08 August History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 1306    -    King Wenceslas of Poland is murdered.
  • 1570    -    Charles IX of France signs the Treaty of St. Germain, ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.
  • 1636    -    The invading armies of Spain, Austria and Bavaria are stopped at the village of St.-Jean-de-Losne, only 50 miles from France.
  • 1648    -    Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, is thrown into prison, then assassinated.
  • 1786    -    Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michael-Gabriel Baccard become the first men to climb Mont Blanc in France.
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  • 1844    -    Brigham Young is chosen to head the Mormon Church, succeeding Joseph Smith.
  • 1863    -    Confederate President Jefferson Davis refuses General Robert E. Lee's resignation.
  • 1876    -    Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph.
  • 1899    -    The first household refrigerating machine is patented.
  • 1925    -    The first national congress of the Ku Klux Klan opens.
  • 1937    -    The Japanese Army occupies Beijing.
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  • 1940    -    The German Luftwaffe attacks Great Britain for the first time, begining the Battle of Britain.
  • 1942    -    U.S. Marines capture the Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal.
  • 1944    -    U.S. forces complete the capture of the Marianas Islands.
  • 1945    -    The Soviet Union declares war on Japan.
  • 1950    -    U.S. troops repel the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days.
  • 1963    -    The "Great Train Robbery"
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  • 1974    -    President Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal.

  • 08 August Birthdays

  • 1865    -    Matthew A. Henson, explorer with Robert Peary who first reached the North Pole (Though some recent scholarship disputes this claim).
  • 1883    -    Emilano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary leader.
  • 1896    -    Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling.
  • 1901    -    Ernest Orlando Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for physics.
  • 1908    -    Arthur J. Goldburg, labor lawyer instrumental in the merger of the Amercian Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.
  • 1937    -    Dustin Hoffman, American actor.