Today In History (August 6th 2016)
Today In History (August 6th 2016)
On This Day In:
1497: John Cabot returns to England after his first successful journey to the Labrador coast.
1806: The Holy Roman Empire ended with the abdication of Emperor Francis II.
1825: Bolivia declared its independence from Peru.
1926: Gertrude Ederle became the first U.S. woman to swim across the English Channel.
1863: The CSS Alabama captures the USS Sea Bride near the Cape of Good Hope.
1888: Martha Turner is murdered by an unknown assailant, believed to be Jack the Ripper, in London, England.
1890: William Kemmler becomes the first man to be executed by the electric chair.
1904: The Japanese army in Korea surrounds a Russian army retreating to Manchuria.
1914: Ellen Louise Wilson, the first wife of the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, dies of Bright’s disease.
1927: A Massachusetts high court hears the final plea from Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italians convicted of murder.
1942: The Soviet city of Voronezh falls to the German army.
1945: Paul Tibbets, the commander of Enola Gay, drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It was the second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, that induced the Japanese to surrender.
1962: Jamaica becomes independent, after 300 years of British rule.
1965: President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which outlawed the poll taxes and literacy tests that had restricted black voter registration in the South.
1972: Atlanta Braves’ right fielder Hank Aaron hits his 660th and 661st home runs, setting the Major League record for most home runs by a player for a single franchise.
1973: Singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder is in an automobile accident and goes into a four-day coma.
1979: Twelve-year-old Marcus Hooper becomes the youngest person to swim the English Channel.
1981: Argentina’s ex-resident Isabel Peron freed from house arrest.
1988: A melee that became known as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot in New York City leads to NYPD reforms.
1991: Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first-ever website, Info.cern.ch.
1993: Pope John Paul II publishes “Veritatis splendor encyclical,” regarding fundamentals of the Catholic Church’s role in moral teachings.
1997: Microsoft announces it will invest $150 million in troubled rival Apple Computer, Inc.
1997: British prime minister Tony Blair and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams meet—the first time in 76 years that a British leader and an IRA ally meet.
2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger announced his candidacy to replace Gray Davis as governor of California to Jay Leno on the Tonight Show.
2012: New Zealand’s Mount Tongariro erupts for the first time since 1897.
2012: Curiosity, a SUV-size rover, successfully landed on Mars. The rover's research has been planned for the next two years, but since Curiosity's electricity is powered by plutonium, it could be operational and provide insight into Mars for decades to come
Born on August 6
1809: Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet laureate (1850), wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
1881: Alexander Flemming, Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928.
1889: Major General George Kenney, commander of the U.S. Fifth Air Force in New Guinea and the Solomons during World War II.
1911: Lucille Ball, American actress and comedian.
1916: Richard Hofstadter, historian who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
1927: Andy Warhol, American pop artist.
1934: Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, science fiction and fantasy author (Xanth series).
1950: Winston E. Scott, US Navy commander and astronaut.
1970: M. Night Shyamalan, Indian-American screenwriter, director and producer (The Sixth Sense, The Village).
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