August 29 Birthday
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans as a Category 3 storm. The hurricane itself caused damage, but the catastrophe came from the failure of the levee system — fifty breaches flooded 80% of the city. 1,833 people died. Hundreds of thousands were stranded. The Superdome became a shelter of last resort, holding 30,000 people in conditions that deteriorated rapidly. The FEMA director, Michael Brown, was overwhelmed. President Bush, flying over on Air Force One, looked out the window but did not land for days. The disaster exposed the poverty, racial inequality, and institutional failure that New Orleans had been living with. The city lost half its population. It has not fully recovered. The Soviet Union's first atomic bomb test, code-named "First Lightning," was detonated on August 29, 1949, at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan. The bomb was a copy of the American "Fat Man" design — Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist working at Los Alamos, had passed the plans to the Soviets. The test ended the American nuclear monopoly, which had lasted four years. The arms race that followed defined the Cold War. The United States responded by accelerating the hydrogen bomb program, which produced the first thermonuclear device in 1952. Michael Jackson, born this day in 1958, was seven when he joined the Jackson 5. Thriller (1982) sold 66 million copies — the best-selling album of all time. He revolutionized music videos and popular dance — the moonwalk was first performed at Motown 25 in 1983. His later years were marked by financial troubles, allegations of child abuse, and addiction to prescription drugs. He died of a propofol overdose in 2009 at fifty. People born on August 29 fall under the zodiac sign of Virgo. The birthstone is Peridot and the birth flower is Gladiolus. Historical events on August 29 include 1533: Atahualpa, last Inca emperor, executed by Spanish conquistadors, 1949: Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb, 2005: Hurricane Katrina strikes Gulf Coast, causing catastrophic flooding of New Orleans. Famous people born on August 29 include John Locke (1632), Michael Jackson (1958), Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809).