AUGUST, APPARENTLY.
Things that happened. Things that supposedly happened. Things that got stranger after the footnote.
CORRECTION, APPARENTLY.
The phonograph anniversary may be wrong.
August 12, 1877 is often listed as the day Thomas Edison completed the phonograph. But surviving records complicate that date. His assistant’s diary suggests the machine may not actually have been finished until December.
FOUND. NOW WHAT?
A T. rex became an ownership dispute.
Sue was discovered in August 1990. Finding one of the most complete T. rex skeletons ever known was only the beginning. What followed involved competing ownership claims, a federal seizure, years of litigation, and eventually an $8.4 million auction.
NOBODY ASKED, BUT...
Before Singer became a sewing-machine name, he was an actor.
Isaac Singer worked as an actor and formed a theatrical troupe before patenting his improved sewing machine in August 1851.
SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA.
IBM showed everyone how to build its computer.
IBM introduced the Model 5150 PC in August 1981. Its architecture was made publicly available, which helped other manufacturers build compatible machines. The clone ecosystem grew, and IBM eventually found itself competing with the standard it had helped create.
THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT.
The first communications satellite was basically a giant balloon.
In August 1960, NASA launched Echo 1, a 100-foot metallic balloon. It carried no communications equipment. Radio signals were literally bounced off it.