Here in Taipei we just dodged three typhoons. South China is getting hit hard through. Yesterday and the day before religious ceremonies were done before many busiensses to celebrate Ghost Month. You put out offerings and insense on a table for the spirits and burn temple money in little metal stoves so your ancestors have some money to spend in the next world.

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Birthdays: Alexander Glauzunov, Billie Holiday, Eddie Fisher, Leo Fender, Herbert Hoover, Norma Shearer, Rhonda Fleming, Jimmy Dean, Rosanna Arquette, Antonio Banderas

256 AD- St. Lawrence's day. He was the Saint who's emblem is the grill he was roasted on. Supposedly he showed his contempt for his torturers efforts by saying:" I think I'm done on this side." The Perseid Meteor Shower occurs around this time. It has been called the Burning Tears of Saint Lawrence.

1629- Spanish painter Diego Velasquez traveled to Italy to study the Renaissance Masters on the advice of his buddy painter Peter Paul Rubens.

1787- Mozart completes his Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -A Little Nightmusic.

1788- Mozart’s on a roll! This day he completed his Jupiter Symphony #41. It was his last symphony. He never heard it performed in his lifetime.

1889 - Dan Rylands patents the screw -on cap.

1897 -German chemists working for the Bayer Company invent Aspirin, the first mass market over the counter drug. A powdered tree root that was known to the Native Americans for years.

1978- Ford announces a recall of it's Pinto series car after tests prove when bumped from behind the auto explodes into flames.

1983- Discovery of the Vega Galaxy. This was the first physical proof of a planetary system outside our Milky Way.

1987 - Clara Peller, the elderly actress who gained last minute advertising fame by saying Where's the Beef?, died at 86 The director and writer of the spots was the father of J.J. Sedelmier, who created the Ambiguously Gay Duo and other TV Funhouse animations for SNL.