The History Shack

  OTD August 31st is the two hundredth-forty-second day of the year, and there are 123 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event 1056 – After a sudden illness a few days previously, Byzantine Empress Theodora dies childless, thus ending the Macedonian dynasty. 1422 – King Henry V of England dies of dysentery while in France. His son, Henry VI, became King of England at nine months. 1535—Pope Paul III excommunicated English King Henry VIII from the church. He drew up a papal bull of ex-communication, which began Eius quo immobilize. 1798 – Irish Rebellion: Irish rebels, with French assistance, establish the short-lived Republic of Connacht. 1864 – During the American Civil War, Union forces led by General William T. Sherman launched an assault on Atlanta. 1895 – German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his navigable balloon. 1920 – Polish-Soviet War: A decisive Polish victory in the Battle of Komarów. 1943 – USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship ...

  OTD August 30th is the two hundredth-forty-second day of the year, and there are 123 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event 70 – Titus ends the siege of Jerusalem after destroying Herod's Temple. 1574 – Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master. 1791 – HMS Pandora sinks after running aground on the outer Great Barrier Reef the previous day. 1813 – First Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance. 1896 – Philippine Revolution: After the Spanish victory in the Battle of San Juan del Monte, eight provinces in the Philippines were declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Arenas. 1916 – Ernest Shackleton completes the rescue of all of his men stranded on Elephant Island in Antarctica. 1945 – General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, lands at Atsugi Air Force Base. 1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African-American Justice ...

  OTD August 29th is the two hundredth-forty-first day of the year, and there are 124 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event  708 – Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708). 1588 – Toyotomi Hideyoshi issues a nationwide sword hunting ordinance, disarming the peasantry to separate the samurai and commoner classes, prevent peasant uprisings, and further centralize his power. 1756 – Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War in Europe. 1786 – Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, began in response to high debt and tax burdens. 1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction. 1869 – The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first mountain-climbing rack railway. 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen. 1898 – The Goodyear Tire Company was founded in Akron,...

  OTD August 28th is the two hundredth-fortieth day of the year, and there are 125 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event 1565 – Pedro Menéndez de Avilés sights land near St. Augustine, Florida, and finds the oldest continuously occupied European-established city in the continental United States. 1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Delaware Bay. 1830 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's new Tom Thumb steam locomotive races a horse-drawn car, presaging steam's role in U.S. railroads. 1845 – The first issue of Scientific American magazine is published. 1859 – The Carrington event is the strongest geomagnetic storm to strike the Earth. Electrical telegraph service is widely disrupted. 1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: The British captured Cetshwayo, the last king of the Zulus. 1898 – Caleb Bradham's beverage "Brad's Drink" is renamed "Pepsi-Cola." 1914 – World War I: The Royal Navy defeats the German fleet in the Battle of Heligoland Bigh...

  The Liberation of Paris in August 1944 was a decisive moment in World War II, bringing an end to four years of Nazi occupation. The efforts of both the French Resistance and the advancing Allied forces paved the road to Paris. The Resistance, a courageous network of underground fighters, had long waged a covert war against the occupiers, gathering intelligence, sabotaging German operations, and maintaining the hope of freedom. Paris fell to Nazi Germany in June 1940 after a rapid and demoralizing campaign that overwhelmed French forces. Under the occupation, Parisians endured years of repression, curfews, shortages, and the terror of the Gestapo. The city became a symbol of both the grandeur of France and the humiliation of its defeat. Nazi forces controlled every aspect of Parisian life, with collaborators and informants sowing mistrust among the populace. In response, various resistance groups emerged, uniting over time into a loosely coordinated network. Among these were the C...

