Category: Today

September 9

337 – Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans succeed their father Constantine I as co-emperors. The Roman Empire is divided between the three.

1493 – Christopher Columbus, with 17 ships and 1,200 men, sails on a second voyage from Cadiz to the New World.

1776 – The Continental Congress officially names its union of states the United States.

1791 – Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington.

1850 –The Compromise of 1850 transfers a 1/3rd of Texas’s claimed territory to federal control in return for the U.S. government assuming $10 million of Texas’s pre-annexation debt.
California is admitted as the 31st state.

1863 – Union forces occupy Chattanooga, Tennessee during the Civil War.

1892 – Using the 36 inch refractor telescope at the University of California’s Lick Observatory east of San Jose, California, American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard, discovers the 3rd closest and 5th found moon of Jupiter; named Amalthea in 1976.

1940 – At Dartmouth College, George Robert Stibitz, a mathematician with Bell Telephone laboratories, demonstrates the first remote operation of a digital computer.

1942 –Launching a Yokosuka E14Y float plane from the Japanese submarine I-25, pilots Nobuo Fujita and Okuda Shoji execute the 1st and only air attack of World War II on the contiguous U.S. mainland, dropping incendiary bombs on Mount Emily in Oregon, lighting a small fire in the state forest.

1943 – During World War II, the Allies land at Salerno and Taranto, Italy.

1945 – Japanese Imperial forces formally surrender to China.

1956 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.

1965 – Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion in damages, becoming the first hurricane to cause over $1 billion in damage.

1969 – Allegheny Airlines Flight 853, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, collides in mid air with a Piper PA-28 Cherokee over Moral Township, Shelby County, Indiana, killing all 83 passengers and crew on board both aircraft.

1971 – The 4 day Attica Prison riot begins, eventually resulting in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers retaking the prison.

1972 – In Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park, a Cave Research Foundation exploration and mapping team discovers a link between the Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems, making it the longest known cave passageway in the world.

1976 – Mao Zedong dies in Beijing, China at exactly 00:00 hours as his doctors ‘pull the plug’ on him after he fell into a coma 2 days earlier.

1994 –  Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-64.

2001 – Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al-Qaeda assassins

2015 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, overtaking Queen Victoria.

 

September 8

1380 – At Kulikovo, near modern day Tula, Russian forces defeat a mixed army of Tatars and Mongols of the Golden Horde, stopping their advance.

1504 – Michelangelo’s sculpture of David is unveiled in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy.

1565 – St. Augustine, Florida is founded by Spanish admiral and Florida’s first governor, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.
The Knights of Malta lift the Ottoman siege of the island that began in May

1781 – During the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina, the last major engagement of the war in the Carolinas, ends with the British winning an extremely narrow tactical victory, but having to retreat to Charleston and eventually cause the entire regular British force to abandon operations in the south.

1810 – The Tonquin sets sail from New York Harbor with 33 employees of John Jacob Astor’s newly created Pacific Fur Company on board. After a 6 month journey around the Horn of South America, the ship arrives at the mouth of the Columbia River and Astor’s men establish the fur trading town of Astoria, Oregon.

1860 – The steamship PS Lady Elgin collides with the schooner Augusta of Oswego, which is only damaged, and sinks on Lake Michigan off Port Clinton Illinois, with the loss of around 300 lives. The disaster remains the greatest loss of life on open water in the history of the Great Lakes.

1863 – In the Second Battle of Sabine Pass, a small Confederate force thwarts a Union invasion of Texas.

1883 – The Northern Pacific Railway is completed in a ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana. Former President Ulysses Grant driving in the final “golden spike”.

1888 – In London, the body of Jack the Ripper’s second murder victim, Annie Chapman, is found.

1892 – The earliest version of The Pledge of Allegiance is recited for the first time.
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

1900 – Even though receiving storm warnings days in advance, a powerful hurricane hits Galveston, Texas killing about 8,000 people.

1916 – In a bid to prove that women were capable of serving as military dispatch riders, Augusta and Adeline Van Buren arrive in Los Angeles, completing a 60-day, 5,500 mile cross-country trip on motorcycles.

1921 – 16 year old Margaret Gorman wins the Atlantic City Pageant’s Golden Mermaid trophy; pageant officials later dub her the first Miss America.

1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch transparent tape.

1935 – Louisiana Senator Huey Long is shot by a relative of a political opponent while leaving the Louisiana State Capitol building. Mortally wounded, he dies 2 days later.

1944 – London is hit by a V-2 rocket for the first time.

1945 – The division of Korea begins when U.S. troops arrive to partition the southern part of Korea, responding to Soviet troops occupying the northern part of the peninsula

1960 –President Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,  Alabama.

1966 – Star Trek premieres on the NBC television network.

1970 – Trans International Airlines Flight 863, a Douglas DC-8, crashes during takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, killing all 11 passengers and crew aboard.

