THIS WEEK IN HISTORY

July 29

 

1948: After a hiatus of 12 years caused by World War II, the first Summer Olympics to be held since the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, opened in London.

1958: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
1959: Hawaii held its first election for U.S. Congress as a state.
1981: Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer.
2018: Demonstrations calling for safer road by students begin in Dhaka, Bangladesh
2019: Record for longest run at the top of US singles chart made by country rap single “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X remixed with Billy Ray Cyrus, No. 1 for 17 weeks.
July 30

 

762: The city of Baghdad (in modern-day Iraq) was founded.

1502: Christopher Columbus landed at Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras during his fourth voyage.

1619: The first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convened in Jamestown, Va.

1676: Nathaniel Bacon issued the “Declaration of the People of Virginia,” beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Gov. William Berkeley.

1729: Baltimore, Maryland, was founded.

1733: The first Masonic Grand Lodge in the future United States was opened in Massachusetts.

1932: Walt Disney’s cartoon short Flowers and Trees premiered. It was the first cartoon short to use Technicolor and the first Academy Award-winning cartoon short.

1955: The TV show “Mister Rogers Neighborhood” premiered in Pittsburgh.

1956: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a joint resolution of Congress, authorizing In God We Trust as the U.S. national motto.

1965: President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law.

1974: In the final days of the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon released subpoenaed White House recordings after being ordered to do so by the U.S. Supreme Court.

2002: Canada recalled all of its troops from Afghanistan.

2003: The last ‘old style’ Volkswagen Beetle rolled off the assembly line in Mexico.
2017: British Senior Open Men’s Golf, Royal Porthcawl: Bernhard Langer of Germany wins his 3rd Open Senior title by 3 shots from Corey Pavin.
2018: Official Malaysian investigation into the disappearance of Flight MH370 is unable to determine what happened.

 

July 31

 

781: Mount Fuji erupted for the first time in recorded history.

1790: The first U.S. patent was issued to inventor Samuel Hopkins for a potash process.

1875: Andrew Johnson, 17th U.S. president (1865-1869), died in Carter Station, Tenn., at age 66. (He is the only president to take the oath of office while drunk.)

1931: New York, New York experimental television station W2XAB (now known as WCBS) began broadcasting.

1961: At Fenway Park in Boston, Mass., the first All-Star Game tie in Major League Baseball history occurred when the game was stopped in the ninth inning because of rain.

1964: Ranger 7 sent back the first close-up photographs of the moon, with images 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from earth-bound telescopes.

1970: The British Royal Navy ceased rationing rum to its sailors.

1971: Apollo 15 astronauts James Irwin and David Scott became the first humans to ride in a lunar rover.

2012: Michael Phelps broke the record set in 1964 by Larisa Latynina for the greatest number of medals won at the Olympics.
2018: Aeroméxico flight 2431 crash lands in Durango, Mexico, all 103 on board survive.
2019: Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian army to help put out huge wildfires in Siberia covering three million hectares (7.4 million acres) after 700,000 people sign petition.

 

August 1

 

1498: Christopher Columbus became the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.
1770: William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) was born in Caroline County, Va. (He died Sept. 1, 1838.)
1774: British scientist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
1834: The British Empire abolished slavery.
1874: Clouds of locusts blackened skies over the Great Plains, from Dakota Territory to Texas and from the Rocky Mountains to the Mississippi River.
1876: Colorado was admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
1932: The first George Washington quarter went into circulation to commemorate the bicentennial of the first president’s birth.
1980: Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected president of Iceland and became the world’s first democratically elected female head of state.
1981: The rock music video channel MTV debuted with the video entitled, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.
2001: Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore had a Ten Commandments monument installed in the judiciary building, leading to a lawsuit to have it removed, and to his own removal from office.
2007: The I-35W Mississippi River bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minn., collapsed during the evening rush hour.
2014: Indiana Pacers NBA super-star Paul George suffers a gruesome compound fracture of his lower right leg in a Team USA scrimmage.
2018: Swedish crown jewels stolen in heist from Strängnäs Cathedral, Stockholm.

