August 7 in Pop Culture History
1782 – George Washington ordered the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It was later renamed the Purple Heart.
1909 – Alice Huyler Ramsey and three other women became the first women to complete a transcontinental automobile trip, taking 59 days to travel from New York, New York to San Francisco, California. Alice drove the whole trip.
1930 – Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, two accused African-American criminals were taken from jail by a mob and lynched. Lawrence Beitler took a picture of the mob and bodies, inspiring Abel Meeropol to write a poem, “Bitter Fruit.” It was later rephrased as “Strange Fruit” and recorded by Billie Holiday.
1944 – IBM announced the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, known best as the Harvard Mark I. It used 765,000 components and hundreds of miles of wire and weighed about 5 tons.
1953 – Officially, Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the US, but it is technically number 47. Congress forgot to vote for a formal resolution to admit Ohio to the Union, but finally did on August 7, 1953.
1954 – #1 Hit August 7, 1954 – September 24, 1954: The Crew-Cuts – Sh-Boom
1955 – Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (became Sony in 1958) sold its first transistor radios in Japan.
1959 – The Lincoln Memorial design on the U.S. penny went into circulation. It replaced the “wheat” design, and was minted until 2008.
1959 – Explorer 6 launches from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The satellite fell back to Earth on July 1, 1961
1965 – #1 Hit August 7, 1965 – August 13, 1965: Herman’s Hermits – I’m Henry VIII, I Am
1971 – #1 Hit August 7, 1971 – September 3, 1971: Bee Gees – How Can You Mend a Broken Heart
1975 (Typhoon) Nina, China
1976 – #1 Hit August 7, 1976 – September 3, 1976: Elton John and Kiki Dee – Don’t Go Breaking My Heart
1976 – Viking 2 entered orbit around Mars. The lander went onto the Mars surface on September 3, 1976, and took pictures and analyzed soil samples until July, 1980.
1978 – The US Government made funds available to offer federal assistance for the Love Canal Disaster
1992 – Growing Pains actress Tracy Gold was hospitalized for anorexia and is written out of most of the final episodes for the series
2004 – #1 Hit August 7, 2004 – August 20, 2004: Juvenile featuring Soulja Slim – Slow Motion
2007 – High School Musical 2 aired on The Disney Channel
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