On This Day…20 August

Thank God it’s Friday. I wish you and yours the very best today, 20 August 2010.

So many eventful …um…events occurred on this day. Events like

1804 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: the “Corps of Discovery”, exploring the Louisiana Purchase, suffers its only death when sergeant Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute appendicitis. I wonder if poor Charles had insurance. Remember, it’s LEWIS and CLARK, not LOIS and CLARK.

Not LEWIS and CLARK.

1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace’s same theory. Creationists everywhere have a hissy fit.

1920 – The National Football League, (NFL), is founded in the United States. The rest of the world wonders spends the next decade working out the rules. (See also cricket).

1991 – Collapse of the Soviet Union, August Coup: more than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union’s parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev. The rest of the world rejoices…except for thriller writers.

1998 – U.S. embassy bombings: the United States military launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Born on this day:

Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin singer, is 62.

Limp Bizkit frontman, Fred Durst is 40.

James Marsters, “Spike” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is an eternally young 48.

James Marsters as Spike

Enjoy what is definitely my favourite Zeppelin song, “Stairway to Heaven.”