August 1

46 BC – While in the process of creating the calendar system named after him, Julius Caesar adds 2 days to the 8th month Sextilis 

30 BC – After his army deserts him, and Octavian brings Alexandria under the control of Rome, Mark Antony commits suicide rather than be taken prisoner.

8 BC – The Roman Senate renames the month Sextilis in honor of Emperor Augustus.

902 – Taormina, the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily, is captured by the Aghlabid army, concluding the moslem conquest of Sicily.

1498 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.

1571 – Famagusta, the last Venetian stronghold in Cyprus, surrenders to the Ottoman army, concluding the moslem conquest of Cyprus.

1620 – The ship Speedwell leaves Delfshaven, England for America with the pilgrims aboard

1664 – Ottoman moslem forces are defeated at the Cistercian monastery of St. Gotthard in Hungary by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli.

1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley confirms the prior discovery of oxygen, termed Sauerstoff by German chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.

1779 – Francis Scott Key is born in Carroll County Maryland.

1800 – The Acts of Union 1800 are passed which merge the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1801 – During the First Barbary War, the American USS Enterprise captures the Tripolitan Tripoli in action off the coast of Libya.

1819 – Herman Melville is born in New York City.

1876 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.

1893 – Henry Perky patents shredded wheat.

1903 – Martha ‘Calamity Jane’ Cannary dies of pneumonia at the Calloway Hotel in Terry, South Dakota.

1911 – Harriet Quimby takes her pilot’s test and becomes the first U.S. woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator’s certificate.

1914 – The German Empire declares war on the Russian Empire at the opening of World War I.

1936 – The Olympics opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.

1944 – The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.

1950 –  President Truman signs the Guam Organic Act making the island an  unincorporated territory of the U.S.

1957 – The United States and Canada form the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

1961 – Defense Secretary Robert McNamara orders the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the military’s version of the civilian Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

1965 – Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune is published.

1966 – Shooting from the tower of the University of Texas at Austin, Charles Whitman kills 15 people outright and wounds 31 more, before being killed by the police.

1981 – MTV begins broadcasting in the U.S.

1993 – The Great Mississippi and Missouri Rivers Flood of 1993 crests at St. Louis at 49.6 feet, 20 feet above flood stage.

2007 – The I-35W Mississippi River bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses during the evening rush hour, killing 13 people and injuring 145 more.

2008 – On mountain K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, 11 mountaineers from international expeditions die in an ice avalanche occurring at an area known as “the Bottleneck”. To date, the worst single accident in mountaineering.