1974 – President Gerald Ford signs a pardon of Richard Nixon for any crimes committed while in office.

1994 – US Air Flight 427, a Boeing 737, crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 passengers and crew aboard.

2016 – NASA launches OSIRIS-REx, its first asteroid sample return mission, landing and departing 101955 Bennu on 20 October 2020,  and is expected to return with samples in September 2023.

2017 – Author and Presidential advisor, Jerry Pournelle dies at his home in Studio City, California.

2022 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom dies at Balmoral Castle in Scotland after reigning for 70 years, having taken the record as the longest reigning British monarch from Queen Victoria, almost to the day, 7 years earlier, on the 9th.

September 7

70 – The Roman army under Titus occupies and plunders the rest of Jerusalem.

1191 – In the 3rd Crusade, the army of Richard I of England defeats the army of Saladin at Arsuf.

1228 – Beginning the 6th Crusade, the army of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II lands in Acre.

1630 – Boston, Massachusetts is founded.

1776 – Commanding the Turtle, Ezra Lee makes the world’s first submarine attack, attempting to attach a time bomb to the hull of HMS Eagle in New York Harbor

1778 – France invades Dominica in the British West Indies, before Britain is even aware of France’s involvement in the Revolutionary War.

1822 – Dom Pedro I declares Brazil’s independence from Portugal

1857 – Mormon settlers slaughter most members of an emigrant wagon train in the ‘Mountain Meadows’ massacre

1863 – Union troops under Quincy A. Gillmore occupy Battery Wagner and Morris Island, South Carolina, previously abandoned by Confederate forces.

1864 – Atlanta is evacuated on orders of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.

1876 – The James–Younger Gang attempts to rob the bank in Northfield, Minnesota, but are driven off by armed citizens.

1907 – Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania sets sail on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England, to New York City.

1916 – US federal employees win the right to Workers’ compensation under the Federal Employers Liability Act 

1921 – The first Miss America Pageant is held in Atlantic City, New Jersey

1923 – The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) is formed.

1940 – The Luftwaffe begins The Blitz, bombing London and other British cities for over 50 consecutive nights.

1945 – Japanese forces on Wake Island, which they had held since December 1941, surrender to U.S. Marines.

1977 – The Torrijos–Carter Treaties between Panama and the U.S. on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The U.S. agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century.

1979 – The Chrysler Corporation asks the U.S government for a $1.5 billion loan to avoid bankruptcy.

1997 – The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor flies for the first time

2002 – Gotthard Glas, better known as Uziel Gal, designer of the UZI and the Ruger MP-9 submachineguns, dies while being treated for cancer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

2008 – Due to the collapse of the Mortgage Backed Security business, caused by fraudulently making  sub-primes mortgages appear to be better risks, the U.S. government takes control of the 2 largest mortgage financing companies in the country, FNMA -Fannie Mae, and FHLMC -Freddie Mac.

2017 – Equifax announce a cyber-crime identity theft event potentially impacting over 145 million U.S. consumers.

September 5

1622 – A hurricane overruns a Spanish fleet bound from Havana to Cadiz and sinks the galleon Atocha in the Florida Straits between Florida and Cuba. with the loss of 260 of the 265 passengers and crew aboard and over $500 million in treasure.

1774 – The First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia

1781 – A British fleet led by Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Graves is repelled from the Chesapeake Bay by a French fleet led by Rear Admiral Francois Paul Comte de Grasse, contributing to the British surrender at Yorktown.

1812 – During the War of 1812, Fort Wayne, Indiana is besieged by a force of over 500 Potawatomi and Miami Indians.

1836 – Sam Houston is elected as the first president of the Republic of Texas.

1862 –The Army of Northern Virginia crosses the Potomac River at White’s Ford during the Maryland Campaign.

1877 – Ogallala Chief Crazy Horse is killed while allegedly resisting confinement at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

1882 – The first United States Labor Day parade is held in New York City.

1905 – At the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in New Hampshire, the Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by President Theodore Roosevelt, ends the Russo-Japanese War.

1914 – The First Battle of the Marne begins when the French attack and defeat German forces who are advancing from the northeast towards Paris

1924 – Paterfamilias Fortis is born in the area near Pontiac, Missouri.

1942 – The Japanese high command orders a withdrawal at Milne Bay, New Guinea, the first major Japanese defeat in land warfare during the Pacific War.

1944 – Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg form the Benelux union

1945 – In Ottawa, the Soviet embassy clerk, Igor Gouzenko defects to Canada, exposing Soviet espionage in North America, basically beginning the Cold War.

1969 – U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley is charged with 6 specifications of premeditated murder for the death of 109 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai.

1972 –  The Palestinian terrorist group “Black September” attacks and takes hostage 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. 2 are killed in the attack and the other 9 the following day. Consequences of the failure of German police to effectively conduct a rescue is the motivation by many nations to form specialized police and military units specifically trained and tasked for counter terrorist/hostage rescue situations.

