While salmon fishing near the Klondike River in Canada’s
Yukon Territory on August 16, 1896, George Carmack
reportedly spotted nuggets of gold in a creek bed. His
lucky discovery sparked the last great gold rush in the
American West.

Hoping to cash in on reported gold strikes in Alaska,
Carmack had traveled there from California in 1881. After
running into a dead end, he headed north into the isolated
Yukon Territory, just across the Canadian border.

In 1896, another prospector, Robert Henderson, told
Carmack of finding gold in a tributary of the Klondike
River. Carmack headed to the region with two Native
American companions, known as Skookum Jim and
Tagish Charlie.

George Washington Carmack
(September 24, 1860 – June 5, 1922)

Klondike Gold Rush Campsite.

River.

CAMILLE
BOHANNON

Singer Madonna Louise Ciccone is 64 years young today.

The singer, songwriter, and actress is referred to as the "Queen
of Pop". Rolling Stone listed her among its greatest artists and
greatest songwriters of all time.

Apocalypse Now, the acclaimed Vietnam War film directed by
Francis Ford Coppola, opened in theaters around the United
States on August 15, 1979.

The film, inspired in part by Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella
Heart of Darkness, among other sources, told the story of
an Army captain (played by Martin Sheen) and crew of men
who are sent into the Cambodian jungle to kill a U.S. Special
Forces colonel (Marlon Brando) who has gone AWOL and is
thought to be crazy. Apocalypse Now, which co-starred Robert
Duvall and Dennis Hopper, became notorious for its long,
difficult production, which included budget problems, shooting
delays due to bad weather on the Philippines set, a heart attack 
for Sheen and a nervous breakdown for Coppola.  
                                             

Francis Ford Coppola became 83 in April.

On August 15, 1969, the Woodstock music festival opened on a
patch of farmland in White Lake, a hamlet in the upstate New
York town of Bethel.

Promoters John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, Artie Kornfield and
Michael Lang originally envisioned the festival as a way to raise
funds to build a recording studio and rock-and-roll retreat near
the town of Woodstock, New York. The longtime artists’ colony
was already a home base for Bob Dylan and other musicians.

Despite their relative inexperience, the young promoters managed
to sign a roster of top acts, including the Jefferson Airplane, the
Who, the Grateful Dead, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin,
Jimi Hendrix, Creedence Clearwater Revival and many more.

On August 14, 1971, St. Louis Cardinals ace Bob Gibson threw
the first no-hitter of his storied career. Gibson’s heroics helped
his team sail to an 11-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Gibson died on October 2, 2020, at age 84, under hospice care
after fighting pancreatic cancer for more than a year.

Robert Gibson (Pack Robert Gibson) 
(November 9, 1935 – October 2, 2020)

Nicknamed "Gibby" and "Hoot"
(after actor Hoot Gibson)