Historical Events on 2 Aug

Historical Events on 2 Aug

1610 - Henry Hudson sails into what it is now known as Hudson Bay, thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.
1776 - Delegates to the Continental Congress begin signing the United States Declaration of Independence.
1790 - The first US Census is conducted.
1798 - French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) concludes in a British victory
1869 - Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system (Shinōkōshō) is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).
1870 - Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.
1903 - Fall of the Ottoman Empire: Unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising.
1916 - World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.
1918 - Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.
1932 - The positron (antiparticle of the electron) is discovered by Carl D. Anderson.
1934 - Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
1937 - The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, essentially rendering marijuana and all its by-products illegal.
1939 - Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon.
1943 - Rebellion in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka.
1943 - World War II: PT-109 rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future US President, saves all but two of his crew.
1945 - World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.
1964 - Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident - North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fires on U.S. destroyers, USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy.
1965 - French Riviera fires: At least 7,000 people, mostly holidaymakers, evacuate to a local beach as fires swept the hills between the Provence resorts of Hyeres and St Tropez.
1967 - The second Blackwall Tunnel opens in Greenwich, London.
1968 - The 1968 Casiguran Earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261.
1973 - A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.
1980 - The Pro Football Hall of Fame Game ended with 5:24 left in the game when it was cancelled due to severe lightning. The game ended in a 0-0 tie.
1980 - A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.
1985 - Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.
1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to conflict with coalition forces in the Gulf War.
2004 - The Cheeser Mackey Show is founded.
216 BC - Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae - The Carthaginian army lead by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army under command of consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro.
338 BC - A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean.