Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

In Philadelphia, delegates to the Constitutional Convention begin debating the first complete draft of the proposed Constitution of the United States. The Articles of Confederation, ratified several months before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, provided for a loose confederation of U.S. states, which were sovereign in most of their affairs. On paper, Congress—the […]

The C.S.S. Arkansas, the most feared Confederate ironclad on the Mississippi River, is blown up by her crew after suffering mechanical problems during a battle with the U.S.S. Essex near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Arkansas‘s career lasted just 23 days. In August 1861, the Confederate Congress appropriated $160,000 to construct two ironclad ships for use […]

At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in history is carried out against William Kemmler, who had been convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe. Electrocution as a humane means of execution was first suggested in 1881 by Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist. Southwick had witnessed an elderly […]

On August 6, 1911, Lucille Desiree Ball, one of America’s most famous redheads and beloved comic actresses, is born near Jamestown, New York. At age 15, Ball went to New York City to attend drama school and become an actress. However, she received little encouragement and was rejected multiple times from Broadway chorus lines. After […]

Andy Warhol, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, is born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Warhol was a major pioneer of the pop art movement of the 1960s who later outgrew that role to become a cultural icon, known as a frail and diminutive man with a shock of silver-blond hair. […]

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote. The bill made it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections that were designed to deny the vote to Black people. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of […]

On August 6, 1996, NASA and Stanford researchers announce they have found signs of Martian life in a meteorite discovered 12 years earlier in Allan Hills, Antarctica, causing a worldwide sensation. But some viewed the announcement skeptically, and the Martian life connection was later debunked. A NASA spokesman initially called the evidence of fossilized, one-celled […]