   OTD August 25th is the two hundredth-thirty-seventh day of the year, and there are 129 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event  1537 – The Honorable Artillery Company, the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army and the second most senior, is formed. 1543 – António Mota and a few companions become the first Europeans to visit Japan. 1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers. 1814 – War of 1812: On the second day of the Burning of Washington, British troops torched the Library of Congress, United States Treasury, Department of War, and other public buildings. 1835 – The first Great Moon Hoax article is published in The New York Sun, announcing the discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. 1894 – Kitasato Shibasaburō discovers the infectious agent of the bubonic plague and publishes his findings in The Lancet. 1914—World War I: The German Army deliberately destroyed the library of the Catholic University of L...

   OTD August 24th is the two hundredth-thirty-sixth day of the year, and there are 130 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event 410 – The Visigoths, under King Alaric I, begin to pillage Rome. 1349 – Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague. 1662 – The 1662 Book of Common Prayer is legally enforced as the liturgy of the Church of England, precipitating the Great Ejection of Dissenter ministers from their benefices. 1814 – British troops invade Washington, D.C., and during the Burning of Washington, the White House, the Capitol, and many other buildings are set ablaze. 1857 – The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history. 1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal. 1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey). 1944 – World War II: Allied troops begin ...

   OTD August 23rd is the two hundredth-thirty-fifth day of the year, and there are 131 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event  79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. 476 – Odoacer, chieftain of the Germanic tribes (Herulic - Scirian foederati), is proclaimed rex Italiae ("King of Italy") by his troops. 1305 – Sir William Wallace is executed for high treason at Smithfield, London. 1600—Battle of Gifu Castle: The eastern forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu defeat the western Japanese clans loyal to Toyotomi Hideyori, destroying Gifu Castle and serving as a prelude to the Battle of Sekigahara. 1775 – American Revolutionary War: King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James's, stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion. 1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration...

   OTD August 22nd is the two hundredth-thirty-fourth day of the year, and there are 132 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event  1559 – Spanish archbishop Bartolomé Carranza is arrested for heresy. 1642 – Charles I raises his standard in Nottingham, which marks the beginning of the English Civil War. 1654 – Jacob Barsimson arrives in New Amsterdam. He is the first known Jewish immigrant to America. 1780 – James Cook's ship, HMS Resolution, returns to England (Cook was killed in Hawaii during the voyage). 1851 – The first America's Cup is won by the yacht America. 1902 – The Cadillac Motor Company is founded. 1902 – Theodore Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to appear in an automobile publicly. 1949 – The Queen Charlotte earthquake is Canada's strongest since the 1700 Cascadia earthquake. 1953 – The penal colony on Devil's Island is permanently closed. 1963 – X-15 Flight 91 reaches the highest altitude of th...

   OTD August 21st is the two hundredth-thirty-third day of the year, and there are 133 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event  1415 – Henry the Navigator leads Portuguese forces to victory over the Marinids at the Conquest of Ceuta. 1680 – Pueblo Indians captured Santa Fe from the Spanish during the Revolt. 1770 – James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales. 1791 – A Vodou ceremony, led by Dutty Boukman, turns into a violent slave rebellion, beginning the Haitian Revolution. 1831 – Nat Turner led enslaved Black people and free blacks in an uprising in Southampton County, Virginia, which claimed the lives of 55 to 65 whites and about twice that number of blacks. 1858 – The first of the Lincoln–Douglas debates is held in Ottawa, Illinois. 1888 – The first successful adding machine in the United States was patented by William Seward Burroughs. 1911 – Vincenzo Peruggia, a Louvre employee, ste...

  OTD August 20th is the two-hundredth-thirty-second day of the year, and there are 133 days remaining until the end of the year.   Event  1308 – Pope Clement V pardons Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, absolving him of charges of heresy. 1707 – The first Siege of Pensacola ends with the British's failure to capture Pensacola, Florida. 1794 – Northwest Indian War: United States troops force a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers. 1852 – Steamboat Atlantic sank on Lake Erie after a collision, losing at least 150 lives. 1858—Charles Darwin first published his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory. 1882 – Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia. 1910 – Extreme fire weather ...