On August 4th...

Feast of St. Dominic

1521 Pope Urban VII was born.

1693 Dom Perignon invented champagne (traditional date).

1735 American printer John Peter Zenger was acquitted of libel.

1790 The Revenue Cutter Service (now the U.S. Coast Guard) was established.

1792 Poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born.

1821 The first edition of Saturday Evening Post was published.

1855 John Bartlett published Familiar Quotations.

1859 Novelist Knut Hamsun was born.

1875 Hans Christian Andersen, writer of fairy tales, died.

1886 American politician Samuel J. Tilden died.

1899 Ezra Taft Benson, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and President of the Mormon Church, was born.

1901 Jazz musician Louis Armstrong was born.

1903 Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto of Venice was elected Pope Pius X.

1904 American diplomat Ralph Bunche was born.

1909 Track star Glenn Cunningham was born.

1916 The United States agreed to purchase the Virgin Islands from Denmark.

1922 Young Turks leader Enver Pasha was killed.

1943 James Wright accidentally invented Silly Putty.

1944 Actor Richard Belzer was born.

1949 Football player John Riggins was born.

1955 Actor Billy Bob Thornton was born.

1956 Elvis Presley released "Hound Dog."

1961 U.S. President Barack Obama was born.

1962 Baseball player Roger Clemens was born.

1964 The bodies of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James E. Chaney were discovered in an earthen Mississippi dam.

1971 Auto racer Jeff Gordon was born.

1977 The Department of Energy was created by act of Congress.

1981 Actor Melvyn Douglas died.

1999 Actor Victor Mature died.

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This page was last updated on August 30, 2018.