1040 King Duncan I of Scotland is killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth, who succeeds him as king (not murdered in his sleep as in Shakespeare's play)
1281 During Kublai Khan's second Mongol invasion of Japan, his invading Chinese fleet of 3,500 vessels disappears in a typhoon near the Japanese coast
1842 US Army Colonel Worth declares the Second Seminole War over after nearly seven years; over 3,000 surviving members of the Seminole Nation are forcibly relocated from Florida to Oklahoma, with only about 300 permitted to remain
1901 First claimed powered flight by Gustave Whitehead in his No. 21 aircraft near Bridgeport, Connecticut
1909 Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana, home of the Indy 500, hosts its first motorized event, a series of motorcycle races
1936 America's Last Public Hanging The last man to be publicly hanged in the United States met his fate on this day in history. It was a squalid affair watched by about 10,000 people.
1938 BBC's first feature film on TV (The Student of Prague)
1945 V-J Day, the Empire of Japan surrenders unconditionally to the Allies, ending World War II (August 15 in Japan and other countries depending on the time zone)
1947 Pakistan gains independence from the United Kingdom
1969 British Army deploys on the streets of Northern Ireland, beginning Operation Banner
1980 17,000 workers strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, beginning the Solidarity movement
1987 Oakland's Mark McGwire sets the rookie home run record at 39 en route to 49
1995 "Battle of Brit Pop" rival bands Oasis (Roll with It) and Blur (Country House) release singles on the same day
Surf’s pup: Some 20 dogs make a splash at annual World Dog Surfing Championships in California
This year’s overall winner was five-year-old Labrador retriever Rippin Rosie, followed closely by Iza, a French bulldog from Pleasanton, and Bradley “Shortboard” Cooper from Long Beach.
Sally jumps off her board while competing in the World Dog Surfing Championships on August 01, 2026 in Pacifica, California.(photo credit: Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
Some 20 dogs competed in the 10th annual World Dog Surfing Championships at Linda Mar Beach in California last Saturday.
The sport was first conceived in 2006 by K. Reed, author of "The Dog's Guide to Surfing."
In the years since, the sport evolved into what it is today, and has inspired similar events across the world, including many in California, Florida, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
This year’s overall winner was five-year-old Labrador retriever Rippin Rosie, followed closely by Iza, a French bulldog from Pleasanton, and Bradley “Shortboard” Cooper, a mixed-breed from Long Beach.
Additionally, Rosie - alongside her owner, Steve Drottar - took first place in the stand-up paddleboarding category.
Iza Surf Dog competes during the World Dog Surfing Championships in Pacifica, California, on August 1, 2026. The event helps local charities raise money by sponsoring a contestant or a team, with a portion of the proceeds going to dog, environmental, and surfing nonprofit organizations. (Photo by Go (credit: Godofredo A. VÁSQUEZ / AFP via Getty Images)
Hundreds of spectators cheered for the dogs as they made a splash
The winners were announced by Rep. Sam Liccardo, former San Jose mayor, to a crowd of hundreds, who cheered for the pups all day from the shore.
The oldest contestant was 11-year-old Charlie, a yellow Lab from the San Diego area, whose surfing journey actually began by accident when owner Jedd Niebor placed the dog onto a surfboard for a quick photo, which turned into an impromptu surf lesson.
Spectators are encouraged to sponsor contestants each year, with a portion of all proceeds going to a number of local charities.
