1492 - Christopher Columbus sets sail from Palos de la Frontera, Spain.
1492 - The Jews of Spain are expelled by the Catholic Monarchs.
1527 - First known letter was sent from North America by John Rut while at St. John's, Newfoundland.
1635 - The third of the Tokugawa shoguns, Iemitsu, establishes the system of alternate attendance (sankin kotai) by which the feudal daimyÅ are required to spend one year at Edo Castle in Tokyo and one year back home at their feudal manor, while their families
1645 - Thirty Years' War: Second Battle of Nördlingen (Battle of Allerheim) - A French army under the command of Louis de Bourbon, Duc d'Enghien and Marshal Henri, Vicomte de Turenne attacks and defeats an Imperial army, led by Field Marshal Franz Baron (Freihe
1678 - Robert LaSalle builds the Le Griffon, the first known ship built in America.
1783 - Mount Asama erupts in Japan, killing 35,000 people.
1852 - First Boat Race between Yale and Harvard, the first American intercollegiate athletic event. Harvard won.
1860 - The Second Maori War begins in New Zealand.
1900 - Firestone Tire & Rubber Company founded.
1913 - Wheatland Hop Riot
1914 - World War I: Germany declares war against France.
1916 - World War I: Battle of Romani - Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeat an attacking Ottoman army, under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal, and beginning the Ottoman retreat from the Sin
1923 - The deceased Warren G. Harding was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge as the 30th President of the United States.
1934 - Adolf Hitler becomes the supreme leader of Germany by joining the offices of President and Chancellor into Führer.
1936 - Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash by defeating Ralph Metcalfe at Berlin Olympics.
1940 - World War II: Italy invades British Somaliland.
1948 - Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist and a spy for the Soviet Union.
1949 - National Basketball Association is founded in the United States.
1958 - The Billboard Hot 100 is founded
1958 - The nuclear submarine USS Nautilus travels beneath the Arctic ice cap.
1960 - Niger gains independence from France.
1972 - U.S. Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1975 - A privately chartered Boeing 707 impacts the mountainside near Agadir, Morocco killing 188.
1977 - United States Senate Hearing on MKULTRA.
1981 - Senegalese opposition parties, under the leadership of Mamadou Dia, launch the Antiimperialist Action Front-Suxxali Reew Mi.
1996 - General William F. Garrison accepted responsibility for the outcome of the 1993 raid in Somalia, and he retired from military service.
1997 - Oued El-Had and Mezouara massacre in Algeria; 40-76 villagers killed.
2001 - The Real IRA detonate a car bomb in Ealing, London, U.K injuring seven people. (See 3 August 2001 Ealing bombing).
2004 - The pedestal of the Statue of Liberty reopens after being closed since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
2005 - President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya of Mauritania is overthrown in a military coup while attending the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia.
435 - Deposed Patriarch of Constantinople Nestorius, considered the originator of Nestorianism, was exiled by Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II to a monastery in Egypt.
8 - Roman Empire general Tiberius defeats Dalmatians on the river Bathinus.
881 - Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu, where Louis III of France defeated the Vikings, an event celebrated in the poem Ludwigslied
Monday, August 2, 2010
Historical Events on 3 Aug
Sunday, August 1, 2010
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 (ShinÅkÅshÅ) 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.