Wikipedia:Main Page history/2021 August 5b

Obverse

The York County, Maine, Tercentenary half dollar is a fifty-cent piece minted in 1936 as a commemorative coin to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the founding of York County, the southernmost county in Maine and the first to be organized. The obverse shows Brown's Garrison, a fort around which York County developed, while the reverse depicts the county's arms. A commemorative coin craze in 1936 saw some coins authorized by the United States Congress that were of mainly local significance; the York County issue was one of these, passing Congress without opposition in the first half of 1936. Maine artist Walter H. Rich designed the issue; his work has garnered mixed praise and dislike from numismatic authors. The Philadelphia Mint struck 25,000 for public sale. Less than 19,000 sold by 1937, more than half to Mainers; the rest were sold in the 1950s. As of 2021, the York County half dollar catalogs for around $200, depending on condition. (Full article...)

Mallard II

• ... that the wooden-hulled Mallard II (pictured), built in 1936, is "probably the oldest operating dredge in California"?
• ... that Danish dairy farmer Hanne Nielsen created a Tilsit cheese for King Christian IX of Denmark?
• ... that South Carolina radio station WBAW received a Peabody Award for public-service programming just six months after signing on the air?
• ... that Jack G. Downing, the only person to serve as CIA station chief in Moscow and Beijing, "read Chinese poetry for kicks"?
• ... that according to campus legend, the English Building at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is haunted by the ghost of a female student who drowned in the building's pool?
• ... that Andreas Schnider, a theologian and local Austrian People's Party leader from Graz, holds a leading role in Austria's teacher training?
• ... that the range of freshwater snail Beddomeia waterhouseae consists merely of a small tributary in Tasmania?
• ... that at the time the post was abolished, the prime minister of Zambia was being paid less than his secretary?

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya

• Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (pictured) travels to Poland on a humanitarian visa after attempts by the Belarus Olympic Committee to repatriate her against her will.
• In Olympic athletics, Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas breaks a 26-year-old world record in the women's triple jump, and world records are set in men's and women's 400 metres hurdles by Norwegian Karsten Warholm and American Sydney McLaughlin.
• Wildfires in southern Turkey kill at least eight people and injure more than 800 others.

August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day in Croatia (1995)

Bertha Benz's Patent-Motorwagen

• 641 or 642 – King Penda of Mercia defeated and killed King Oswald of Northumbria at the Battle of Maserfield, traditionally believed to have been fought in Oswestry, Shropshire, England.
• 1888 – Bertha Benz made the first long-distance automobile trip, driving 106 km (66 mi) from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, in a Benz Patent-Motorwagen (pictured).
• 1981 – U.S. president Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization en masse.
• 2011 – NASA launched the Juno probe to Jupiter as part of the New Frontiers program.