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Today (July 31)
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July 31 William Hardham (31 July 1876 – 13 April 1928) was a New Zealand soldier. Born in Wellington, Hardham volunteered to serve with the New Zealand Military Forces in the Second Boer War. Posted to the 4th Contingent in 1900, he served in South Africa and was awarded the Victoria Cross for the rescue of a wounded soldier while under fire. When the First World War began, he joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) and was posted to the Wellington Mounted Rifles (WMR) to serve overseas as a captain. Wounded during the Gallipoli campaign, he was repatriated to New Zealand. On recovery he was made the commandant of Queen Mary Hospital in Hanmer Springs. He rejoined the WMR, then in Palestine, in late 1917 and reached the rank of major by the end of the war in 1918. Returning to civilian life after his discharge from the NZEF, he worked for a newspaper and later the Public Works Department as well as being involved in veterans' affairs. He died in 1928 at the age of 51. (Full article...)
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July 31: Lā Hae Hawaiʻi (Flag Day) and Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea (Sovereignty Restoration Day) in Hawaii (1843)
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July 31 Colorado has sent congressional delegations to the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives since it became a U.S. state in 1876, beginning with the 44th United States Congress. Before becoming a state, the Colorado Territory sent non-voting delegates to the House of Representatives from 1861 to 1876. Prior to the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913, senators were elected by the Colorado General Assembly. Today, voters in Colorado elect two members of the Senate to six-year terms and, since the 2020 United States census, eight members of the House to two-year terms, one for each of Colorado's congressional districts (map pictured). As of April 2026, 83 people have served Colorado in the House and 37 have served Colorado in the Senate. (Full list...)
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July 31
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Tomorrow (August 1)
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August 1 Aquilegia is a genus of perennial flowering plants commonly known as columbines. Part of the buttercup family, Aquilegia contains between 70 and 400 described species and subspecies with natural ranges across the Northern Hemisphere. Aquilegia first evolved in Asia, with natural and introduced populations present on all continents except Antarctica. The flowers of most columbines feature nectar spurs; variation in the length of spurs, alongside other flower attributes, evolved to attract pollinators. Popular as garden plants, columbines may have first entered cultivation 1,700 years ago. Their high physical variability and ease of hybridization has resulted in the development of many cultivated varieties. Several cultures have used columbines for medicinal purposes. Columbines have also taken on symbolic connotations: the horn-like shape of the nectar spurs has resulted in associations with cuckoldry, while the species Aquilegia coerulea (pictured) is the state flower of Colorado. (Full article...)
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August 1: Emancipation Day in former British colonies; Lughnasadh in the Northern Hemisphere; Buwan ng Wika begins in the Philippines; PLA Day in China (1927)
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In two days (August 2)
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August 2 Page from the Brokmerbrief written in Old Frisian Old Frisian was a West Germanic language spoken between the late 13th century and the end of the 16th century by Frisians who comprised a loose confederacy along the North Sea coast. It served as an early regional standard language and demonstrates remarkable uniformity across time and space. The surviving corpus is almost entirely legal documents (example pictured). Old Frisian marked for four cases, three genders, and two tenses, though other grammatical functions could be achieved through periphrasis. Word order varied widely, though subject–object–verb was most common. Middle Low German began to displace Old Frisian as the language of trade during the 15th century and, by the turn of the 17th century, it had evolved into Middle Frisian, a vernacular language constrained to rural areas. It is the common ancestor of all Frisian languages except for the Insular North Frisian languages, with which they share an earlier ancestor called Pre–Old Frisian. (Full article...)
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August 2: Roma Holocaust Memorial Day
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August 2 The featured picture for this day has not yet been chosen. In general, pictures of the day are scheduled in order of promotion to featured status. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines for full guidelines. | |
In three days (August 3)
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August 3 Petropavlovsk was the lead ship of her class of three pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy during the last decade of the 19th century. Named for the successful Russian defense during the 1854 Siege of Petropavlovsk, the ship was sent to the Far East almost immediately after entering service in 1899. She participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion the next year and served as the flagship of the First Pacific Squadron. Petropavlovsk played a minor role in the Battle of Port Arthur, the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian squadron that opened the Russo-Japanese War, in February 1904. The ship sank on 13 April after striking one or more mines near Port Arthur, in northeast China. Casualties numbered 27 officers and 652 enlisted men, including Vice Admiral Stepan Makarov, the commander of the squadron, and the war artist Vasily Vereshchagin. (This article is part of a featured topic: Petropavlovsk-class battleships.)
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August 3: Tisha B'Av (Judaism, 2025)
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August 3 Stephen Graham Jones, the latest winner of the award The Nebula Award for Best Novel is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) for science fiction or fantasy novels. The award has been given annually since 1966 and has been described as one of "the most important of the American science fiction awards" and "the science-fiction and fantasy equivalent" of the Emmy Awards. During the 61 nomination years, 209 authors have had works nominated, and 48 of these have won (including co-authors and ties). Ursula K. Le Guin has received the most Nebula Awards for Best Novel, with four wins out of six nominations. Joe Haldeman has received the next most: three awards out of four nominations, while nine other authors have each won twice. Jack McDevitt has the most nominations at twelve (with one win), while Poul Anderson and Philip K. Dick tie for having the most nominations without winning an award, at five each. (This list is part of a featured topic: Nebula Award.) | |
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August 3 The featured picture for this day has not yet been chosen. In general, pictures of the day are scheduled in order of promotion to featured status. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines for full guidelines. | |
In four days (August 4)
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August 4 The Black Prince's chevauchée of 1356 was a large-scale mounted raid, or chevauchée, by an Anglo-Gascon force under the command of Edward the Black Prince as part of the Hundred Years' War. In 1355 the Black Prince marched 675 miles (1,086 km) from Gascony to Narbonne and back, causing enormous economic damage. The following year he carried out a similar chevauchée, this time as part of a strategic operation in cooperation with other English armies. On 4 August 6,000 Anglo-Gascon soldiers headed north from Bergerac towards Bourges, devastating a wide swathe of French territory and sacking many French towns on the way. English plans went awry and by early September the Anglo-Gascons were facing the French King, John II, and a much larger French army on their own. The Black Prince withdrew; John, determined to fight, pursued and cut off the Prince's army. The French repeatedly attacked at the battle of Poitiers and were heavily defeated. John and one of his sons were captured. (Full article...)
