August 10 provides a good object lesson in how fast the world works now compared to the 1700s. It was July 4, 1776 that the British colonies in North America issued the Declaration of Independence. But the anniversary of the news finally reaching England is today, August 10. The phrase “breaking news” didn’t even exist until about 1840. Nowadays, of course, you might hear about anything in the world in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.
Transportation just wasn’t the same when we had to depend on wind at sea and horses on land. When Magellan set off in 1519 (on August 10!) to try to sail around the world, the voyage took years. But disasters have always happened fast; they launched the warship Vasa in Stockholm on August 10 in 1628, and it only took 20 minutes to sink.
Regardless of the speed of events or communications, people like to remember what happened and share great accomplishments in fields from warships to art. The Vasa might not have exactly been a great accomplishment, but on the anniversary of its launch (and sinking), the Louvre museum opened in Paris in 1793. About 50 years later, August 10 was also the date the Smithsonian Institution was chartered. The charter came from the US Congress, but the money came from James Smithson, whose will said his estate (worth about $500,000) should fund a “Smithsonian Institution” in Washington.
Smithson, though, was English, not American, and he’d never even visited the US. He inherited his money and never had a job in his life. He was fascinated by chemistry and he published dozens of scientific papers. Besides the Institution named after him, there’s also “smithsonite,” an ore you can refine into zinc.
If you refine some zinc, you could combine it with copper to make brass. And if you have some brass, you could use it for some of the components of a diesel engine — which you might want to use to get around today, if only because it’s International Biodiesel Day.
You couldn’t get a diesel engine in a Ford Pinto, a mediocre (or worse) car from the 1970s. The Ford company probably wished they’d made a different choice on the power plant, because diesel fuel (including biodiesel) doesn’t explode. A design mistake in the Pinto meant that if the car was hit from behind by another car, the gas tank could rupture, and gasoline does explode. A Ford Pinto did just that on August 10, 1978, killing three people. The legal case broke new ground in product liability, because Ford was charged with homicide, not just a civil charge.
There weren’t any design flaws in the Magellan space probe. Although it reached Venus on August 10, 1990, the anniversary of Magellan beginning his voyage, its name is based on its mission, not the anniversary. Magellan was the first person to map a lot of the Earth, and the probe’s mission was to map Venus from orbit.
The Magellan probe can’t be seen at all from the surface of Venus (not that there’s anybody there to look). It’s a sort of hidden camera, but not really the same kind they used in the old TV show Candid Camera, which was based on hidden cameras. But by coincidence, Candid Camera debuted on August 10 too…in 1948. In various versions, the show stayed on the air for 66 years. Candid Camera was probably the first reality show, even though it didn’t have any elements of a game.
Games are part of August 10 history too; it’s Charles Darrow’s birthday. He popularized Monopoly. He didn’t invent it, though — that was probably Lizzie Magie, who called her original version The Landlord’s Game. She intended it a way to promote Georgism, the economic approach described by Henry George (to be honest, the little I know about Georgism really doesn’t match the game very well). She patented her game — twice — but in 1932 Darrow started marketing his unauthorized version. He got away with it, too, and even patented his version — and when Parker Brothers bought the game, they bought it from Darrow. But when they found out Magie was the original designer, they paid her, too.
Parker Brothers then went on to market the game throughout the US and even elsewhere in the world. It’s not clear whether anybody at the company noticed that because of their copyright, they had a monopoly—on Monopoly.
