Sunday 4 August 2024 Calendar with holidays, observances and special days

Holidays and observances

• Avocado Day in Nuevo León, Mexico
• Barack Obama Day in llinois, US
• Bridge and Chopsticks Day in Japan (Hashi No Hi)
• Burkina Faso Revolution Day (between 1992 and 2000, this day was considered a public holiday and was dedicated to the anniversary of the military coup in 1983. Perhaps not the last uprising and military coup took place in Burkina Faso on October 28, 2014)
• Champagne Day (âirthday of champagne in 1693)
• Constitution Day on the Cook Islands
• International Assistance Dog Week (Starts on First Sunday in August)
• International Forgiveness Day
• Judge's Day in Peru
• Matica slovenská Day in Slovakia
• National Bakery Worker's Day in Argentina and Chile
• National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day in USA
• National White Wine Day in US
• Santo Domingo de Guzman Day
• Sisters Day (Celebrated on the first Sunday of August)
• U.S. Coast Guard Day
• White Madonna Day in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (fętes de la Vierge blanche)

Events

• In 2016 a team at the University of Oxford achieves a quantum logic gate with record-breaking 99.9% precision, reaching the benchmark required to build a quantum computer.
• 1977 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
• 1969 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuân Thuỷ begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
• 1914 – In response to the German invasion of Belgium, Belgium and the British Empire declare war on Germany. The United States declares its neutrality.
• 1873 – American Indian Wars: While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer clashes for the first time with the Cheyenne and Lakota people near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.
• 1821 – The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
• 1790 – A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
• 1701 – Great Peace of Montreal between New France and First Nations is signed.
• 1693 – Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of champagne; it is not clear whether he actually invented champagne, however he has been credited as an innovator who developed the techniques used to perfect sparkling wine.
• 1327 – First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.

