August 30 Birthday
On August 30, 1963, the Moscow-Washington hotline went into operation. The Cuban Missile Crisis had revealed that communication between the two superpowers was dangerously slow — it had taken Kennedy's message twelve hours to reach Khrushchev. The hotline was not a red telephone — it was a teletype connection using a transatlantic cable. The first test message from Washington was "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog 1234567890." The hotline has never been used in a crisis, but its existence provided a channel for communication that both sides trusted. Warren Buffett, born this day in 1930, filed his first tax return at fourteen, deducting $35 for his bicycle as a business expense. He bought his first stock at eleven. He has lived in the same house in Omaha since 1958, purchased for $31,500. He is worth over $100 billion. He will give 99% of his fortune to charity, primarily to the Gates Foundation. He eats McDonald's every morning and drinks five cans of Cherry Coke daily. People born on August 30 fall under the zodiac sign of Virgo. The birthstone is Peridot and the birth flower is Gladiolus. Historical events on August 30 include 1963: Washington-Moscow hotline goes into operation, 1983: Guion Bluford becomes first African American in space, 1991: Azerbaijan declares independence from Soviet Union. Famous people born on August 30 include Mary Shelley (1797), Huey Long (1893), Warren Buffett (1930).