On August 6th...

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Feast of the Transfiguration

1458 Pope Callistus III died.

1538 Bogotá, Colombia, was founded by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada.

1623 Maffeo Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII.

1637 Dramatist and poet Ben Jonson died.

1775 Irish statesman Daniel O'Connell was born.

1806 The Holy Roman Empire came to an end.

1809 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, English poet, was born.

1819 Norwich University was founded in Vermont as the first private military school in the United States.

1825 Bolivia declared its independence from Peru.

1845 The Russian Geographical Society was founded in Saint Petersburg.

1856 The Great Bell was cast for the Great Clock of Westminster (Big Ben).

1861 The British annexed Lagos, Nigeria.

1867 A group of Cheyenne braves became the first Indians ever to engineer a train wreck when they derailed a Union Pacific train near Plum Creek, Nebraska.

1881 Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, was born.

1890 Cy Young pitched and won his first major league baseball game.
1890 At Auburn Prison, New York murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be executed by electric chair.

1892 Actor Hoot Gibson was born.

1896 France annexed Madagascar.

1909 Alice Ramsey and three friends became the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip.

1910 Film director Charles Crichton was born.

1911 Actress Lucille Ball was born.

1914 Denis Patrick Dowd Jr. enlisted in the French Foreign Legion, becoming the first American to fight in World War I.

1917 Actor Robert Mitchum was born.

1918 The Second Battle of the Marne ended.

1925 Actress Barbara Bates was born.

1926 Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel.

1928 Artist Andy Warhol was born.

1934 U.S. troops left Haiti after a 19-year occupation.
1934 Author Piers Anthony was born.

1940 Estonia was annexed by the Soviet Union.

1945 An American bomber dropped the world's first atomic bomb to be used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan.

1956 The DuMont Television Network made its final broadcast.
1956 The Beech Model 95 Travel Air made its first flight, with pilot S.C. Tuttle.

1958 Musician Randy DeBarge was born.

1962 Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom.

1970 Film director M. Night Shyamalan was born.

1973 Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar, two-time President of Cuba, died.

1976 Actress Soleil Moon Frye was born.

1978 Pope Paul VI died.

1979 12-year-old Marcus Hooper became the youngest person to swim the English Channel.

1985 The Major League Baseball Players Association went on strike (for one day).

1991 Television journalist Harry Reasoner died.

2004 Musician Rick James died.

2009 Film director John Hughes died.

2012 Composer Marvin Hamlisch died.

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This page was last updated on August 06, 2018.