1975 – Lynette ‘Squeaky’ Fromme attempts to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California.

1977 – NASA launches the Voyager 1 spacecraft from Cape Canaveral.

1978 – Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat begin peace discussions at Camp David, Maryland.

1984 – On mission STS-41-D, Shuttle Discovery lands at Edwards Air Force Base, California after its maiden voyage.

1986 – Pan Am Flight 73 from Mumbai, India to New York, with 358 people on board is hijacked at a scheduled stop at Karachi International Airport in Pakistan.

1996 – Hurricane Fran makes landfall near Cape Fear, North Carolina as a Category 3 storm with 115 mph sustained winds, causing over $3 billion in damage and killing 27 people.

2016 – Actor Hugh O’Brian, dies, age 91 at his home in Beverly Hills.

September 4

476 – Emperor Flavius Romulus Augustus is deposed by the Goth, Odoacer who proclaims himself “King of Italy”, ending the Western Roman Empire.

1774 – During his second voyage of exploration, Captain James Cook sights New Caledonia.

1781 – Los Angeles is founded as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles

1812 – During the War of 1812,  Fort Harrison, overlooking the Wabash River of what is today the city of Terre Haute, Indiana, is besieged by a combined force of 600 Potawatomi, Wea, Shawnee, Kickapoo and Winnebago Indians.

1862 –  The Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee invades Maryland.

1882 – The Pearl Street Station in New York City becomes the first power plant to supply electricity to paying customers.

1886 – Geronimo surrenders to General Nelson Miles in Arizona.

1888 – George Eastman registers the trademark Kodak and receives a patent for his camera that uses roll film.

1939 – On the first Royal Air Force attack on Germany, Flight Officer William J. Murphy becomes the first British pilot killed in the war.

1950 – Darlington Raceway, in South Carolina, is the site of the inaugural Southern 500, the first 500-mile NASCAR race.

1957 – The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus calls out the National Guard to prevent African American students from enrolling in Central High School.

1965 – Albert Schweitzer dies at his hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon

1967 – Operation Swift during the Vietnam War begins when U.S. Marines engage the North Vietnamese in battle in the Que Son Valley.

1972 – Mark Spitz becomes the first competitor to win seven medals at a single Olympic Games.

1977 – 5 members of the Joe Boys gang attempt to kill leaders of the rival Wah Ching gang in the Golden Dragon Restaurant in Chinatown, San Francisco, leaving 5 people dead and 11 others injured, none of whom were gang members.

1985 – The first geodesic allotrope molecule of carbon, C_60, discovered after accidental synthesis at Rice University in Houston, Texas, is named Buckminsterfullerene in honor of the designer of the geodesic dome; Richard Buckminster Fuller.

1998 – Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University.

2002 – Tied at 11 runs, the Oakland Athletics at their home ballpark, defeat the Kansas City Royals with a ‘walk-off’ home run by Scott Hatteberg , winning their 20th consecutive game, a still current American League record.

September 3

301 – San Marino, one of the smallest nations in the world and the world’s oldest republic still in existence, is founded by Saint Marinus.

863 – The Byzantine army under the personal command of Emperor Michael III utterly defeats an invading Arab army under the command of Umar al-Aqta, the emirate of Tarsus, at Porson, near the river Lalakaon in what is now eastern Turkey

1260 – The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking  the point of maximum expansion of the Mongol Empire

1658 – Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, dies at age 59 at Whitehall of complications of malaria.

1777 – The Flag of the United States flies in battle for the first time at the Battle of Cooch’s Bridge in Delaware.

1783 – The Revolutionary War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Paris by the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain.

1812 – A party of Shawnee Indians, led by Missilimetaw , makes a surprise attack on the village of Pidgeon Roost in Indiana, the first Indian attack in Indiana during the War of 1812, killing 24 people, including 15 children.

1838 – Frederick Douglass escapes from slavery.

1861 – Confederate General Leonidas Polk invades Kentucky, prompting the state legislature to ask for Union assistance.

1879 – British envoy Sir Louis Cavagnari and 72 men of the British Army’s Corps of Guides are massacred, defending the British Residency in Kabul while under siege by warring Afghans.

1895 – John Brallier becomes the first openly professional American football player, when he was paid $10 by David Berry, to play Quarterback for the Latrobe Athletic Association in a 12–0 win over the Jeanette Athletic Association at Jeanette Pennsylvania.

1935 – Sir Malcolm Campbell, driving the Rolls-Royce Railton Blue Bird reaches a speed of 304.331 miles per hour on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, becoming the first person to drive an automobile over 300 mph.

1939 – Following the Germans ignoring an ultimatum to cease the invasion of Poland; France, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and India declare war on Germany, forming the Allied nations at the start of World War II.

1941 – Karl Fritzsch, deputy commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, experiments with the use of Zyklon B, a cyanide based pesticide, in the gassing of Soviet POWs.

