On August 2, 1776, members of Congress affixed their
signatures to an enlarged copy of the Declaration of
Independence.
Fifty-six congressional delegates in total signed the
document, including some who were not present at
the vote approving the declaration. The delegates
signed by state from North to South.
On August 1, 1782, Caroline Herschel—sister of William
Herschel, an astronomer who discovered Uranus the year
before—discovered a comet after spotting it through a
telescope. This was the first comet discovery credited
to a woman.
William and Caroline Herschel
Herschel, a German-born British woman, began her work
in astronomy through helping her brother.
As William’s assistant, Caroline Herschel executed many
of the calculations from his studies.
In 1782, prior to discovering the comet, she had been
recording the positions of new sky objects in her own
logbook.
Charles Whitman took a stockpile of guns and ammunition
to the observatory platform atop a 300-foot tower at the
University of Texas and proceeded to shoot 46 people,
killing 14 people and wounding 32.
Whitman (below) who had killed both his wife and mother
the night before, was eventually shot to death after Austin
police officers courageously charged up the stairs of the
tower to subdue the attacker.
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.
