On this day August 2nd
1 – In 47 BC – Caesar defeated Pharnaces at Zela in Syria and declares, “veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered).
2 – 1274 – Edward I of England returns from the Ninth Crusade and is crowned King seventeen days later.
3 – 1552 – The treaty of Passau gives religious freedom to Protestants living in Germany. Otherwise known as the Peace of Passau, the treaty came after 30 years of civil war between the catholics and the protestants, which wearied Emperor Charles..
4 – During Henry Hudson’s search for the Northwest Passage, he sails into what is now known as Hudson Bay.
4.5 – Born in 1754, Pierre Charles L’Enfant was a French engineer who designed the layout of Washington, D.C.
5 – 1776 – The Continental Congress, having decided unanimously to make the Declaration of Independence, affixed the signatures of the other delegates to the document.
6 – 1790 – The first US census begins enumerating the population. A significant undertaking under President George Washington, it was seen as a sign of American prosperity and progress.
7 – 1819 – The first parachute jump from a balloon was made by Charles Guill in New York City.
8 – Born today in 1820, John Tyndall, a British physicist, was the first scientist to show why the sky is blue. Blue light has a shorter wavelength than other colors, making it more easily scattered.
9 – 1847 – William A. Leidesdorff launched the first steam boat in San Francisco Bay.
10 – In1869 Japan’s Edo society class system was abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. These reforms were implemented by Emperor Meiji Mutsihito. The capital was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo, followed by the formation of a national army in 1871. In the 1880s samurai and peasants revolted, as well as the rampant westernization being checked by traditional Japanese values. By 1902 the Restoration was largely accomplished and Japan appeared on the international scene for the first time.
14 – 1870 – Tower Subway, the world’s first underground tube railway, opened in London, England, United Kingdom.
15 – In 1876 U.S. Marshall Wild Bill Hickok, commonly known as Hitchcock (because of 1867 newspaper misprint), was shot while playing poker.
16 – In 1914 the German occupation of Luxembourg during World War I begins.
17 – Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-Canadian engineer, inventor of the telephone (b. 1847, died today in 1922) He founded AT&T (American Telephone & Telegraph) in 1885.
18 – In 1923 Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes president upon the death of Warren G. Harding.
19 – 1934 – Reichskanzler (meaning chancellor), Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg.
20 – In 1939 Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.
21 – In 1943 The Holocaust: Jewish prisoners stage a revolt at Treblinka, one of the deadliest of Nazi death camps where approximately 900,000 persons were murdered in less than 18 months.
Meanwhile
The Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sunk into the Pacific. Future U.S. President, Lt. John F. Kennedy, saved all but two of his crew.