1943 – British and Canadian troops land on the Italian mainland at Reggio, almost directly across the Strait of Sicily from Messina.
Walter Bedell Smith and Giuseppe Castellano sign the Armistice of Cassibile for the nations of Italy, the U.K and the U.S.

1944 – Anne Frank and her family are placed on the last transport train from the Westerbork transit camp to the Auschwitz concentration camp

1976 – The Viking 2 spacecraft lands at Utopia Planitia on Mars

1989 – Varig Flight 25, a Boeing 737, crashes in the Amazon rainforest near São José do Xingu in Brazil, killing 12 of the 48 passengers and crew aboard.

2005 – Chief Justice of the U.S., William Rehnquist dies at age 80, of cancer at his home in Arlington, Virginia .

2010 – UPS Airlines Flight 6, a Boeing 747 crashes near Nad Al Shebao Dubai shortly after take off, due to an on board fire, killing both crew members on board.

2017 – North Korea conducts its sixth and most powerful to that date, nuclear test.

September 2

44 BC – Cleopatra declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion.

31 BC – In the last war of the Roman Republic, naval forces of Octavian defeat those of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Actium.

1192 – The Treaty of Jaffa is signed between Richard I of England and Saladin, leading to the end of the 3rd Crusade.

1752 – Great Britain, along with its overseas possessions, adopts the Gregorian calendar.

1789 – The United States Department of the Treasury is founded.

1862 –President Lincoln restores General George B. McClellan to command U.S. Forces after General John Pope’s defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

1864 – Union forces enter Atlanta, a day after the Confederate defenders flee the city, ending the Atlanta Campaign.

1885 – In Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack Chinese workers, killing 28, wounding 15 and forcing several hundred more out of town.

1901 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.

1912 – Arthur Rose Eldred is awarded the first Eagle Scout award of the Boy Scouts of America.

1925 – The USS Shenandoah, the first American built rigid airship, crashes in a thunderstorm in Noble County, Ohio killing 14 of the 42 crew aboard

1935 – The Labor Day Hurricane, the most intense hurricane to strike the U.S., makes landfall at Long Key, Florida, killing at least 400 people.

1939 – Following the start of the invasion of Poland the previous day, the beginning of World War II, the Free City of Danzig, now Gdańsk, is annexed by Nazi Germany.

1945 – World War II officially ends when The Japanese Instrument of Surrender is signed by Japan and the major Allied Powers aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

1958 – A US Air Force reconnaissance RC-130, tail number 60528, of the 7406th Support Squadron, is shot down by Soviet MiG-17 fighters over Armenia, when it strays into Soviet airspace while conducting a signals intelligence mission, killing all 17 crew members aboard

1963 – The CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television’s first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.

1964 – Alvin C. York dies at the Veterans Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 76.

1987 – In Moscow, the trial begins for 19-year-old pilot Mathias Rust, who flew his Cessna airplane into Red Square in May.

2008 – Google launches its Chrome web browser.

2013 – The Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens, after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the old span.

September 1

1772 – The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is founded in San Luis Obispo, California.

1774 –  Under orders from General Gage, Middlesex County, Massachusetts Sheriff, David Phips confiscates the Massachusetts provincial gun powder supply at the Powder House in Somerville, causing Militia to form and preemptively begin removing other powder stores and accouterments to more secure locations.

1862 –Confederate Army troops defeat a group of retreating Union Army troops near Chantilly, Virginia.

1864 – Confederate General John Bell Hood orders the evacuation of Atlanta, ending a 4 month long siege by General Sherman.

1873 – Cetshwayo ascends to the throne as king of the Zulu nation in Southern Africa following the death of his father Mpande.

1878 – Finding that the young men originally hired as telegraph messengers are providing unsatisfactory customer service, Emma Nutt becomes the first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company. It is not until the early 1970s before men are again hired to be operators.

1880 – The army of Mohammad Ayub Khan is routed by the British at the Battle of Kandahar, ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

1894 – 418 people die in the Great Hinckley Fire, a forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota.

1897 – The Tremont Street Subway in Boston opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.

1934 – The first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated cartoon, The Discontented Canary, is released

1939 – Ground, Air and Naval forces of Nazi Germany begin an attack and invasion of Poland beginning what will be World War II.
Switzerland mobilizes its forces and the Swiss Parliament elects Henri Guisan to head the Swiss Armed Forces.

1961 – TWA Flight 529, a Lockheed Constellation, crashes shortly after takeoff from Midway Airport in Chicago, killing all 78 passengers and crew on board. At the time, it was the deadliest single plane disaster in U.S. history.

1969 – A coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power.

1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.

1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of over 1,435 miles per hour

1979 – The NASA space probe Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 13,000 mi.

1982 – The U.S. Air Force Space Command is founded.

1983 – Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace, killing all 269 passengers and crew on board.

