August 5, 1981 (Wednesday)
- President Reagan ordered the firing of 11,359 American air-traffic controllers who had ignored his 11:00 am deadline for returning to work. Another 875 who had walked out had come back before being fired. There was no negotiation with PATCO President Robert Poli, and the union was decertified on October 22. Poli himself resigned on December 31.
- The 55 foot tall Percheron rocket, privately built by Space Services Inc., exploded on the launch pad at Matagorda Island in Texas. The company started over with a new rocket, Conestoga One, which was launched on suborbital flight on September 9, 1982.
- By a vote of 130-14, Mohammad Javad Bahonar was elected by the Majlis as the new Prime Minister of Iran.
- Born: Carl Crawford, American MLB outfielder and stolen base champion, in Houston; and Rachel Scott, American student who was killed in the 1999 Columbine High School massacre
- Died: Jerzy Neyman, 87, Moldavian born mathematician who introduced the confidence interval for testing in inferential statistics and revolutionized data sampling techniques.
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Famous quotes containing the word august:
“Sorrow has the fortunate peculiarity that it preys upon itself. It dies of starvation. Since it is essentially an interruption of habits, it can be replaced by new habits. Constituting, as it does, a void, it is soon filled up by a real “horror vacui.””
—J. August Strindberg (1849–1912)