Dogs surf at the World Dog Surfing Championship in California
The Feel Good Factor on DNTCCC a pet friendly blog
1514 French King Louis XII (52) marries by proxy Mary Tudor (18), sister of Henry VIII, at Greenwich Palace, England
1521 Spanish conquistadors led by Hernán Cortés capture Aztec Emperor Cuauhtémoc in Tenochtitlan, bringing the Aztec Empire to an end
1536 Buddhist monks from Kyoto's Enryaku-ji Temple set fire to 21 Nichiren temples throughout Kyoto in the Tenbun Hokke Disturbance (Traditional Japanese date: July 27, 1536)
1642 Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovers Mars's southern polar cap
1788 Prussia joins the Anglo-Dutch alliance to form the Triple Alliance to prevent the spread of the Russo-Swedish War of 1788-90
1913 Otto Witte, German acrobat and fantasist, is purportedly crowned King of Albania
1937 Second Sino-Japanese War: Japanese forces start the Battle of Shanghai, a three-month conflict involving over one million troops
1942 The Manhattan Project commences under the direction of US General Leslie Groves with the aim of developing an atomic bomb
1961 Construction of the Berlin Wall begins in East Germany
1967 "Bonnie and Clyde" crime film directed by Arthur Penn and starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway is released
2013 "Crash My Party," the fourth studio album by Luke Bryan, is released (Billboard Album of the Year 2014)
2008 American super-swimmer Michael Phelps wins three gold medals, all in world record time, in one day at the Beijing Olympics: 200 m IM (1:54.23), 200 m butterfly (1:52.03), and 4x200m freestyle relay (6:58.56)
1121 Battle of Didgori: Georgian army under King David the Builder wins a decisive victory over the renowned Seljuk commander Ilghazi
1480 Ottoman troops conquer Otranto in southern Italy after a 15-day siege, killing 12,000, enslaving 5,000, and beheading 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam
1851 American inventor Isaac Singer patents his famous sewing machine
1883 The last quagga (a zebra subspecies with fewer stripes) dies at Artis Magistra Zoo in Amsterdam
1908 Ford Motor Company builds its first Model T car, which Henry Ford himself tests on a hunting trip to Wisconsin and northern Michigan
1927 Silent film "Wings," starring Clara Bow and directed by William A. Wellman, premieres in NY as the first film and one of only two silent films to win an Academy Award for Best Picture
1964 Mickey Mantle switch-hits a home run for the record 10th and final time in a game, with one going 502 feet
1981 Don Estridge unveils the company's first personal computer, the IBM PC, at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, priced at $1,565 with 16 kilobytes of RAM, helping bring computing to the masses
1991 Heavy metal band Metallica releases its fifth album, "Metallica," which debuts at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart
3114 BC 3114-08-11 BCE is traditionally considered the start date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya
1929 New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth becomes the first MLB player to hit 500 home runs (off Willis Hudlin) in a 6-5 loss to the Indians at League Park, Cleveland
1945 Allies refuse Japan's offer to surrender on the condition that Emperor Hirohito retains his status
1954 Formal peace treaty ends over seven years of fighting in Indochina between the French and the Communist Viet Minh
1978 Second studio album by Chic, "C'est Chic," is released, featuring the single "Le Freak" (Billboard Album of the Year 1979)
1988 Al-Qaeda is formed at a meeting between Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Dr. Fadl in Peshawar, Pakistan
2003 NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan in its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year history
Fun Fact About August 11. During a radio voice test, US President Reagan jokes that he "signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." August 11, 1984
612 BC Fall of Nineveh to the Babylonians and the forces of Medes, leads to the sack of one of the greatest cities in the world, the destruction of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and the death of King Sinsharishkun [date approximate]
1497 Explorer John Cabot tells King Henry VII of his trip to "Asia"
1675 King Charles II and John Flamsteed lay the foundation stone of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London
1846 US Act of Congress passes establishment of the Smithsonian Institution, now the world's largest museum and research complex
1885 Leo Daft opens America's first commercially operated electric streetcar in Baltimore
1948 ABC enters network TV at 7 pm (WJZ, NY)
1787 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart completes his chamber piece "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" (A Little Serenade)
1984 Famous Mary Decker-Zola Budd collision during 3000 m at the Los Angeles Olympics; Decker falls, Budd finishes 7th, and Maricica Puică of Romania wins
48 BC Caesar's Civil War: Julius Caesar decisively defeats Pompey the Great at the Battle of Pharsalus, forcing Pompey to flee to Egypt.
378 Battle of Adrianople: Gothic rebel army defeats Roman forces under Emperor Valens, who is killed.
1790 Robert Gray's Columbia Rediviva returns to Boston after a 3-year journey as the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe.
1898 Rudolf Diesel of Germany obtains patent #608,845 for his internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine.
1900 1st International Lawn Tennis Challenge, Boston, MA: Dwight Davis and Holcombe Ward beat Ernest Black and Herbert Roper Barrett 6-4, 6-4, 6-4 to give the US an unassailable 3-0 lead over the British Isles.
1930 Animated character Betty Boop debuts in Max Fleischer's cartoon "Dizzy Dishes"
1942 Mahatma Gandhi and 50 others are arrested in Bombay after the passing of a "Quit India" motion and campaign by the All India Congress Committee.
