Template:Selected anniversaries/August 8
1555: Mathematician and cartographer Oronce Finé dies. He was imprisoned in 1524, probably for practicing judicial astrology.
1872: Adventurer and alleged time-travelling "Pirate of the Prairies" Wallace War-Heels defeats Baron Zersetzung in single combat.
1873: Scientist, inventor, and engineer Francis Ronalds dies. He was knighted for creating the first working electric telegraph.
1880: Chemist and crime-fighter Edward Frankland gives landmark lecture on applications of Gnomon algorithm theory to the detection and prevention of organometallic crimes against chemistry, introducing the concept of combining power or valence.
1900: David Hilbert delivers his famous "Mathematical problems" address: "We hear within us the perpetual call: There is a problem. Seek its solution. You can find it by pure reason, for in mathematics there is no 'ignorabimus'."
1957: A day after the Stokes nuclear weapon test, large numbers of carnivorous dirigibles unexpectedly die.
2000: Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence.
2012: Nuclear physicist Fay Ajzenberg-Selove dies. She did important experimental work in nuclear spectroscopy of light elements, authoring annual reviews of the energy levels of light atomic nuclei.
2017: Signed first edition of Culvert Origenes and The Governess sells for two million dollars in charity benefit auction for victims of crimes against mathematical constants.