1876: Mary Slessor sailed from Liverpool for Calabar. She was inspired by her mother’s strong Presbyterian faith and longed to follow in the footsteps of famed missionary and explorer David Livingstone and spread the word of God abroad. On August 5, 1876, at 28, Slessor set sail for Nigeria aboard the SS Ethiopia.
1926: In his last public stunt, American magician Harry Houdini stayed in an underwater airtight coffin for some 90 minutes; he bested rival magician Rahman Bey’s time of one hour.
1944: Hundreds of Jews are freed from forced labour in Warsaw. On August 5, 1944, Polish insurgents liberated a German forced-labour camp in Warsaw, freeing 348 Jewish prisoners, who joined in a general uprising against the German occupiers of the city.
You will also like...
1960: Independence declared by Upper Volta
Upper Volta—now Burkina Faso (which means “Land of Incorruptible People”), a landlocked country in western Africa—proclaimed its independence on this day in 1960, ending more than 60 years of French rule. After independence, Maurice Yaméogo became the first president of the country, whose name was changed to Burkina Faso in 1984.
1962: Marilyn Monroe is found dead. On August 5, 1962, movie actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home in Los Angeles. She was discovered lying nude on her bed, face down, with a telephone in one hand. Empty bottles of pills, prescribed to treat her depression, were littered around the room. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was “caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide.”
1981: U.S. President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who were on strike.
1984: Richard Burton Welsh actor is dead. Richard Burton was a highly regarded Welsh actor on stage and screen and earned seven Oscar nominations for work like The Robe, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Becket, and Equus. He wed Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor in 1964, and the two maintained a volatile relationship for years to come that included remarriage and two divorces. Burton died in Céligny, Switzerland at the age of 58.
1986: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the leaders of six other Commonwealth nations ended a meeting in London still in sharp disagreement over the effectiveness and advisability of imposing meaningful sanctions against South Africa to bring about an end to apartheid. When Australia, The Bahamas, Canada, India, Zambia, and Zimbabwe realized they could not induce Britain to take a firmer stance against South Africa, the six leaders reaffirmed the sanctions they had already adopted in the Nassau accord of 1985 and then added others.
2001: Econet Wireless Nigeria launched its operation pioneering GSM service in Nigeria.
2009: General Abdel Aziz sworn in as President of Mauritania
General Abdel Aziz, who came to power in a coup in 2008, was sworn in as the President of Mauritania after elections in 2009.
2010: Thirty-three workers became trapped after a mine in the Atacama Desert of Chile collapsed, and the resulting rescue took 69 days, attracting international attention.
1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is Signed
Also known as the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the document was signed by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States in Moscow. The treaty, which came as a response to the heightening tensions due to the frequent testing of nuclear weapons by these 3 countries during the Cold War, banned the testing of nuclear weapons anywhere on land, over water or in space. Underground testing was still allowed under the treaty until it was also banned in 1996 after the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty came into force.
1962: Nelson Mandela is Arrested.
The South African anti-apartheid activist and adherent of nonviolence was arrested by the government at Rivonia, a suburb of Johannesburg. After a year-long trial, Mandela was imprisoned at the infamous Robben Island prison where he spent the next 18 years. He was released from prison in 1990 after spending 28 years as a political prisoner. In the early 1990s, after intense international and domestic pressure, in part from the efforts of Mandela, the South African government started taking steps to end apartheid – a government policy of racial segregation and discrimination. As a result, Mandela was elected the country’s first black president in 1994.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: August 5
Neil Armstrong (August 5, 1930 – August 25, 2012)
Neil Armstrong, an American pilot, engineer, astronaut, and first person to walk on the moon was born on 5 August 1930. He was a NASA astronaut and commander of the 1969 US Apollo 11 Moon mission. During a landmark TV broadcast, as he walks on the moon, he says “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” He died of Cardiovascular disease at the age of 82.
