Also on this day
Lead Story
1846
After a decade of debate about how best to spend a bequest left to America from an obscure English scientist, President James K. Polk signs the Smithsonian Institution Act into law.
In 1829, James Smithson died in Italy, leaving behind a will with a peculiar footnote. In the event that his...
American Revolution
1776
On this day in 1776, news reaches London that the Americans had drafted the Declaration of Independence.
Until the Declaration of Independence formally transformed the 13 British colonies into states, both Americans and the British saw the conflict centered in Massachusetts as a local uprising within the British empire. To King...
Automotive
1978
On this day in 1978, three teenage girls die after their 1973 Ford Pinto is rammed from behind by a van and bursts into flames on an Indiana highway. The fatal crash was one of a series of Pinto accidents that caused a national scandal during the 1970s.
The small...
Civil War
1861
The struggle for Missouri erupts with the Battle of Wilson’s Creek, where a motley band of raw Confederates defeat a Union force in the southwestern section of the state.
Union General Nathaniel Lyon, who commanded a force of 6,400 soldiers near Springfield, Missouri, was up against two Rebel forces commanded by...
Cold War
1949
President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Bill, which establishes the Department of Defense. As the Cold War heated up, the Department of Defense became the cornerstone of America’s military effort to contain the expansion of communism. In 1947, the National Security Act established the Cabinet-level position of secretary...
Crime
1981
The severed head of six-year-old Adam Walsh, who disappeared from a shopping mall two weeks earlier, is found in a canal in Vera Beach, Florida. Two years later, career criminal Ottis Ellwood Toole, then an inmate at a Raiford, Florida, prison, confessed to Adam’s abduction and murder. However, investigators were...
Disaster
1993
A rare collision of three ships in Tampa Bay, Florida, results in a spill of 336,000 gallons of fuel oil on this day in 1993. Fortunately, a combination of favorable weather conditions and preparedness kept the damage to a minimum.
It was about 6 a.m. when two fuel barges heading into...
General Interest
1793
After more than two centuries as a royal palace, the Louvre is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government. Today, the Louvre’s collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture.
The Louvre...
1821
Missouri enters the Union as the 24th state–and the first located entirely west of the Mississippi River.
Named for one of the Native American groups that once lived in the territory, Missouri became a U.S. possession as part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. In 1817, Missouri Territory applied for statehood,...
1977
On August 10, 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz is arrested and charged with being the “Son of Sam,” the serial killer who terrorized New York City for more than a year, killing six young people and wounding seven others with a .44-caliber revolver. Because Berkowitz generally targeted attractive young...
2003
On this day in 2003, the United Kingdom records its first-ever temperature over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Throughout the month, an intense heat wave scorched the European continent, claiming more than 35,000 lives. August 2003 was the hottest August ever recorded in the northern hemisphere and broke all previous...
Hollywood
1984
On this day in 1984, the action thriller Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, opens in theaters as the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system, had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that...
Literary
1912
On this day, Virginia Stephen, 30, marries Leonard Woolf, 31, at a registry office in London.
Virginia Woolf, born in 1882, grew up surrounded by intellectuals. Her father was a writer and philosopher, and her mother was a British aristocrat. In 1902, Virginia’s father died, and Virginia took a house with...
Music
1937
Versatile, inexpensive and relatively easy to play, the acoustic guitar was a staple of American rural music in the early 20th century, particularly black rural music such as the blues. But a significant physical limitation made it a poor fit in ensembles made up of brass, woodwind and orchestral string...
Old West
1877
Amanda McFarland, a dedicated Presbyterian missionary, becomes the first white woman to settle at Fort Wrangell, Alaska.
The wife of a Presbyterian minister from Illinois, McFarland joined her husband in opening a mission to the Indians of New Mexico in 1867. Despite suffering from chronic health problems, McFarland was a dedicated...
Presidential
1874
Future President Herbert Hoover is born on this day in 1874 in West Branch, Iowa. After being tragically orphaned at the age of nine, Hoover lived with his uncle, attended Quaker schools and then graduated from Stanford University with a degree in engineering.
Hoover and his wife Lou went to China...
Sports
1981
On this day in 1981, Pete Rose of the Philadelphia Phillies gets the 3,631st hit of his baseball career, breaking Stan Musial’s record for most hits by a National Leaguer. The record-breaking hit came in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, the team with whom Musial had spent his...
Vietnam War
1966
Troops of the First Battalion, Fifth Marines fight a bitter battle against NVA forces in Quang Tin province, 60 miles west of Tam Ky. In Thailand, a U.S.-built air base is opened in Sattahib. Ultimately, there would be five major airbases and over 49,000 U.S. military personnel in...
1972
North Vietnamese forces block Routes 1, 4, and 13, all major South Vietnamese ground supply routes to Saigon. For the next two months, Communist forces repeatedly interdicted these and other key supply routes critical to Saigon’s survival in an attempt to strangle the city. This was all part...
World War I
1914
After eluding their British pursuers—not once but several times—in a dramatic chase through the Mediterranean Sea, the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau safely anchor off the Dardanelles—the waterway connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara and the only passage from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea—at five o’clock...
World War II
1945
On this day in 1945, just a day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan submits its acquiescence to the Potsdam Conference terms of unconditional surrender, as President Harry S. Truman orders a halt to atomic bombing.
Emperor Hirohito, having remained aloof from the daily decisions of prosecuting the war, rubber-stamping the...