1985 – A joint American–French expedition led by Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

2008 – The U.S. transfers control of Anbar Province back to the reformed Iraqi government

August 31

1776 – William Livingston, the first Governor of New Jersey, begins serving his first term.

1864 – Union forces led by General Sherman launch a final assault on besieged Atlanta.

1870 – Maria Montessori is born in Chiaravalle, Italy

1886 – A 7.0 Mw  power earthquake hits southeastern South Carolina killing 60 people and causing over $6 million in damage.

1888 – Jack the Ripper murders his first victim, Mary Ann Nichols

1895 – Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his ‘Navigable Balloon’.

1897 – Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, a type of movie projector

1935 – In an attempt to stay out of the growing tensions concerning Germany and Japan, the United States passes the first Neutrality Act.

1939 – Nazi Germany mounts a false flag attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland, precipitating the beginning of World War II.

1940 – Pennsylvania Central Airlines Trip 19, a Douglas DC-3, crashes near Lovettsville, Virginia. The investigation of the accident is the first to be conducted under the Bureau of Air Commerce act of 1938.

1945 – General Douglas MacArthur establishes the Supreme Allied Command occupation headquarters in Tokyo.

1950 – TWA Flight 903, a Lockheed Constellation, crashes near Itay El Barud, Egypt while attempting to return to Cairo due to an engine fire, killing all 55 passengers and crew aboard.

1969 – Rocco ‘Rocky’ Marciano along with pilot Glenn Belz and passenger Frankie Farrell, die in a small plane crash near Newton, Iowa

1986 – Aeroméxico Flight 498,  a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, collides with a Piper PA-28 Cherokee over Cerritos, California, killing all 67 passengers and crew aboard both planes, and 15 more people on the ground.

1988 – Delta Air Lines Flight 1141, a Boeing 727, crashes during takeoff from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, killing 2 crew members and 12 passengers of the 108 passengers and crew aboard.

1997 – Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Fayed, and driver Henri Paul are killed in a car crash in Paris.

2016 – Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff is impeached and removed from office.

August 30

70 – Titus ends the siege of Jerusalem after destroying Herod’s Temple.

1574 – Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master.

1791 – HMS Pandora, holding the captured prisoners from the HMS Bounty, sinks after having run aground on the outer Great Barrier Reef the previous day.

1813 – Creek “Red Sticks” warriors kill over 500 settlers, including over 250 armed militia, in Fort Mims, Alabama during the Creek War.

1836 – Brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen found the city of Houston in the Republic of Texas.

1862 – Confederate forces under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General William “Bull” Nelson defending Richmond, Kentucky.

1945 – General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi airfield to set up temporary headquarters at Yokohama as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces occupying Japan.

1963 – The Moscow–Washington telephone hotline between the leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union goes into operation.

1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first black Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1984 – Shuttle Discovery is launched on its maiden voyage in mission STS-41-D

1991 – Azerbaijan declares independence as the Soviet Union comes to an end.

1992 – After an 11 day standoff at his farm at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where his wife and one of his children are killed, Randy Weaver surrenders to federal authorities.

1995 –  NATO launches combat operations against Bosnian Serb forces in Operation Deliberate Force.

2003 – Charles Bronson dies of cancer, age 81, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

2021 – The last remaining American troops leave Afghanistan, ending U.S. involvement in the war.

August 29

870 – The city of Melite surrenders to an Aghlabid army following a siege, completing the moslem occupation of Malta.

1526 – Over 160 years before the last battle between Christendom and islam in the area around Mohács, Hungary, the Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman I, defeat and kill Louis II, the last king of Hungary and Bohemia of the Jagiellonian dynasty

1541 – The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom. (n.b. The city of Buda is just across the Danube river from the city of Pest, the now combined city capital of Hungary, Budapest.)

1758 – The Treaty of Easton establishes the first American Indian reservation, at Indian Mills, New Jersey, for the Lenape tribe.

1786 – After the Massachusetts state legislature adjourns without considering the petitions sent to Boston by Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays and other farmers, he leads several thousand men in an armed uprising against high taxation rates.

1779 – American forces under the command of General John Sullivan defeat Tory Militia and Iroquois forces at the Battle of Newtown in Chemung County, New York, during the Revolutionary War.

1825 – Portuguese and Brazilian diplomats sign the Treaty of Rio de Janeiro, which has Portugal recognise Brazilian independence, formally ending the Brazilian war of independence.

1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.

1861 – Federal forces gain control of Pamlico Sound after defeating Confederate forces manning the coastal defense batteries at the Cape Hatteras inlet in North Carolina.

1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire opens, the world’s first mountain climbing rack railway.

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world’s first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen.

1898 – The Goodyear Tire Company is founded.

1916 – The Philippine Autonomy Act is signed into law by President Wilson, creating an all-Filipino legislature and officially declaring the U.S. government’s commitment to grant independence to the Philippines.

1949 – The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, a design stolen from the U.S., known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.

