Historical Events on 2 August or August 2
- 338 BC Macedonian army led by Philip II defeats combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean
- 216 BC Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae – Carthaginian army lead by Hannibal defeats numerically superior Roman army under command consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro
- 257 St Stephen I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
- 1057 Frederik van Lotharingen elected as 1st Belgium Pope Stephen IX [X]
- 1100 King William II of England (William Rufus) is killed by an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrell while hunting in the New Forest.
- 1542 French troops leave Flanders
- 1552 Treaty of Passau: Emperor Charles V accepts Lutheran religion
- 1578 Battle of Rijmenam: Spanish Habsberg forces defeated by Dutch troops (Eighty Years’ War)
- 1581 Leiden University names Snellius math professor
- 1610 Henry Hudson enters bay later named after him, the Hudson Bay
- 1665 French expedition against Barbarians in Tunis/Algiers
- 1695 Daniel Quare receives a British patent for his portable barometer
- 1701 Great Peace of Montreal signed between New France and North American Indian nations at urging of Huron chief Kondiaronk
- 1704 Duke of Marlborough beats French & Bavarians at Blenheim
- 1718 Austrian joins Triple Alliance
- 1738 France offers emperor Karel VI mediation in war against Turkey
- 1776 Formal signing of the US Declaration of Independence by 56 people (date most accepted by modern historians)
- 1782 George Washington creates Honorary Badge of Distinction
- 1786 Utrechtse Vroedschap flees
- 1787 Horace the Saussure reaches top of Mont Blanc
- 1790 1st US census conducted, the population was 3,939,214 including 697,624 slaves
- 1791 Samuel Briggs & his son, patent nail-making machine
- 1798 Battle of the Nile: British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson further decimates the French fleet
- 1802 Napoleon declared “Consul for Life”
- 1819 1st parachute jump in US
- 1830 Charles X of France abdicates in favour of his grandson the Duc de Bordeaux
- 1831 Ten day campaign begins, Dutch army occupies Belgium
- 1832 Battle of Bad Axe, Wisconsin: 1,300 Illinois militia defeat Sauk & Fox Native Americans ending the Black Hawk War in the US
- 1858 1st mailboxes installed in Boston & NYC streets
- 1858 Government of India transferred from East India Company to the British Crown
- 1861 Skirmish at Dug Springs, MI
Historical Events on 2 August or August 2
- 1864 2nd Saratoga Racetrack (NY) opens
- 1865 Lewis Carroll publishes “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”
- 1865 Trans Atlantic Cable being laid by SS Great Eastern snaps & is lost
- 1870 Tower Subway, the world’s first underground tube railway, opens in London.
- 1873 1st trial run of SF cable car, Clay Street between Kearny & Jones
- 1875 1st roller skating rink opens (London)
- 1877 SF Public Library opens with 5,000 volumes
- 1880 British Parliament officially adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
- 1884 Dutch Queen Emma appointed regent
- 1887 Rowell Hodge patents barbed wire
- 1892 Charles A Wheeler patents a prototype of the escalator
- 1894 Death duties 1st introduced in Britain
- 1894 Dutch Society for Women Suffrage gets royal charter
- 1903 Unsuccessful uprising of Macedonians against Turkey
- 1906 Chicago White Sox begin AL record 19 game win streak
- 1907 Walter Johnson, 19, debuts with Washington & loses 3-2 to Detroit
- 1909 1st Lincoln head pennies minted
- 1909 Army Air Corps formed as Army takes 1st delivery from Wright Brothers
- 1911 Haiti’s dictator Simon flees on US warship near Jamaica
- 1912 18th US Golf Open: John McDermott shoots a 294 at CC of Buffalo NY
- 1914 Belgian government receives German ultimatum
- 1914 German press falsely reports that French bombed Nuremberg
- 1914 German troops overthrows Luxembourg
- 1914 Germany & Turkey sign secret treaty of alliance
- 1914 Great Britain mobilizes
- 1914 Postdam Conference ended
- 1914 Russian troops invade Eastern Prussia
- 1914 Sherlock Holmes Adventure “His Last Bow” takes place
- 1916 World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.
- 1918 Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.