Births

• 1992 – Cole Sprouse, American actor. In 2017, Sprouse began starring as Jughead Jones on The CW television series Riverdale.
• 1992 – Dylan Sprouse, American actor. He identifies as a Heathen.
• 1987 – Marreese Speights, American basketball player. Marreese Akeem Speights (born August 4, 1987) is an American professional basketball player for the Guangzhou Long-Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA).
• 1986 – Nick Augusto, American drummer. Nick Augusto (born August 4, 1986) is an American drummer, best known as the drummer of heavy metal band Trivium, in which he played from 2009 until 2014.
• 1985 – Crystal Bowersox, American singer-songwriter and guitarist, was the runner-up on the ninth season of American Idol. She was the first female finalist in three years.
• 1985 – Robbie Findley, American soccer player. He was capped 11 times by the United States national team, having made his international debut in 2007.
• 1984 – Mardy Collins, American basketball player. Collins played for the Knicks for two seasons and then played for the Los Angeles Clippers from 2008 to 2010.
• 1983 – Greta Gerwig, American actress, producer, and screenwriter. Between 2006 and 2009, she appeared in a number of films by Joe Swanberg, some of which she co-wrote or co-directed, including Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007) and Nights and Weekends (2008).
• 1981 – Marques Houston, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actor. As an actor, he is best known for his role as Roger Evans in the television comedy Sister, Sister.
• 1978 – Jon Knott, American baseball player. Jonathan David Knott (born August 4, 1978 in Manassas, Virginia) is a former Major League Baseball outfielder.
• 1978 – Kurt Busch, American race car driver. He is the 2004 NASCAR Nextel Cup Series champion, and currently the longest-tenured active driver in the Cup Series – having made his first start in 2000.
• 1978 – Luke Allen, American baseball player. Lucas Gale Allen (born August 4, 1978, in Covington, Georgia) is an outfielder, who has played in Major League Baseball with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Colorado Rockies.
• 1977 – Frankie Kazarian, American wrestler. Frank Benedict Gerdelman (born August 4, 1977) is an American professional wrestler.
• 1971 – Jeff Gordon, American race car driver and actor. Jeffery Michael Gordon (born August 4, 1971) is an American former professional stock car racing driver, currently an announcer for Fox NASCAR, and a top executive for Hendrick Motorsports.
• 1970 – Bret Baier, American journalist. William Bret Baier (born August 4, 1970) is the host of Special Report with Bret Baier on the Fox News Channel and the chief political anchor for Fox.
• 1970 – John August, American director and screenwriter. He is known for writing the films Go (1999), Charlie's Angels (2000), Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003), Big Fish (2003), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Frankenweenie (2012), the Disney live-action adaptation of Aladdin (2019) and the novel Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire (2018).
• 1969 – Troy O'Leary, American baseball player. Troy Franklin O'Leary (born August 4, 1969) is an American former professional baseball outfielder who played with the Milwaukee Brewers (1993-1994), Boston Red Sox (1995-2001), Montreal Expos (2002) and Chicago Cubs (2003).
• 1968 – Daniel Dae Kim, South Korean-American actor. He also runs a production company called 3AD, which is currently producing the television series The Good Doctor.
• 1965 – Dennis Lehane, American author, screenwriter, and producer. Of these, his fourth, Gone, Baby, Gone, was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name.
• 1962 – Roger Clemens, American baseball player and actor. William Roger Clemens (born August 4, 1962), nicknamed "Rocket", is an American former baseball pitcher who played 24 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for four teams.
• 1961 – Barack Obama, American lawyer and politician, 44th President of the United States, Nobel Prize laureate. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Illinois from 2005 to 2008 and an Illinois state senator from 1997 to 2004.
• 1960 – Chuck C. Lopez, American jockey. Lopez (born August 4, 1960 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American jockey in Thoroughbred horse racing.
• 1959 – Robbin Crosby, American guitarist and songwriter (d. 2002), was an American guitarist who was a member of glam metal band Ratt, earning several platinum albums in the US in the 1980s. Crosby died in 2002 from a heroin overdose and pneumonia with complications from AIDS.
• 1958 – Allison Hedge Coke, American-Canadian poet and academic. Since then, she has written five more books and edited eight anthologies.
• 1958 – Mary Decker, American runner. Mary Teresa Slaney (formerly Tabb, née Decker; born August 4, 1958) is a retired American middle-distance runner.
• 1957 – Brooks D. Simpson, American historian and author. Brooks Donohue Simpson (born August 4, 1957) is an American historian and an ASU Foundation Professor of History at Arizona State University, specializing in American political and military history, especially the era of the American Civil War and Reconstruction and the American presidency.
• 1956 – Gerry Cooney, American boxer and promoter. Gerald Arthur Cooney (born August 4, 1956) is an American former professional boxer who competed from 1977 to 1990, and challenged twice for world heavyweight titles in 1982 and 1987.
• 1955 – Alberto Gonzales, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 80th United States Attorney General. Bush, becoming the highest-ranking Hispanic American in executive government to date.
• 1955 – Billy Bob Thornton, American actor, director, and screenwriter. Billy Bob Thornton (born August 4, 1955) is an American actor, writer, director and musician.
• 1950 – Caldwell Jones, American basketball player and coach (d. 2014), was an American professional basketball player.
• 1949 – John Riggins, American football player, sportscaster, and actor. Robert John Riggins (born August 4, 1949), nicknamed "The Diesel" and "Riggo", is an American former football running back who played professionally in the National Football League (NFL) for the New York Jets and Washington Redskins.
• 1948 – Johnny Grubb, American baseball player and coach. John Maywood Grubb, Jr. (born August 4, 1948 in Richmond, Virginia) is a former Major League Baseball outfielder and designated hitter, who also occasionally played at first base.
• 1945 – Alan Mulally, American engineer and businessman. He retired from Ford Motor Company on July 1, 2014.
• 1945 – Paul McCarthy, American painter and sculptor. Paul McCarthy (born August 4, 1945) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
• 1944 – Richard Belzer, American actor. He portrayed the character for 23 years from 1993 to 2016.
• 1942 – Cleon Jones, American baseball player. Jones played most of his career for the New York Mets and in 1969 caught the final out of the "Miracle Mets" World Series Championship over the Baltimore Orioles.
• 1941 – Ted Strickland, American psychologist and politician, 68th Governor of Ohio, was the 68th Governor of Ohio, serving from 2007 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the United States House of Representatives, representing Ohio's 6th congressional district (1993–1995, 1997–2007).