1958 – The United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

1965 – The Gemini V mission splashes down in the Atlantic Ocean after nearly 8 days in orbit, establishing a new record of time spent in space.

1991 – The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.

1997 – Netflix is launched as an internet DVD rental service.

2005 – Hurricane Katrina hits the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing 1,836 people and causing $125 billion in damage.

2022 – Ukraine begins a counteroffensive against Russian forces in the Kherson Oblast on the south central Black Sea coast.

August 28

430 – Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, Saint Augustine, dies in Hippo Regius, Numidia, in what is now Algeria.

1189 – Forces of the 3rd Crusade under the command of Guy of Lusignan begin the Siege of Acre.

1521 – The Ottoman Turks occupy Belgrade, Serbia.

1565 – Pedro Menéndez de Avilés founds St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest continuously occupied European established city in the continental U.S.

1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay.

1830 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s new Tom Thumb steam locomotive races  a horse drawn rail car, and although pulling far away at the beginning, suffers a mechanical failure and ultimately loses.

1845 – The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published.

1861 –Combined Union Army and Naval forces begin an attack that ends with the capture of the Hatteras Inlet Batteries near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

1862 – The Second Battle of Bull Run, also known as the Battle of Second Manassas begins in Prince William County, Virginia.

1867 –Captain William Reynolds of USS Lackawanna formally takes possession of Midway Atoll, which is later built up to be used as a mid-Pacific supply point.

1898 – Caleb Bradham’s beverage “Brad’s Drink” is renamed “Pepsi-Cola”.

1916 – Germany declares war on Romania. Italy declares war on Germany.

1945 – U.S. Army troops land at the Atsugi airfield, Kanagawa Prefecture, to prepare for arrival of the 11th Airborne Division to begin the occupation of Japan. Combatant elements of Naval Task Force 31 enter Tokyo bay in preparation for the arrival of Naval Task Force 38 and the flagship USS Missouri.

1957 – U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond begins a filibuster to prevent the United States Senate from voting on the Civil Rights Act of 1957; stopping 24 hours and 18 minutes later, the longest filibuster ever conducted by a single Senator.

1963 – Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

1988 – 3 jet aircraft of the Italian Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collide over Ramstein Air Base and the wreckage falls into the crowd, killing 75 people and seriously injuring 346 more.

1990 – Iraq declares Kuwait to be its newest province.

2014 – Convicted spy John Anthony Walker completes his life sentence by dying of unknown causes in the Federal Prison at Butner, North Carolina.

August 27

1557 – During the 8 year war between the Kingdom of France and the Spanish Empire over territory in modern Italy, a decisive engagement between a Habsburg Spanish force under Duke Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy defeating a French force under Duke Louis Gonzaga of Nevers, results in Philibert recovering the province of Savoy from French domination.

1776 – Battle of Long Island: In what is now Brooklyn, New York, British forces under General William Howe inflict a defeat on American troops under General George Washington. Acting a a rear guard, the 1st Maryland Regiment repeatedly charges the numerically superior British force during the battle, allowing General Washington and the rest of the American troops to escape.

1803 – Reverend Edward Beecher is born in East Hampton, New York

1828 – Brazil and Argentina recognize the sovereignty of Uruguay in the Treaty of Montevideo

1832 – Chief Black Hawk of the Sauk tribe surrenders to the U.S., ending the Black Hawk War.

1859 – Petroleum is discovered in Titusville, Pennsylvania leading to the world’s first commercially successful oil well.

1881 – A category 2 hurricane makes landfall near Savannah, Georgia, killing an estimated 700 people.

1883 – Four enormous explosions so violent and loud that they are heard 3,000 miles away, nearly destroys the island of Krakatoa, causing an estimated 120,000 deaths due to the effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ash falls, and tsunamis.

1893 – A category 3 hurricane makes landfall near Savannah, Georgia, killing an estimated 2,000 people.

1916 – Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary

1918 – U.S. Army forces skirmish against Mexican Carrancistas near Nogales, the only battle of World War I fought on American soil

1928 – The Kellogg–Briand Pact, titled The General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy is signed by fifteen nations.

1943 – Japanese forces evacuate New Georgia in the Solomon islands.

1975 – Ethiopian Emperor Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie I, dies while imprisoned at the National Palace in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

1979 –Admiral of the Fleet, Louis, Earl Mountbatten of Burma is assassinated by a bomb planted aboard his fishing boat in Mullaghmore, County Sligo, Ireland by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles distant. No invasion by Martians is noted.

2006 – Comair Flight 5191, a Bombardier CRJ-100, crashes on takeoff from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky bound for Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, killing all 47 passengers and 2 of the 3 crew aboard.

2011 – Hurricane Irene , a category 3 storm, strikes the U.S east coast, killing 47 and causing an estimated $15.6 billion in damage.

August 26

1071 – The Seljuq Turks defeat the Byzantine army at Manzikert in modern day Turkey.

1748 – The first Lutheran denomination in North America, the Pennsylvania Ministerium, is founded in Philadelphia.

