Morton wrote two blog entries related to the 8th of August. Most 08.08 related posts today will probably be about the Olympics in Beijing. I won’t talk about that. Here are two notable examples what happened on August 8 in the past:

In 1952 Jostein Gaarder was born. He’s well-known for Sophie’s World, A Novel about the History of Philosophy.

In 1902 Paul Dirac was born. He was not only a famous theoretical physicist who was awarded the Nobel prize in 1933 together with Erwin Schrödinger, but he also held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. That’s the world’s most prestigious professorship. Sir Isaac Newton hold the chair from 1669 to 1702. Since 1980 the holder is Stephen Hawking.