• 1940 – Larry Knechtel, American bass player and pianist (d. 2009), was an American keyboard player and bassist, best known as a member of the Wrecking Crew, a collection of Los Angeles-based session musicians who worked with such renowned artists as Simon & Garfunkel, Duane Eddy, the Beach Boys, the Mamas & the Papas, the Monkees, the Partridge Family, the Doors, the Grass Roots, Jerry Garcia, and Elvis Presley, and as a member of the 1970s band Bread.
• 1940 – Timi Yuro, American singer-songwriter (d. 2004). Sometimes called "the little girl with the big voice," she is considered to be one of the first blue-eyed soul stylists of the rock era.
• 1939 – Frankie Ford, American R&B/rock & roll singer (d. 2015), was an American rock and roll and rhythm and blues singer, best known for his 1959 hit "Sea Cruise".
• 1938 – Ellen Schrecker, American historian and academic. Ellen Wolf Schrecker (born August 4, 1938) is an American professor emerita of American history at Yeshiva University.
• 1935 – Carol Arthur, American actress and producer. Carol Arthur (born August 4, 1935) is a retired American actress, mainly recognizable as playing supporting roles in films produced by Mel Brooks.
• 1932 – Frances E. Allen, American computer scientist and academic. Her achievements include seminal work in compilers, program optimization, and parallelization.
• 1932 – Liang Congjie, Chinese environmentalist, founded Friends of Nature (d. 2010), was a Chinese historian best known for his work as an environmental activist who established the Friends of Nature in 1994 as the first environmental non-governmental organization to be officially recognized by the government of the People's Republic of China.
• 1928 – Gerard Damiano, American director, producer, and screenwriter (d. 2008), was an American director of adult films. He wrote and directed the 1972 cult classic Deep Throat, which starred Linda Susan Boreman aka Linda Lovelace.
• 1926 – George Irving Bell, American physicist, biologist, and mountaineer (d. 2000), was an American physicist, biologist and mountaineer, and a grandson of John Joseph Seerley. He died from complications of leukemia after surgery.
• 1926 – Perry Moss, American football player and coach (d. 2014), was an American football player, coach, and executive. Moss played tailback at the University of Tulsa and quarterback at Illinois during the 1940s.
• 1921 – Herb Ellis, American guitarist (d. 2010), was an American jazz guitarist. During the 1950s, he was in a trio with pianist Oscar Peterson.
• 1920 – Helen Thomas, American journalist and author (d. 2013), was an American reporter and author best known for her longtime membership in the White House press corps. She covered the White House during the administrations of ten U.S. presidents—from the start of the Kennedy administration to the second year of the Obama administration.
• 1915 – Warren Avis, American businessman, founded Avis Rent a Car System (d. 2007), was an American entrepreneur who founded Avis Rent a Car System in 1946.
• 1913 – Robert Hayden, American poet and educator (d. 1980), was an American poet, essayist, and educator. He served as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1976 to 1978, a role today known as US Poet Laureate.
• 1913 – Wesley Addy, American actor (d. 1996), was an American actor of stage, television, and film.
• 1912 – David Raksin, American composer and educator (d. 2004), was an American composer who was renowned for his work in film and television. With over 100 film scores and 300 television scores to his credit, he became known as the "Grandfather of Film Music."
• 1910 – Anita Page, American actress (d. 2008), was an American film actress who reached stardom in the last years of the silent film era.
• 1910 – Hedda Sterne, Romanian-American painter and photographer (d. 2011), was a Romanian-born American artist who was an active member of the New York School of painters. Her work is often associated with Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism.
• 1910 – William Schuman, American composer and educator (d. 1992), was an American composer and arts administrator.
• 1904 – Helen Kane, American singer and actress (d. 1966). Her signature song was "I Wanna Be Loved by You" (1928), featured in the musical film "Good Boy".
• 1902 – Bill Hallahan, American baseball player (d. 1981), was an American left-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball during the 1920s and 1930s. Nicknamed "Wild Bill" because of his lack of control on the mound—he twice led the National League in bases on balls—Hallahan nevertheless was one of the pitching stars of the 1931 World Series and pitched his finest in postseason competition.
• 1901 – Louis Armstrong, American trumpet player and singer (d. 1971), was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist, and actor who was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz.
• 1899 – Ezra Taft Benson, American religious leader, 13th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (d. 1994), was an American farmer, government official, and religious leader who served as the 15th United States Secretary of Agriculture during both presidential terms of Dwight D. Eisenhower and as the 13th president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1985 until his death in 1994.
• 1887 – Albert M. Greenfield, Ukrainian-American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1967), was a real estate broker and developer who built his company into a vast East Coast network of department stores, banks, finance companies, hotels, newspapers, transportation companies and the Loft Candy Corporation. His high-rise office buildings and hotels were instrumental in changing the face of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, his base of operations.
• 1867 – Jake Beckley, American baseball player and coach (d. 1918), was an American professional baseball first baseman. He played in Major League Baseball for the Pittsburgh Alleghenys, Pittsburgh Burghers, Pittsburgh Pirates, New York Giants, Cincinnati Reds and St.
• 1853 – John Henry Twachtman, American painter, etcher, and academic (d. 1902), was an American painter best known for his impressionist landscapes, though his painting style varied widely through his career. Art historians consider Twachtman's style of American Impressionism to be among the more personal and experimental of his generation.
• 1821 – James Springer White, American religious leader, co-founded the Seventh-day Adventist Church (d. 1881). In 1849 he started the first Sabbatarian Adventist periodical entitled "The Present Truth", in 1855 he relocated the fledgling center of the movement to Battle Creek, Michigan, and in 1863 played a pivotal role in the formal organization of the denomination.
• 1821 – Louis Vuitton, French fashion designer, founded Louis Vuitton (d. 1892). Louis Vuitton is one of the world's leading international fashion houses; it sells its products through standalone boutiques, lease departments in high-end department stores, and through the e-commerce section of its website.
• 1755 – Nicolas-Jacques Conté, French soldier, painter, balloonist, and inventor (d. 1805), was a French painter, balloonist, army officer, and inventor of the modern pencil.

