This Week in History

August 6, 1928 — Artist Andy Warhol, a pioneer of the pop art movement, is born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Artfact.com lists a recent high price paid for a Warhol as over $5 million.

August 7, 1904 — Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ralph Johnson Bunche is born. This brilliant African American earned the Peace Prize for his mediation work in the Arab-Israeli conflict beginning in 1947. He travelled to the Middle East in 1948 and in 1949 succeeded in convincing Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria to sign Armistice Agreements with Israel. The Green Line - the armistice lines between Israel and the West Bank and Gaza Strip - lasted (not without troubles) until the 1967 Six-Day War. The West Bank, by the way, was primarily controlled by Jordan until 1967, and not by any nation called Palestine.

August 8, 1945 — The United States ratifies the United Nations Charter. The U.N. brings the world's nations together to resolve international difficulties using the pen and microphone rather than the sword.

August 9, 1936 — Track star Jesse Owens wins his fourth gold medal of the Berlin Olympic Games.

August 10, 1981 — John Walsh's son Adam is found murdered in Hollywood, Florida. U.S. Congress later passes the Missing Children's Act to give the FBI more power to track missing children. Walsh became the national spokesman against crime and eventually the host of a new prime time television show, America's Most Wanted.

August 11, 1929 — Babe Ruth makes his 500th home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio, the first baseball player to do so. This has nothing to do with conservative politics, but everything to do with celebrating the best and brightest and most talented people in the United States - which is something good for us Americans to do.

August 12, 1877 — American astronomer Asaph Hall discovers Deimos, one of the two moons of Mars. Six days later, August 18, he will discover the other moon - Phobos. He thus verified Johannes Kepler's speculation that two moons orbited Mars. In Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire Gulliver's Travels, in part three, the "Voyage to Laputa", the astronomers of Laputa have supposedly discovered the two moons of Mars - an idea Swift probably got from the long-dead Kepler's speculation.