergate" in which Richard Nixon attempted to protect men ordered to burglarize the Democratic National Headquarters cost him much of his political support in his second term. On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon announced he was resigning — the first USA President to do so — in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Richard Millhouse Nixon was the first US president whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." The second was William Jefferson Clinton.

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On This Day August 7

On August 7, 1974 Philippe Petit performed a high wire act between the twin towers of the World Trade Center 1,368 feet (417 m) in the air. Philippe Petit's famous high-wire performance between the Twin Towers is known as "the artistic crime of the century". After completing his stunt, Petit was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. These charges were dropped on the condition that the tightrope performer put on a free high-wire performance for children in Central Park.

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On This Day August 6

1991 Tim Berners-Lee released files describing his idea for the World Wide Web, a publicly available service on the Internet on August 6, 1991. This date also marked the debut of the Web as a publicly available service on the Internet, although new users could only access it after August 23rd. In December 1993 there were just 623 websites on the internet.

1991 The first ever website to be built was http://info.cern.ch. While inventing and working on setting up the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee spent many of his working hours in Building 31 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN. The first web page went live on August 6, 1991. Built by Berners-Lee, it was dedicated to information on the World Wide Web project and ran on a NeXT computer at CERN.

Below is the NeXT Computer used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN, which. became the world's first web server

By Coolcaesar at the English-language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, 

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On This Day August 5

A group of independent English Christians borrowed £4,000 from a London company of investors to subsidize a voyage across the Atlantic to a plot of land they had obtained near the Hudson River in the New World. The ship they hired for the voyage, The Mayflower, was tiny, with a deck just 90ft long. This small ship departed from Southampton, England on August 5, 1620 taking their 102 passengers to the New World, as well as its crew of 25-30.

Mayflower II, a replica of the original "Mayflower" By GmaJoli

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