August 4 is the birthday of my son-in-law

...whom I will neither name nor show to you, in keeping with my own personal blogging policy. He’s 43 today.

According to Wikipedia, a lot of other things also happened on August 4. Here are a few of them:

70 A.D. -– The destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans.
367 –- Gratian, aged 8, son of Roman Emperor Valentinian I, is named co-Augustus by his father and associated to the throne.
1265 -– Second Barons’ War: Battle of Evesham, in which the army of Prince Edward (the future king Edward I of England) defeats the forces of rebellious barons led by Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, killing de Montfort and many of his allies.
1327 -– First War of Scottish Independence: James Douglas leads a raid into Weardale and almost kills Edward III of England.
1532 -– the Duchy of Brittany is annexed to the Kingdom of France.
1578 -– Battle of Al Kasr al Kebir, in which the Moroccans defeat the Portuguese. King Sebastian of Portugal is killed in the battle, leaving his elderly uncle, Cardinal Henry, as his heir. This initiates a succession crisis in Portugal.
1693 -– Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon’s invention of Champagne, although he actually did not have anything to do with sparkling wine.
1704 -– War of the Spanish Succession: Gibraltar is captured by an English and Dutch fleet, commanded by Admiral Sir George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles.
1789 -– In France, members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1790 -– A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
1791 -– The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman-Habsburg wars.
1796 -– French Revolutionary Wars: Napoleon leads the French Army of Italy to victory in the Battle of Lonato.
1821 -– Atkinson & Alexander publish the Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
1824 -– The Battle of Kos is fought between Turk and Greek forces.
1873 -– 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 Sioux near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.
1892 -– The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.
1914 -– World War I: Germany invades Belgium. In response, the United Kingdom declares war on Germany. The United States declare their neutrality.
1944 -– World War II: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.
1946 -– An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 hits northern Dominican Republic. One hundred are killed and 20,000 are left homeless.
1964 -– American civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
1964 -– Gulf of Tonkin Incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1969 -– At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
1974 -– A bomb explodes in the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22.
1984 -– The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
1993 -– A federal judge sentences Los Angeles Police Department officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King’s civil rights.
2010 -– California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage passed by the state’s voters in 2008, is overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

These people were born on August 4:

1792 -– Percy Bysshe Shelley, English poet (d. 1822)
1870 -– Sir Harry Lauder, Scottish entertainer (d. 1950)
1899 -– Ezra Taft Benson, thirteenth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons, people) and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Dwight D. Eisenhower (d. 1994)
1900 -– Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, Scottish consort of George VI (d. 2002)

1901 -– Louis Armstrong, American jazz trumpeter and singer (d. 1971)

1920 -– Helen Thomas, American journalist
1955 -– Billy Bob Thornton, American actor and writer
1961 -– Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
1962 -– Roger Clemens, American baseball player
1971 -– Jeff Gordon, American race car driver

These people died on August 4:

1060 -– King Henry I of France (b. 1008)
1113 -– Gertrude of Saxony, daughter of Bernard II, Duke of Saxony and wife of Floris I, Count of Holland (b. 1030)
1306 -– King Wenceslaus III of Bohemia, Hungary and Poland (b. 1289)
1875 -– Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (b. 1805)
1981 -– Melvyn Douglas, American actor (b. 1901)
1997 -– Jeanne Calment, French supercentenarian, the world's oldest human on record and the only person ever to live past the age of 122 (b. 1875)
1999 -– Victor Mature, American actor (b. 1913)

August 4 is the Christian Feast Day of both Saint John Vianney and Saint Sithney, patron saint of mad dogs.

It is Coast Guard Day in the United States, Revolution Day in Burkino Faso, Constitution Day in the Cook Islands, and Johnny Cash Day in Arkansas. I have been unable to ascertain whether it is Lizzie Borden Day in Fall River, Massachusetts, however.

I thought of naming my son-in-law co-Augustus today and breaking open a magnum of Don Perignon’s bubbly, but that will have to wait until another year. I have chosen instead to end this post with a poem and one more photograph:

Lizzie Borden took an axe
Gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one