Michael Phelps wins eighth Olympic medal in Athens

On August 21, 1754, Banastre Tarleton is born as the fourth child of John Tarleton, the former lord mayor of Liverpool, and a money lender, merchant and slave trader. After completing his education at Oxford, Tarleton became the most feared officer in the British army during the War for American Independence, memorialized in portraits by […]

Believing himself chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery, Nat Turner launches the largest-ever insurrection by enslaved people in the United States. Turner, an enslaved man and educated minister, planned to capture Virginia’s Southampton county armory and then march 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where his rebels would be able to elude their […]

The vicious guerrilla war in Missouri spills over into Kansas and precipitates one of the most appalling acts of violence during the war when Southern partisans raid the abolitionist town of Lawrence, Kansas and murder 150 men. The Civil War took a very different form in Kansas and Missouri than it did throughout the rest […]

Daphne Milne, wife of writer A.A. Milne, gives birth to a son, who the couple name Christopher Robin Milne on August 21, 1920. Christopher Robin will be immortalized in A.A. Milne’s books Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner. A.A. Milne was born in London in 1882, the youngest of three sons. His parents were […]

On August 22, 1950, officials of the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) accept Althea Gibson into their annual championship at Forest Hills, New York, making her the first African American player to compete in a U.S. national tennis competition.

Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Kenyan independence movement, is released by British colonial authorities after nearly nine years of imprisonment and detention. Two years later, Kenya achieved independence and Kenyatta became prime minister. Once portrayed as a menacing symbol of African nationalism, he brought stability to the country and defended Western interests during his 15 […]

The Equal Educational Opportunities Act is enacted on August 21, 1974. The new law addressed civil rights issues in education, barring states from discriminating against students based on gender, race, color or nationality and requiring public schools to provide for students who do not speak English. In many ways, the EEOA was an extension of the Civil Rights […]

An eruption of lethal gas from Lake Nyos in Cameroon kills nearly 2,000 people and wipes out four villages on August 21, 1986. Carbon dioxide, though ubiquitous in Earth’s atmosphere, can be deadly in large quantities, as was evident in this disaster. Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun are both crater lakes about a mile square […]