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August 4
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In five days (August 5)
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August 5 Yeah Yeah Yeahs performing in 2006 Yeah Yeah Yeahs is the debut EP by the American indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was recorded as a demo over two days in early 2001 with producer Jerry Teel, and was not intended for release. However, the band felt an urge to share their music and land more shows, and developed the project into their debut EP. Yeah Yeah Yeahs features the band's early garage rock and art punk influences, and lead singer and lyricist Karen O's themes of romance and sex. It was self-released on July 9, 2001, and reissued in 2002 by Wichita in the U.K. and Touch and Go in the U.S. On reissue, the EP topped the UK Indie Chart and had sold over 71,000 copies by the end of the decade. It was praised by critics for its unique sound and Karen O's vocals, and was named as among the best releases of 2002 by the The New York Times, NME and The Village Voice. iN 2024 Paste placed it among the 100 greatest EPs of all time. (Full article...)
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August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day in Croatia (1995) Animas River after the Gold King Mine waste water spill
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August 5 Grace Beyer, three-time winner The Women's Basketball Academic All-America Team Member of the Year is the annually-awarded most outstanding singular college basketball female athlete selected for the Academic All-America Teams in a given year. The Academic All-America program recognizes combined athletic performance and academic achievement excellence of the nation's top student-athletes. The program is divided into four categories: National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I, Division II, and Division III member schools, and a division for National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics schools, Canadian universities and colleges, and two-year colleges. One of the twelve sport-by-sport Academic All-Americans of the year is selected as the Academic All-America Team Member of the Year for each division. The most recent women's basketball players to have earned the all-sports honor did so in 2024—Caitlin Clark of Iowa in Division I, Samantha Pirosko of Gannon in Division II, and Grace Beyer of UHSP in the NAIA. (Full list...) | |
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August 5 The featured picture for this day has not yet been chosen. In general, pictures of the day are scheduled in order of promotion to featured status. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines for full guidelines. | |
In six days (August 6)
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August 6 The Big Duck is a 20-foot (6.1 m) tall ferrocement building in the shape of a duck: a canonical example of novelty architecture. Built in 1931 in Riverhead, New York, it was moved several times to locations on eastern Long Island, ending up in Flanders in 2007. This structure inspired the word duck as a common term in academic literature used to refer to buildings shaped like everyday objects or describe excessive ornamentation used in graphical presentations of data. It was built by duck farmer Martin Maurer for use as a shop to sell ducks and duck eggs. This was during a period when duck farming was a growing industry on eastern Long Island and novelty architecture was on the rise due to the increasing popularity of automobiles. It was added to both the National Register of Historic Places and the New York State Register of Historic Places in 1997 and is a principal building on the Big Duck Ranch, which was listed on both registers in 2008. (Full article...) |
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Mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the Little Boy explosion
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August 6 The featured picture for this day has not yet been chosen. In general, pictures of the day are scheduled in order of promotion to featured status. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines for full guidelines. | |
In seven days (August 7)
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August 7 Henry Macandrew (7 August 1866 – 16 July 1919) was a British Indian Army officer. He fought through the Tirah campaign in India, and then served as a staff officer during the Boer War, and received the Distinguished Service Order. Given command of the 5th Bengal Cavalry, upon the outbreak of the First World War he travelled to France as general staff officer grade 1 of the 1st Indian Cavalry Division. He was then promoted to become brigadier-general general staff for the Indian Cavalry Corps, with which he participated in the Battle of Neuve-Chapelle. Macandrew assumed command of the 2nd Indian Cavalry Division, leading it during the Battle of the Somme and the Battle of Cambrai. Later he was given command of the newly created 5th Cavalry Division for service in the Sinai and Palestine campaign, participating in events including the Capture of Damascus and the Battle of Aleppo. Knighted in 1919, Macandrew stayed with the 5th Cavalry Division at Aleppo, but died there later in the year. (Full article...)
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August 7: Assyrian Martyrs Day (1933)
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August 7 Ecuador has five sites on the list of World Heritage Sites and a further six on the tentative list. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Sites are places of importance to cultural or natural heritage as described in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, established in 1972. Ecuador accepted the convention on 16 June 1975, making its historical sites eligible for inclusion on the list. The first two sites listed in Ecuador were the Galápagos Islands and the city of Quito (pictured), in 1978, which were also the first two sites inscribed to the list itself, with the reference numbers 1 and 2, respectively. Three sites are listed for their cultural and two for their natural properties. (Full list...) | |
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August 7 The featured picture for this day has not yet been chosen. In general, pictures of the day are scheduled in order of promotion to featured status. See Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Guidelines for full guidelines. | |