1945 US drops second atomic bomb "Fat Man" on Nagasaki, Japan, destroying part of the city.
1965 Singapore separates from the Federation of Malaysia and gains independence.
1974 Richard Nixon resigns as President of the United States, and Vice President Gerald Ford takes the oath of office to become the 38th US President.
1997 "Just to See You Smile" single released by Tim McGraw (Billboard Song of the Year 1998)
2012 Jamaican sprint superstar Usain Bolt wins the 200m at the London Olympics in 19.32 seconds, becoming the first to win the 100m and 200m double in consecutive Olympics.
2020 Disputed Belarusian presidential election sees longtime dictator Alexander Lukashenko officially win 80% of the votes but unofficially lose 60-70% of the votes to main opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, sparking widespread protests in Belarus and international condemnation.
Let me ask you a question. Can you remember the really big, important “firsts” in your life? You know what I mean – not the really big things but the little important things, like the first time you went to the movies by yourself, without an adult. Or the first time you went to the movies and they didn’t make you sit in the children’s section. Remember those “big” firsts?
How about the first pet you had? Do you remember that? I always wanted a dog, but Mama would never hear of it. Finally, one day an appetizing store in our neighborhood was having a grand opening and giving out free goldfish to customers. So, Mama came home with the goldfish in a cardboard coffee container and placed it in a milk bottle. After all, who could afford a fish bowl in those years? Besides, Mama explained to us, “The fish man once told me a goldfish loves to swim in a milk bottle.”
Nu, so who were we to doubt Mama’s word, especially when she got this information from no less a person than our fish store man?
So, every morning I got up to feed the little creature and admire its graceful movements – swimming to the top of the bottle and then down to the bottom once more. When I came home from school, I would take the milk bottle with the fish into the bathroom and fill up the bathtub with cold water to give the little fellow a chance to “stretch out,” get a little exercise. After all, what kind of life could he have had in a milk bottle?
That little fish lived for three months. I fed him every day and changed the water almost every other day. Then one night tragedy struck. The fish apparently misjudged where the top of the bottle was and accidentally jumped out of it and onto the rug. Shoen! Os fish. Who knew fish could get claustrophobia? Listen, we were kids.
Remember your very first school notebook? I’ll never forget that first experience when I entered first grade. A few days before school started, Mama took me with my sisters to the candy store to buy our school supplies. Oy, what excitement! There must have been a million kids buying books and pencils and papers. Everybody was getting ready for school. I felt like I was an adult.
Mama paid three cents for my first little notebook. Remember those thin little notebooks with the Rorschach Test designs on the front cover? How proud I felt. My sister carefully printed my name on the front cover and it was mine. My very first schoolbook! I felt 10 feet tall.
By the second day of school, that book looked like it came through the Battle of Waterloo, but it was mine.
And how about the first briefcase? A few days before I entered second grade, I got a real briefcase. I felt like such an adult, as if I were an executive with an office and a secretary.
I needed a briefcase like I needed a hole in the head, but it was all about social status. After all, the big kids all had one. I felt so grown-up schlepping that briefcase with one little notebook inside to school every day. And once in school, it was our ritual to take out the notebook and leave the briefcase in the aisle for the teacher to trip over as she walked around to check our homework.
Remember the next tenant in the briefcase, the pencil case? We never really had to buy one; we always got one for free when we bought a pair of shoes shortly before school opened. Remember those special pencil cases with one pencil, two crayons and a ruler? The pencil case really filled out the briefcase and added to our status.
And how about that first subway ride, alone, without an adult? Remember that experience? I’ll never forget it. I was supposed to go after school to the place where Papa worked. His boss wanted me to come in to help Papa, who was a cutter of ladies’ coats, lay up yards and yards of material on a cutting table. Mama and Papa gave me such detailed instructions that anyone could have gotten there.
The only thing they forgot to put down on the paper was which side of the station I was supposed to wait for the train. So naturally, if you have two choices, like a dummy, I took the uptown train and rode around for nearly three hours before I realized something was wrong. Finally, a conductor aimed me in the right direction and I wound up at Papa’s place just about the time he was supposed to leave. So, we came home together. But the fact that I got there – that was the important thing!
Limoncello Meets Whiskey... And the Result Is Amazing! - Limoncello Whiskey Sour
With thanks to Dave Edwards on the Booze on the Rocks YouTube Channel
Today on Booze oN The Rocks we're making the Limoncello Whiskey Sour, a bold yet refreshing cocktail that combines the rich character of whiskey with the sweet citrus notes of authentic limoncello and the vibrant acidity of fresh lemon juice..
