August 4 – Some important events on this day.
1181 👉🏼 Supernova SN 1181 in the constellation Cassiopeia observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers, lasting until August 6
1558 👉🏼 1st printing of Zohar (Jewish Kabbalah)
1666 👉🏼 Hurricane hits Guadeloupe, Martinique and St Christopher. Thousands die
1693 👉🏼 Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Pérignon’s invention of Champagne
1821 👉🏼 Russian Antarctic Expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen returns to Kronshtadt after becoming the 1st to circumnavigate Antarctica.
The first Russian Antarctic Expedition 1819-1821 by led by Baltic German Fabian Gottieb von Bellingshausen, a Russian naval officer who captained the ship Vostok with his second-in-command Mikhail Lazarev aboard the Miry.
They were not only the first to cross the Antarctic circle since Captain Cook, they went on be the first to sight Antarctic in January 1820 and to make two circumnavigations of the continent. Bellingshausen is responsible for naming a number of landmarks in Antarctica including Peter I Island and the Alexander Coast.
1881 👉🏼 122°F (50°C), Seville, Spain (European record)
1886 👉🏼 Colombia adopts constitution
1892 👉🏼 Lizzie Borden’s parents found dead.
On this day Andrew and Abby Borden are found hacked to death in their Fall River, Massachusetts, home. Andrew was discovered in a pool of blood on the living room couch, his face nearly split in two, and his wife, Abby, was upstairs, her head smashed to pieces. It was later determined that she was killed first. Suspicion soon fell on one of the Bordens’ two daughters, Lizzie, age 32 and single, who lived with her wealthy father and stepmother and was the only other person besides their maid, Bridget Sullivan, who was home when the bodies were found. Lizzie Borden was arrested and charged with the double homicide. As a result of the crime’s sensational nature, her trial attracted national attention.
It was alleged that she tried to buy poison the day before the murders and that she burned one of her dresses several days afterward. And, although fingerprint testing was becoming commonplace in Europe at the time, the Fall River police were wary of its reliability, and refused to test for prints on the potential murder weapon, a hatchet, found in the Bordens’ basement. The fact that no blood was found on Lizzie with her well-bred Christian persona convinced the all-male jury that she was incapable of the gruesome crime and they quickly acquitted her.
Lizzie, who inherited a substantial sum after her father’s death, moved from the murder site into a different home, where she lived until her death on June 1, 1927. Today, the house where the Borden murders occurred is a bed and breakfast. Despite Lizzie Borden’s acquittal, the cloud of suspicion that hung over her never disappeared and she is immortalized in a popular rhyme:“Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.”
1909 👉🏼 MLB umpire Tim Hurst instigates a riot by spitting in the face of A’s 2nd baseman Eddie Collins who had questioned a call; 2 weeks later Hurst banned for life
1942 👉🏼 1st train with Jews departs Mechelen Belgium to Auschwitz
1944 👉🏼 Anne Frank arrested in Amsterdam by German Security Police (Grüne Polizei) following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified
1965 👉🏼 Cook Islands enters into free association with New Zealand
1993 👉🏼 Rwandian Hutus and Tutsis sign peace treaty in Arusha, Tanzania
1994 👉🏼 Truck carrying millions of bees overturns on NY parkway
2012 👉🏼 Oscar Pistorius becomes the first amputee runner to compete at the Olympics
2015 👉🏼 Muppets Missy Piggy and Kermit the Frog announce the end to their relationship on Twitter
2017 👉🏼 Aldi supermarket withdraws all eggs from sale after chemical fipronil found in eggs from The Netherlands
2018 👉🏼 President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela survives an assassination attempt by drone, live on TV