Deaths

• 2015 – Alfred C. Williams, American lawyer and politician (b. 1951)
• 2015 – Billy Sherrill, American songwriter and producer (b. 1936)
• 2015 – Elsie Hillman, American philanthropist and politician (b. 1925)
• 2015 – John Rudometkin, American basketball player (b. 1940)
• 2014 – Chester Crandell, American lawyer and politician (b. 1946)
• 2014 – James Brady, American activist and politician, 15th White House Press Secretary (b. 1940)
• 2013 – Art Donovan, American football player and radio host (b. 1925)
• 2013 – Keith H. Basso, American anthropologist and academic (b. 1940)
• 2012 – Bud Riley, American football player and coach (b. 1925)
• 2012 – Johnnie Bassett, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1935)
• 2009 – Blake Snyder, American screenwriter and producer (b. 1957)
• 2007 – Lee Hazlewood, American singer-songwriter and producer (b. 1929)
• 2007 – Raul Hilberg, Austrian-American political scientist and historian (b. 1926)
• 2005 – Anatoly Larkin, Russian-American physicist and theorist (b. 1932)
• 2004 – Mary Sherman Morgan, American chemist and engineer (b. 1921)
• 2003 – Frederick Chapman Robbins, American pediatrician and virologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916)
• 1999 – Victor Mature, American actor (b. 1913)
• 1982 – Bruce Goff, American architect, designed the Boston Avenue Methodist Church (b. 1904)
• 1981 – Melvyn Douglas, American actor (b. 1901)
• 1940 – Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Ukrainian-American general, journalist, and activist (b. 1880)
• 1938 – Pearl White, American actress (b. 1889)
• 1932 – Alfred Henry Maurer, American painter (b. 1868)
• 1886 – Samuel J. Tilden, American lawyer and politician, 25th Governor of New York (b. 1814)
• 1795 – Timothy Ruggles, American lawyer, jurist, and politician (b. 1711)
• 1741 – Andrew Hamilton, Scottish-American lawyer and politician (b. 1676)