LIMONCELLO WHISKEY SOUR
Ingredients:
3 oz | 90 ml | 9 cl Whiskey
2 oz | 60 ml | 6 cl Limoncello
1 oz | 30 ml | 3 cl Lemon Juice
METHOD
1. Add all of the ingredients to a shaker.
2. Shake with ice for 8-10 seconds.
3. Strain into a rocks glass over fresh ice.
A museum specimen of Australyichthys aegis.At first glance, it looks exactly like a seahorse. It has the same horse-shaped head tilted down from the body, the same curled, grasping tail and, in the males, a fully enclosed pouch for brooding the young.
But this little fish, no longer than your thumb, is not a seahorse, as we report in our new study published in the Journal of Lost Species. This is Australyichthys aegis, a newly described fish from the deep reefs off southern Australia. We have given it the common name helmethead sea muppet, after the domed, helmet-like crest on its head.
Its scientific name follows the same idea: In Greek mythology, the aegis was a protective shield. Together with its two relatives, the bullneck sea muppet (A. minotaur) and the paradoxical sea muppet (A. paradoxus), it makes up a small group we nickname the sea muppets.
All three, we have now shown, belong on their own branch of the family tree. The seahorse look has arisen more than once, and these fish are a case of it evolving well away from the true seahorses. That evidence had been sitting in museum drawers, misfiled, for decades.
Bycatch from the deep
You will not find these fish while scuba diving.
Every known specimen was brought up by accident, caught in trawl nets or dredges working the seafloor between about 50 and 125 meters (164–410 feet) down. The single specimen of A. aegis came up in 2006 near the Gambier Islands, at the mouth of South Australia's Spencer Gulf.
The dredge that caught it was sampling for small shelled animals known as brachiopods during a natural history expedition. Because that expedition was after invertebrates, the fish was mistakenly cataloged in the invertebrate collection of the South Australian Museum, where it sat unrecognized for years.
After each chance capture, the fish were preserved, then largely forgotten. The rest are held in Australian museum collections, including the Australian Museum, Museums Victoria and CSIRO.
The whole genus is known from just seven specimens gathered over about 65 years, scattered across more than 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) of coastline, and nothing has been collected in nearly two decades.
Irreplaceable specimens
The specimens are irreplaceable, so we could not dissect them. Instead, we used micro-CT scanning, the same X-ray technology used in hospitals but with enough resolution to reveal tiny bones.
That let us build three-dimensional models of each fish's skeleton and compare them bone by bone with true seahorses (Hippocampus).
Every earlier assessment had rested on external appearance, and the skeletons did not support it. Seahorses have a particular internal architecture, including a rigid cage of fused bony plates supporting the belly and a bony crown, called a coronet, on the head.
Our scans showed that Australyichthys has neither. In their place is a different arrangement of bones supporting the belly, one that appears in no seahorse.
Only one specimen could give us DNA.
A. aegis had been fixed in ethanol rather than formalin. It was the only member of the genus stored that way, and ethanol leaves genetic material intact. Sequencing it placed the fish well outside the seahorses, on the branch that is their closest relative. The genes said what the bones had already said.
All three species had been placed in the seahorse genus based on how they look and, on that evidence, were considered seahorses. They are not, and they needed a genus of their own. We named it Australyichthys, from the Latin for southern and the Greek for fish.
A shared way of life
When separate lineages evolve to look alike, biologists call it convergent evolution, and it usually reflects a shared way of life rather than shared ancestry.
The whole seahorse body, with its bent head, gripping tail and brood pouch, has been built at least twice within a single fish family, the Syngnathidae, which includes seahorses, pipefishes, pipehorses and seadragons.
Working out how that happened may reveal why evolution keeps arriving at the same solution.
All this happened along the Great Southern Reef, the connected system of kelp forests and rocky reefs that rings southern Australia. Many of its species are found nowhere else, and its deeper zones are barely explored.
In fact, an entire genus of vertebrate hid there, misidentified, until a CT scanner settled the question.
No one has ever seen one of these fish alive; they have turned up only by chance in a passing net or dredge. On that record, they now qualify as lost species, known from a handful of preserved animals and never from a living one.
Calling them lost is not a prediction of extinction. It marks them as a priority for targeted surveys that go looking rather than waiting for the next accidental catch. They are most likely still down there, in a part of the sea we hardly ever visit.