1768 – Captain James Cook sets sail from England on board HMS Endeavour for his first expedition to the South Pacific Ocean area.

1791 – John Fitch is granted a U.S. patent for the steamboat.

1883 – The volcano on the island of Krakatoa begins to erupt

1920 – The 19th amendment to United States Constitution takes effect, giving women the right to vote.

1942 – At Chortkiv, in Ukraine, the state police and German Schutzpolizei deport 2000 Jews to Bełżec extermination camp, murdering over 500 children and the sick beforehand.

1972 – The Games of the XX Olympiad open in Munich.

1974 – Charles Lindbergh dies on the island of Maui at age 72

1980 – While trying to disarm a bomb planted by John Birges at the Harvey’s Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, the FBI accidentally detonates it, without any deaths or injuries.

2003 – Colgan Air Flight 9446, a Beechcraft 1900 crashes after take off from Barnstable Municipal Airport in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, killing both pilots, the only people on board.

2009 – Kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard is discovered alive in California after being missing for over 18 years. Her captors, Phillip and Nancy Garrido are apprehended.

2015 – 2 U.S. journalists are shot and killed by a disgruntled former coworker while broadcasting a live report in Moneta, Virginia with the murderer committing suicide after a vehicle pursuit by police.

2018 – 3 people are killed and 10 wounded by a losing player at a video game tournament in Jacksonville, Florida with the murderer then committing suicide.

2021 – During the precipitous evacuation of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, an attack on the Kabul airport kills 13 U.S. military personnel and at least 169 Afghan civilians.

August 24

79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and in 2 days buries the cities of Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae,  aaaand Pompeii.

410 – The Visigoths under King Alaric I sack Rome.

1215 – A little over 2 months after being signed by him, King John of England persuades Pope Innocent III to issue a bull declaring Magna Carta invalid.

1682 – William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.

1781 – Militia reinforcements for General George Rogers Clark, under the command of Archibald Lochry, are ambushed and overwhelmed near present day Aurora, Indiana by a Mohawk force under the command of Joseph ‘Thayendanegea’ Brant, which forces Clark to abandon his attempt to attack British held Detroit.

1814 – British troops invade Washington D.C. and set fire to the White House, the Capitol, and many other buildings.

1816 – The first Treaty of St. Louis between the U.S. and the Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi tribes is signed in, *drum roll*  St. Louis, Missouri

1841 – Captain John Ordronaux, reputedly the most successful American privateer of the War of 1812, dies in  Cartagena, Colombia

1857 – The financial Panic of 1857 caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy, begins in the U.S and due to the invention of the telegraph spread rapidly throughout the nation.

1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.

1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop, from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey.

1933 – Southern Railways, Crescent Limited train derails in Washington, D.C., after the Anacostia River bridge it is crossing was washed out by a hurricane hitting the area earlier in the day.

1942 – The Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō is sunk and the U.S. carrier USS Enterprise is heavily damaged in The Battle of the Eastern Solomons.

1945 – British Prime Minister Attlee informs Parliament that Britain is in “a very serious financial position” due to the abrupt ending of Lend-Lease by President Truman

1949 – The treaty creating NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,  goes into effect.

1951 – United Air Lines Flight 615, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Decoto, California, killing all 50 passengers and crew aboard.

1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party as a “Communist-action” organization.

1970 – Vietnam War protesters bomb Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

1981 – Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.

1989 – Colombian drug cartels declare “total war” on the Colombian government.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.

1992 – Hurricane Andrew makes landfall in Homestead, Florida as a Category 5 hurricane

1995 – Microsoft Windows 95 is released to the public in North America.

2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term “planet” such that Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.

2012 – Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, killing 77 people, is sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention.

 

August 23

30 BC –Octavian has Marcus Antonius Antyllus, eldest son of Mark Antony, and Caesarion, the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. and only child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, executed.

79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

1244 – King Frederick II of Jerusalem, ruler for 15 years after his forces of the 6th Crusade successfully retook the city in 1229, surrenders to forces of the besieging moslem Khwarezm Empire

1305 – Sir William Wallace is executed for high treason at Smithfield, London.

1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.

1595 – One of the warlords of ancient Wallachia, Prince Michael the Brave’s forces confront an Ottoman army 8 times its size, led by Koca Sinan Pasha near Călugăreni in modern southeastern Hungary, and achieves a tactical victory, inflicting losses ten times its own before retreating in good order

1775 – King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James’s stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.

1784 – Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin. It is not accepted into the United States, and only lasts for 4 years before dissolving back under control of the state.

1785 – Oliver Hazard Perry is born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

1819 – Oliver Hazard Perry dies aboard his his flagship USS Nonsuch enroute to Tobago, having caught Yellow Fever while sailing the Oronoco river on a diplomatic mission to Simon Bolivar.

1831 – Nat Turner’s slave rebellion is suppressed. Turner flees into hiding.

