On August 2nd...

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1100 King William II of England was killed by an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrell while hunting in the New Forest.

1552 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V accepted the Lutheran religion.

1695 Daniel Quare received a British patent for a portable barometer.

1754 Pierre Charles L'Enfant, principal architect of Washington, D.C., was born.

1776 The Declaration of Independence was formally signed.

1790 The first U.S. census began.

1788 Painter Thomas Gainsborough died.

1791 Samuel Briggs and his son patented a nail-making machine.

1798 The British Navy, under Admiral Horatio Nelson, beat the French Navy at the Battle of Nile.

1799 Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier, co-inventor of the first aircraft to carry humans into the sky, died.

1802 Napoleon Bonaparte was declared "Consul for Life."

1819 The first parachute jump in the United States was made.

1820 Physicist John Tyndall was born.

1823 French military strategist and politician L.M.N. Carnot died.

1830 King Charles X of France abdicated in favor of his grandson the Duc de Bordeaux.

1832 The Illinois militia defeated the Sauk & Fox in the Battle of Bad Axe (Wisconsin).

1834 Sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi was born.

1858 The first official mailboxes were installed in Boston, Massachusetts, and New York City, New York.
1858 The government of India was transferred from the East India Company to the Crown.

1859 Education reformer Horace Mann died.

1865 Lewis Carroll published "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

1868 King Constantine of Greece was born.

1870 Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opened in London, England.

1875 The world's first roller skating rink opened in London, England.

1880 The British Parliament officially adopted Greenwich Mean Time.

1887 Rowell Hodge patented barbed wire.

1892 Charles A. Wheeler patented a prototype of the escalator.

1894 The Dutch Society for Women Suffrage got a royal charter.

1904 Actress Myrna Loy was born.

1909 The first U.S. Lincoln Penny was issued.
1909 The U.S. War Department purchased its first military plane from the Wright Brothers, thus founding the Army Air Corps.

1910 American philosopher William James died.

1920 Marcus Garvey presented his "Back To Africa" program in New York City, New York.

1921 A Chicago, Illinois, jury returned a not guilty verdict against the "Black Sox."
1921 Operatic tenor Enrico Caruso died.

1922 Inventor Alexander Graham Bell died.

1923 Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States, died.

1924 Joe Hauser set a record of 14 total bases in a game.
1924 Novelist James Baldwin was born.
1924 Actor Carroll O'Connor was born.

1932 Carl David Anderson discovered and photographed a positron (positive electron), the first known antiparticle.
1932 Lamar Hunt, founder of the American Football League, was born.
1932 Actor Peter O'Toole was born.

1934 Adolf Hitler became commander-in-chief of the German armed forces.
1934 German President Paul von Hindenburg died.

1936 Louis Blériot, the first man to fly an airplane across the English Channel, died.

1937 The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was passed, making marijuana and all its by-products illegal in the United States.

1939 Film director Wes Craven was born.

1943 A PT boat commanded by John Fitzgerald Kennedy was cut in half by a Japanese warship.

1950 Judge Lance Ito was born.

1953 Actor Butch Patrick was born.

1959 Comedian Victoria Jackson was born.

1961 The Beatles played their first gig as house band of Liverpool's Cavern Club.
1961 Gherman Titov became the second human to orbit the Earth.

1962 NASCAR chairman Brian France was born.

1964 North Vietnam fired on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin.

1976 Film director Fritz Lang died.

1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait.

1994 The U.S. Congress began hearings concerning the White Water Scandal.

1997 Author William Seward Burroughs died.

1998 Puppeteer Shari Lewis died.

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This page was last updated on August 30, 2018.