August 2

1610: Henry Hudson sailed into what is now Hudson Bay, thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.
1790: The first U.S. Census was conducted.
1870: The world’s first underground tube railway opened in London, England.
1873: San Francisco’s famous cable car system began operating.
1886: The federal government passed the first laws regulating the manufacture of oleomargarine.
1909: The Lincoln penny was issued by the U.S. Mint to commemorate the 100th year since President Abraham Lincoln’s birth. The coin contained 95 percent copper with other minerals. As of 1982 the coin is copper-plated zinc (97½ percent zinc).
1923: 29th U.S. President Warren Gamaliel Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while recovering from ptomaine poisoning contracted in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was 57.
1932: The positron (antiparticle of the electron) was discovered by Carl D. Anderson at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

1934: German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover of Germany’s government.
1937: The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 rendered marijuana and all its by-products illegal in the USA.
1939: Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.
1943: PT-109, commanded by Lt. John F. Kennedy, sank after being rammed by a Japanese destroyer off the Solomon Islands. The future president was credited with saving all but two members of the crew and was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism, and a Purple Heart for injuries he suffered.
1947: A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashed into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile. (The wreckage was not found for over 50 years.)
1967: Violinist David Margetts of the UCLA String Quartet placed a violin case containing an $800,000 Stradivarius violin— which he had borrowed from UCLA—atop his car after a rehearsal in Hollywood, and drove off. The case fell off alongside the freeway and was found by a woman passing by, who kept it for 27 years not knowing its value. (The violin was discovered in her estate in 1994 and returned to UCLA.)
1990: Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to the Persian Gulf War.
2018: Oldest library in Germany confirmed unearthed in Cologne dating to 2AD, possibly held 20,000 scolls.
2019: Singer songwriter Ed Sheeran‘s Divide tour becomes the most attended and highest grossing tour of all time overtaking U2 after 893 days on the road.

 

August 3

 

1492: Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.
1527: The first known letter from North America was sent by John Rut while at St. John’s, Newfoundland.
1678: Robert LaSalle built the Le Griffon, the first known ship built on the Great Lakes.
1900: The Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was founded.
1934: Adolf Hitler became the supreme leader of Germany by joining the offices of president and chancellor into Führer.
1936: Jesse Owens won the 100-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics.
1946: Santa Claus Land, the world’s first theme amusement park, opened in Santa Claus, Indiana.

1958: The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus traveled beneath the Arctic ice cap.
1977: Tandy Corporation announced the TRS-80, one of the world’s first mass-produced personal computers.
2004: The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopened after being closed since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
2012: American Missy Franklin swims a world record 2:04.06 to win the 200m backstroke gold medal at the London Olympics.
2015: The Athens Stock Exchange re-opens after a month and falls by 22%.

 

August 4

 

1532: The Duchy of Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France.
1790: A newly passed tariff act created the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the U.S. Coast Guard).
1821: The Saturday Evening Post was published for the first time as a weekly newspaper. (The magazine went out of business in 1969.)
1875: Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Ugly Duckling) died in Copenhagen at age 70.
1892: The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden were found murdered in their home in Fall River, Mass.
1902: The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opened.
1924: Diplomatic relations were established between Mexico and the Soviet Union.
1944: A tip from a Dutch informer led the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they found and arrested Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.
1958: The Billboard Hot 100 was published for the first time.
1977: President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating the U.S. Department of Energy.
1987: As part of President Ronald Reagan’s  deregulation of government, the Federal Communications Commission rescinded the Fairness Doctrine that required radio and television stations to present controversial issues “fairly,” paving the way for the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
2015: Muppets Missy Piggy and Kermit the Frog announce the end to their relationship on Twitter.
2017: Aldi supermarket withdraws all eggs from sale after chemical fipronil found in eggs from The Netherlands.