Son of Sam serial killer is arrested

On August 10, 30 B.C. (some scholars say August 12), Cleopatra, queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, takes her life following the defeat of her forces against Octavian, the future first emperor of Rome. Cleopatra, born in 69 B.C., was made Cleopatra VII, queen of Egypt, upon the death of […]

After more than two centuries as a royal palace, the Louvre is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government. Today, the Louvre’s collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture. The Louvre palace was begun by […]

On August 10, 1912, Virginia Stephen, 30, marries Leonard Woolf, 31, at a registry office in London. Virginia Woolf, born in 1882, grew up surrounded by intellectuals. Her father was a writer and philosopher, and her mother was a British aristocrat. In 1902, Virginia’s father died, and Virginia took a house with her sister and […]

On August 10, 1939, The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland and featuring words and music by E.Y. “Yip” Harburg and Harold Arlen, receives its world premiere in Green Bay, Wisconsin. It would open widely in U.S. theaters some two weeks later. The beloved characters and familiar plot points were mostly all there in the […]

On August 10, 1978, three teenage girls die after their 1973 Ford Pinto is rammed from behind by a van and bursts into flames on an Indiana highway. The fatal crash was one of a series of Pinto accidents that caused a national scandal during the 1970s. The small and economical Pinto, which debuted in […]

On August 10, 1984, the action thriller Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, opens in theaters as the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system, had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that same year. Founded in 1922 as […]

On August 10, 2003, the United Kingdom records its first-ever temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Throughout the month, an intense heat wave scorched the European continent, claiming more than 35,000 lives. August 2003 was the hottest August ever recorded in the northern hemisphere and broke all previous records for heat-related deaths. France was the worst […]