The USS Maddox was a destroyer operating in the Gulf of Tonkin — Vietnam — in August 1964. Its mission was to “collect signal intelligence”, which when somebody else’s ship does, the US calls “spying”. They saw North Vietnamese gunboats on their radar, and on August 4, the US reported that the Maddox and the gunboats were involved in a minor battle (nobody was hurt) when the North Vietnamese boats had attacked the Maddox.
Great consternation ensued in Washington D.C., and Congress immediately passed the “Gulf of Tonkin Resolution”. It didn’t exactly declare war, but it granted the president (Johnson) the authority to “assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by ‘communist aggression’.” That was enough, and on August 5, 1964, the Vietnam War started when the US began bombing North Vietnam. They were able to start the next day because, as luck would have it, there was also an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin at the time.
It wasn’t until 2003 that Robert McNamara, who had been the Secretary of Defense on August 5, 1964, admitted that the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident” never happened. They just made it up, hoping to drum up a war with North Vietnam. It, um, worked. Thousands of people died, and nobody was even tried for war crimes.
The Washington establishment claimed to be spooked by “communists,” but it was probably their teenage kids they were really afraid of. The show American Bandstand had debuted on ABC TV on August 5, 1957, and by 1964 it was in full swing, with teenagers — TEENAGERS, for crying out loud! — actually rating the records played on the show. They used the entirely obvious rating scale 35 to 98, and generally repeated the catch phrase “it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.” The teens in the studio got to enjoy one popular band per show as they played their latest hit.
It wasn’t until — okay, it was actually right away — that Dick Clark, who hosted the show for decades, admitted that the bands weren’t really playing their music; they were just lip-syncing.
August 5 is also the day in 1926 of Harry Houdini’s greatest escape. He was sealed in a coffin, which was placed underwater in the Hotel Shelton swimming pool for a hour and a half. The motivation for the stunt was trying to outdo “Rahman Bey”, an Egyptian performer who did a similar trick and claimed that he used supernatural powers to survive in a sealed casket for 60 minutes. Houdini spent his whole career exposing mystics, spiritualists, and fakes, and explained that when HE did the trick, all he needed to do was control his breathing. Admittedly, he was very, very good at controlling his breathing; he could hold his breath for more than three minutes at a time.
It was when Houdini’s book was published later that people read his admissions about the methods he used in his escapes, including hidden lockpicks and the like. The breath control, though, was real.
Everybody who took a road trip in the 1920s to see one of Harry Houdini’s performances — and for that matter, anybody to takes a road trip today — is recreating an event from August 5, 1888, when Bertha Benz (the wife of Karl Benz, who had just built one of the first automobiles) took the world’s first road trip. She drove the “Benz Patent Motorwagen” 66 miles from Mannheim to Pforzheim. She took her two sons along, aged 13 and 15, and solved a number of problems with the Motorwagen along the way.
What Bertha Benz didn’t do was ask her husband if she could use the car. In fact, she didn’t even tell him about the trip. She was from a wealthy family and had financed the whole project, but didn’t think Benz himself was doing enough to market his invention. She took the trip to show the practical use of the device.
It was only later on, when their memoirs, letters, and notes were made public, that Bertha Benz was shown to be virtually a co-inventor of the automobile, and that several innovations, including brake pads and a lower-range transmission gear for climbing hills, were hers. She would have held any number of patents except that in those days, in Germany, married women couldn’t hold patents. She would also have been a co-investor in the Benz company except that in those days, in Germany, married women couldn’t make investments.
When Bertha Benz arrived in Pforzheim she sent a telegram home to let Karl know where she and the boys had gotten to. Telegrams were how you did it in the 1880s — you could even send a telegram all the way across the Atlantic Ocean! That was thanks to a project led by Cyrus Field in 1858. On August 5 of that year, they completed the first transatlantic cable, making possible the official telegram Queen Victoria sent to President James Buchanan on August 16. There wasn’t any real message; it was just the “official opening” of the transatlantic telegram service.
It was later revealed — well, it wasn’t so much “revealed” as “noticed” — that the cable only lasted three weeks before breaking. It wasn’t replaced for another eight years.
Something else August 5 is known for is being the birthday of Neil Armstrong, first man to walk on the moon. He’s the guy who said “This is one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.”
It wasn’t until later, when he returned to Earth, that he admitted that he’d blown the line; he’d meant to say “that’s one small step for a man…”
