On August 11, 1942, in the midst of World War II’s escalating technological arms race, Austrian-born actress Hedy Lamarr and American avant-garde composer George Antheil were awarded U.S. Patent No. 2,292,387 for an invention few in the entertainment world—or the military establishment—could have anticipated.…
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Smokey Bear, commonly known as Smokey the Bear, stands as an enduring symbol of wildfire prevention in the United States. With his iconic slogan, “Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires,” Smokey has become a cultural figure representing the nation’s efforts to protect forests from…
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On August 8, 1945 the United States, England, France and the Soviet Union joined together and signed the London Agreement, a new treaty to impose justice against the Nazis for their crimes. For two months during the summer of 1945, Robert H. Jackson and…
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On the morning of August 6, 1945, a single American B-29 bomber—Enola Gay—emblazoned with the name of the pilot’s mother, took off from the island of Tinian in the western Pacific. Its mission, cloaked in secrecy and unprecedented in history, was to bring a…
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On August 2, 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of World War II, physicist Albert Einstein and fellow Hungarian émigré Leo Szilard co-signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that would become one of the most consequential pieces of correspondence in history. The…
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