#TodayInHistory – August 11
3 min read
August 11 – Some important events on this day.
3114 BC 👉🏼 The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Mayans, begins.
2492 BC 👉🏼 Traditional date of the defeat of Bel by Hayk, progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation.
480 BC 👉🏼 Greco-Persian Wars: Battle of Artemisium – Persian naval victory over the Greeks in an engagement fought off north coast of Euboea.
1863 👉🏼 Cambodia becomes French protectorate
1919 👉🏼 Weimar Constitution adopted in Germany.
On this day, Friedrich Ebert, a member of the Social Democratic Party and the provisional president of the German Reichstag (government), signs a new constitution, known as the Weimar Constitution, into law, officially creating the first parliamentary democracy in Germany.
1945 👉🏼 Allies refuse Japan’s offer to surrender on the condition that Emperor Hirohito retains his status
1949 👉🏼 1st Naples-Capri swim, 27 km by Giovanni Gambi
1951 👉🏼 1st televised baseball game in color, on WCBS in New York City (Boston Braves beat the Brooklyn Dodgers 8-1)
1954 👉🏼 Formal peace treaty ends over 7 yrs of fighting in Indochina between the French and the Communist Viet Minh
1973 👉🏼 Hip hop is born at a birthday party in the Bronx.
Despite like any style of music hip hop has roots in different forms and its evolution was shaped by many different artists, it seems that it came to life precisely on this day in 1973, at a birthday party in the recreation room of an apartment building in the west Bronx, New York City. The location of that birthplace was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, and the man who presided over that historic party was the birthday girl’s brother, Clive Campbell—better known to history as DJ Kool Herc, founding father of hip hop.
What he decided to do was to use the two turntables in a typical DJ setup not as a way to make a smooth transition between two records, but as a way to switch back and forth repeatedly between two copies of the same record, extending the short drum break that the crowd most wanted to hear. He called his trick the Merry Go-Round. Today, it is known as the “break beat.”
By the summer of 1973, DJ Kool Herc had been using and refining his break-beat style for the better part of a year. His sister’s party on August 11, however, put him before his biggest crowd ever and with the most powerful sound system he’d ever worked. It was the success of that party that would begin a grassroots musical revolution, fully six years before the term “hip hop” even entered the popular vocabulary.
1978 👉🏼 Funeral of Pope Paul VI held in the Vatican.
Pope Paul VI was the Pope from 1963 until 1978. In his tenure he was one of the most consequential Popes in modern history, enacting reform programs which affected the daily life of all aspects of the Church’s life. He closed the Second Vatican Council in 1965 and implemented several of its recommendations and reforms.
A follower of mariological studies (the study of Mary, Mother of Jesus), he named her the Mother of the Church during the Second Vatican Council. His orthodox positions on birth control were debated in the west during his lifetime.
Upon his death in 1978, the College of Cardinals elected Pope John Paul I to succeed him, who died a month later, and who was himself replaced by John Paul II, resulting in 1978 being the Year of Three Popes.
1984 👉🏼 During a radio voice test, US President Reagan jokes he “signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in 5 minutes.”
1988 👉🏼 Al-Qaeda formed at a meeting between Osama bin Laden, Zawahiri and Dr Fadl in Peshawar, Pakistan
1989 👉🏼 Voyager 2 discovers 2 partial rings of Neptune
2003 👉🏼 NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, marking its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year-history.
