August 2
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
[edit] Births
- 1533 - Theodor Zwinger, medical scholar (d. 1588)
- 1672 - Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss scholar (d. 1733)
- 1674 - Philip II, Duke of Orléans, regent of France (d. 1723)
- 1696 - Mahmud I, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1754)
- 1754 - Pierre Charles L'Enfant, architect, city planner (d. 1825)
- 1788 - Leopold Gmelin, chemist (d. 1853)
- 1815 - Adolf Friedrich von Schack, writer (d. 1894)
- 1834 - Frédéric Bartholdi, sculptor (d. 1904)
- 1835 - Elisha Gray, American inventor and founder of Western Electric (d. 1901)
- 1854 - Milan I, King of Serbia (d. 1901)
- 1865 - Irving Babbitt, American literary critic (d. 1933)
- 1868 - King Constantine I of Greece (d. 1923)
- 1871 - John French Sloan, artist (d. 1951)
- 1892 - Jack Warner, Canadian film producer (d. 1978)
- 1897 - Max Weber, Swiss Federal Councilor (d. 1974)
- 1900 - Helen Morgan, actress (d. 1941)
- 1905 - Karl Amadeus Hartmann, composer (d. 1963)
- 1905 - Myrna Loy, actress (d. 1993)
- 1905 - Rudolf Prack, actor (d. 1981)
- 1912 - Vladimir Zerjavic, Croatian statistician (d. 2001)
- 1914 - Beatrice Straight, actress (d. 2001)
- 1915 - Gary Merrill, actor (d. 1990)
- 1924 - James Baldwin, American author (d. 1987)
- 1924 - Carroll O'Connor, actor (d. 2001)
- 1925 - Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentinian dictator
- 1929 - K.M. Peyton, English writer
- 1932 - Peter O'Toole, Irish actor
- 1933 - Lorenzo Milam, author and broadcaster
- 1934 - Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
- 1937 - Garth Hudson, Canadian musician, organist/keyboardist with The Band
- 1939 - Wes Craven, film director
- 1941 - Doris Coley, singer (Shirelles) (d. 2000)
- 1942 - Isabel Allende, author
- 1944 - Jim Capaldi, British drummer, singer, and songwriter (Traffic) (d. 2005)
- 1948 - Dennis Prager, radio talk show host and author
- 1950 - Lance Ito, American judge
- 1953 - Butch Patrick, actor
- 1957 - Mojo Nixon, musician and actor
- 1961 - Linda Fratianne, figure skater
- 1964 - Mary-Louise Parker, actress
- 1969 - Fernando Couto, footballer
- 1970 - Tony Amonte, hockey player
- 1972 - Kevin Smith, actor, director, and screenwriter
- 1974 - Jeremy Castle, singer and songwriter
- 1975 - Xu Huaiwen, German badminton player
- 1977 - Edward Furlong, actor
- 1982 - Hélder Postiga, Portuguese footballer
- 1986 - Alisha Annas, musician
- 1992 - Hallie Kate Eisenberg, actress
[edit] Deaths
[edit] Events
- 338 BC - Rise of Macedon: Philip II of Macedon crushes Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea.
- 216 BC - Punic Wars: In the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal destroys the Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro in what is considered one of the great masterpieces of the tactical art.
- AD 461 - Majorian resigns as Western Roman Emperor; shortly afterwards Libius Severus is declared western Roman emperor by Ricimer
- 1776 - Delegates to the Continental Congress begin to sign the Declaration_of_Independence.
- 1790 - First US Census; records are missing for five states: Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey and Virginia. Destroyed somewhere between that date and 1830.
- 1798 - Second Coalition: End of the Battle of the Nile between French and British navies; France defeated.
- 1869 - Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system 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 of the Bulgarians against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden uprising.
- 1916 - World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.
- 1918 - Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.
- 1934 - Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
- 1943 - PT-109, with future president of the United States Lieutenant John F. Kennedy aboard, sinks.
- 1944 - Beginning of the Treblinka uprising.
- 1945 - World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.
- 1950 - The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was published on Yankee Stadium, New York.
- 1955 - Velcro is patented.
- 1964 - North Vietnam fires on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
- 1967 - The second Blackwall Tunnel opened in Greenwich, London.
- 1970 - Powder Ridge Rock Festival
- 1975 - In New Orleans, Louisiana, the Superdome officially opens with an American football game between the New Orleans Saints and Houston Oilers.
- 1976 - An intruder breaks into Priscilla Davis's Mockingbird Lane mansion in Fort Worth, Texas. Priscilla Davis and a friend are injured while Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr are killed. T. Cullen Davis is tried and found innocent of the crime.
- 1980
- A terrorist bombing at the railway station in Bologna, Italy kills 85 people and wounds more than 200.
- Hard rock band AC/DC release Back in Black, their first album with lead singer Brian Johnson and their best-selling
- 1985 - A Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, killing 137.
- 1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.
- 1994 - Popular Japanese television and movie actor Beat Takeshi is seriously injured in a motorcycle accident.
- 1997 - Australian ski instructor Stuart Diver is rescued as the sole survivor from the Thredbo landslide in New South Wales, Australia, in which 18 lives were lost.
- 2003 - A 65th anniversary edition of The Beano is released.
