NASA Administrator Thomas Paine told an audience on August 1 that a manned mission to Mars and Venus, both in the same mission, would be feasible in the 1980s.
The Coronado Bridge, between San Diego and Coronado, Calif., opened to auto traffic on August 3, one minute after midnight. The bridge is 2.1 miles long and rises 244 feet above San Diego Bay, high enough to allow U.S. Navy ships to pass underneath.
A sonic boom from a U.S. Navy F-4 Phantom shattered three-quarters of the windows in the downtown business district of the Canadian resort town of Kelowna, British Columbia, on August 6. A member of the Navy’s Blue Angels was trying to catch up to the rest of the team during practice for an upcoming air show. He exceeded Mach 1 at the altitude of only 300 feet. Damage was an estimated $150,000.
On August 8, the Beatles crossed Abbey Road for their iconic photo, taken by Iain Macmillan.
As directed by Charles Manson, members of the “Manson Family” invaded a house in Los Angeles rented by film director Roman Polanski and his wife, Sharon Tate, late on August 9. The group brutally killed Tate, her late-term unborn child, three guests, and a random visitor to a nearby building. Polanski was out of the country. Less than 24 hours later, other Manson Family members murdered Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in a Los Angeles house picked at random. Manson and 25 others were arrested on August 16 . . . for auto theft. The group was released 10 days later because of a clerical error on the arrest warrant.
British Army troops arrived in Northern Ireland on August 14 to bring an end to sectarian rioting in Derry. Their presence did not end until nearly 38 years later.
“Three days of peace and music” — the Woodstock Festival — began on August 14 near the town of Bethel, N.Y., in the Catskills. When the original opening act was late because they were stuck in traffic, the then little-known folk singer, Richie Havens, opened the festival with a three-hour performance. Upwards of 200,000 people attended the festival, which wrapped up with a Jimi Hendrix concert on Monday. At one point, heavy rain turned the venue, a farm, into what a UPI reporter called “a sea of mud, sickness and drugs.”
Hurricane Camille made landfall near Biloxi, Miss., on August 17. The storms and resulting floods killed 259 people.
The Beatles recorded their final song as a group on August 20.
The U.S. federal government announced the first use of a “poverty line” on August 29.
Rocky Marciano, the only undefeated heavyweight boxing champion (49-0), was killed, along with two others, in the crash of a small plane near Newton, Iowa, on August 31. It was the eve of what would have been his 46th birthday.