1914 – Japan declares war on Germany

1927 – Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for murder at Charlestown State Prison in Massachusetts

1929 – Arabs attack the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, killing over 60 Jews and forcing the rest to evacuate the town.

1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Non-aggression Pact.

1942 – German troops begin the attack on Stalingrad.

1954 – The Lockheed C-130 Hercules files for the first time

1966 – NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western “guests”  – actually hostages -to try to prevent the 1st Gulf War.

1991 – The World Wide Web is opened public access.

1994 – Eugene Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

2011 – A  5.8  magnitude earthquake occurs in Virginia. Damage occurs to monuments and structures in Washington, D.C. and the resultant damage is estimated at $200 –$300 million USD. Personnel at Felker Army Airfield at Fort Eustis report actually seeing shock waves traveling through a concrete floor of an aircraft hangar.

 

August 22

1485 – King Richard III Plantagenet and several noblemen are killed in battle at Bosworth Field. Henry VII takes the throne and begins the reign of the House of Tudor

1777 – Hearing rumors of Continental Army reinforcements en route, British forces abandon the Siege of Fort Stanwix in central New York

1851 – The first America’s Cup yacht race is won by the yacht America.

1864 – 12 nations sign the First Geneva Convention, establishing the rules of protection of the victims of armed conflicts.

1902 – Named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, founder of Detroit, Michigan, William Murphy and Lemuel Bowen, investors of the recently dissolved Henry Ford Company, found the Cadillac Automobile Company.
On the same day, Theodore Roosevelt becomes the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile.

1934 – Norman Schwarzkopf  Jr. is born in Tenton., New Jersey.

1941 – German troops begin the Siege of Leningrad.

1963 – X-15 Flight 91, piloted by Joseph A. Walker, reaches the highest altitude of the program, 354,200 feet, 67+ miles

1968 – Pope Paul VI arrives in Bogotá, Colombia, the first visit of a pope to Latin America.

1978 – The District of Columbia Voting Rights Amendment is passed by Congress, but eventually fails ratification with only 16 states voting for it.

1989 – Texas Rangers’ Nolan Ryan strikes out Oakland Athletics’ Rickey Henderson to become the first Major League Baseball pitcher to record 5,000 strikeouts.

1990 – President Bush calls up U.S. military reservists for service due to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

1992 – FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shoots and kills Vicki Weaver during an 11 day siege at her home at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.

2003 – Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

2007 – The Texas Rangers defeat the Baltimore Orioles 30–3, the most runs scored by a team in modern Major League Baseball history.

August 21

1680 – Pueblo Indians capture Santa Fe from the Spanish during the Pueblo Revolt.

1716 – The arrival of Venetian naval reinforcements and the news of their loss at Petrovaradin force the Ottomans to abandon the Siege of Corfu, keeping the Heptanese Islands in the Ionian sea under Venetian rule

1831 – Nat Turner leads black slaves and free blacks in a rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia.

1858 – The first Lincoln–Douglas debate is held in Ottawa, Illinois.

1863 –  Quantrill’s Guerillas raid Lawrence, Kansas

1878 – The American Bar Association is founded in Saratoga Springs, New York

1897 – Ransom Eli Olds founds the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in Lansing, Michigan

1901 – 600 American school teachers on the USAT Thomas, arrive at Manila, in the newly occupied territory of the Philippines, to establish a public school system to train Filipino teachers and students in basic education and the English language

1904 – William ‘Count’ Basie is born in Red Bank, New Jersey.

1911 – Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee.

1918 – The Second Battle of the Somme begins during World War I.

1942 – U.S. Marines, deployed in the defense along the Tenaru river on Guadalcanal, defeat attacking Japanese soldiers of the Ichiki Butai attempting their first ground offensive to retake the airfield on the island.

1945 – Physicist Harry Daghlian is fatally irradiated in a criticality accident during an experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory with the ‘Demon Core’, the plutonium core of what would have been the 3rd bomb dropped on Japan.
President Truman orders an immediate halt to Lend-Lease aid.

1959 – President Eisenhower signs an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state of the union

1968 – James Anderson Jr. posthumously receives the first Medal of Honor to be awarded to an African American U.S. Marine.

1974 – Buford Pusser dies in a vehicle accident near Adamsville, Tennessee.

1991 – The coup attempt by communist hardliners against Mikhail Gorbachev collapses.

1993 – 3 days before its planned arrival and insertion into orbit, NASA loses, and never regains contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.

1995 – Atlantic Southeast Airlines Flight 529, an Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia,  crashes in Carroll County, Georgia, after the left engine fails, killing 4 of the 26 passengers on board, and the Captain of the aircraft, with 4 more passengers later dying of injuries.

2000 – Tiger Woods wins the 82nd PGA Championship, becoming the first golfer to win 3 major tournaments in a calendar year since Ben Hogan in 1953

2017 – A solar eclipse traverses the continental United States.