Moments in Time: Grateful Dead
The History Channel
On Aug. 4, 2012, in London, Oscar Pistorius of South Africa became the first amputee to compete at the Olympic Games. He finished second out of five runners in the opening heat and went on to the semifinals, where he finished eighth out of eight runners.
On Aug. 5, 1951, 38-year-old Canadian daredevil William "Red" Hill Jr. attempted to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel made of 13 rubber innertubes, canvas webbing and fish netting that he dubbed "the Thing." It broke apart under the high water pressure two hours after he set out, but his badly injured body was not recovered until the next morning.
On Aug. 6, 1975, The New York Times printed a front-page obituary for Agatha Christie's Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot -- quite the honor for a fictional character! Christie had announced her decision to dispose of him in her next book; indeed, as the Times noted, "The news of his death, given by Dame Agatha, was not unexpected. Word that he was near death reached here last May."
On Aug. 7, 1967, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson nearly unlimited power to oppose "communist aggression" in Southeast Asia and marking the beginning of America's expanded military role in the battlefields of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.
On Aug. 8, 1942, six German saboteurs who'd secretly entered the United States on a mission to attack its civil infrastructure were executed by electric chair for spying. Two others who notified the FBI of the plot and aided authorities in their manhunt for the collaborators were imprisoned but freed six years later on President Harry Truman's orders, and returned to Germany.
On Aug. 9, 1995, legendary Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia died of a heart attack in a California residential drug-treatment facility at age 53.
On Aug. 10, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge arrived in South Dakota on horseback wearing a cowboy hat to dedicate Mount Rushmore two months before its carving began and presented sculptor Gutzon Borglum with a set of steel drill bits.