On August 10, 1939, The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland
and featuring words and music by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and
Harold Arlen, received its world premiere in Green Bay,
Wisconsin. It opened widely in U.S. theaters some two
weeks later.
CAMILLE BOHANNON
On August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb is dropped on
Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally
in Japan’s unconditional surrender.
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declared war on
Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers the following
day into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to
take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.
Despite a strong Japanese army comprised of a million men
awaiting them, the Soviet force, under command of Marshal
Alexander Vasilevsky, swept into China, Korea and the Kuril
Islands, forcing a rapid retreat.
By the end of the engagement, the Soviets had only lost around
8,000 troops compared to the 80,000 lost by Japan.
On August 1, 1861, Robert FitzRoy, a British naval officer who
had been researching ways to predict the weather, published
the first known weather forecast in The Times.
The report, which included a prediction of 62 degrees and clear
skies in London, was largely accurate.
Fitzroy—who had captained the famed HMS Beagle, which
sailed around the world with naturalist Charles Darwin—
had become concerned about the massive loss of life at
sea, with more than 7,400 shipwrecks near the British
coast over a five-year period.
Fitzroy believed advance warning about rough weather
could prevent many such tragedies.
After the initial August 1 forecast, weather reports quickly became
very popular and syndicated in publications around England. It
wasn’t just fishermen and sailors, traditionally affected by the
weather, who availed themselves of the forecasts.
People involved in organizing events like county fairs and flower
shows obsessively followed them as well. Some people even
used the forecasts for more speculative purposes, like picking
which horse to bet on in races, depending on how the weather
might affect track turf.
A Delta Air Lines McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30, similar
to the one involved.
On July 31, 1973, Delta Flight 723 struck a concrete seawall
as it descended into Boston’s Logan International Airport
amid heavy ground fog.
The collision broke off some of the fuselage and the plane
slimed into the ground, breaking apart and bursting into
flames.
Almost all on board died instantly in what became the worst
air disaster at Logan and in all of New England.