- 1920 Marcus Garvey presents his “Back To Africa” program in NYC
- 1921 Chicago jury brings in not guilty verdict against the Black Sox
- 1922 China, hit by a typhoon; about 60,000 die
- 1924 Joe Hauser sets record of 14 total bases in a game
- 1928 Benito Mussolini signs peace treaty with Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
- 1929 Phillies Don Hurst sets NL record of 6 consecutive games with a HR
- 1931 Spanish Catalonia agrees (99+%) for autonomous status
- 1932 Charlie Grimm replaces Roger Hornsby as manager of Chicago Cubs
- 1932 Carl David Anderson discovers and photographs a positron, the first known antiparticle
- 1934 1st airplane train, plane tows 3 mail gliders behind it
- 1934 Adolf Hitler becomes commander-in-chief of German armed forces
- 1934 William Franks twirls an indian club overhead 17,280 times in 1 hour
- 1936 30th Tour de France won by Sylvere Maes of Belgium
- 1937 Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, essentially rendering marijuana and all its by-products illegal
- 1938 1st test of a yellow baseball (Dodgers vs Cardinals)
- 1939 Hatch Act prohibits political activity by federal workers
- 1940 Clermont-Ferrand sentences General Charles de Gaulle to death
- 1940 KL-House of saxon & commandos focus on Gross Rosen, Silesia
- 1941 German 11st Army surrounds 20 Soviet divisions at Oeman
- 1941 Jews are expelled from Hungarian Ruthenia
- 1942 250 Dutch Catholic Jews arrested, transported to Amersfoort camp
- 1942 Col-Gen Hoth’ Panzer army reaches Kotelnikovo
- 1943 Armed revolt breaks out in Treblinka
- 1943 Lt John F. Kennedy’s PT-boat 109 sinks at Solomon islands
- 1943 Sunderland seaplanes sinks U-706 & U-106
- 1943 Uprising at Treblinka Concentration Camp (crematorium destroyed)
- 1944 Amsterdam soccer team “The Volewijckers” plays in orange shirts
- 1944 Jewish survivors of Kovono Ghetto emerge from their bunker
- 1944 Turkey breaks diplomatic relationship with nazi-Germany
- 1945 Potsdam Conference between Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill ends
- 1953 Betty Jack Davis, singer (w/Skeeter Davis), killed in car crash
- 1953 KCPQ TV channel 13 in Tacoma-Seattle, WA (IND) begins broadcasting
- 1954 Tahar Ben Ammar appointed premier of Tunisia
- 1955 USSR performs nuclear test
- 1958 Jordan & Iraq disolve their Arab Federation, after 3 months
- 1959 41st PGA Championship: Bob Rosburg shoots a 277 at Minneapolis GC
- 1959 Milwaukee Brave Bill Bruton hits 2 bases loaded triples
- 1959 SF Giants 1st baseman Willie McCovey hits 1st of his 521 HRs
- 1961 Beatles 1st gig as house band of Liverpool’s Cavern Club
- 1961 Cyrille Adula becomes premier of Congo
- 1961 St Louis Cards (NFL) beat Toronto Argonauts (CFL) 36-7 in Toronto
- 1963 30th NFL Chicago All-Star Game: All-Stars 20, Green Bay 17 (65,000)
- 1964 Dutch government gives Indonesia export guarantees
- 1964 Mickey Wright wins LPGA Milwaukee Jaycee Golf Open
- 1964 North Vietnam fires on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin incident which would eventually escalate US involvement in the Vietnam War
- 1964 Race riot in Jersey City NJ
- 1965 Morley Safer’s sends 1st Vietnam report indicating the US is losing
- 1966 Radio Vila (New Hebrides) begins transmitting
- 1967 New Orleans Saints 1st pre-season game, they lose to LA Rams 16-77
- 1967 US’s Lunar Orbiter 5 launched; enters lunar orbit Aug 5
Historical Events on 2 August or August 2
- 1967 The second Blackwall Tunnel opens in Greenwich, London.
- 1967 “In the Heat of the Night” directed by Norman Jewison and starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger premieres in New York (Best Picture 1968)
- 1968 35th NFL Chicago All-Star Game: Green Bay 34, All-Stars 17 (69,917)
- 1969 Bob Dylan makes surprise appearance at Hibbing HS Minn 10th reunion
- 1969 US President Richard Nixon visits Romania
- 1970 Baltimore defeats KC 10-8, Orioles 23rd straight win over the Royals
- 1970 France performs nuclear test at Fangataufa Island
- 1970 Rubber bullets used for the first time in Northern Ireland during ‘The Troubles’
- 1972 Gold hits record $70 an ounce in London
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1975 104°F (40°C) at Providence, Rhode Island (state record)
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1975 107°F (42°C) at Chester/New Bedford, Massachusetts (state record)
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1979 “Broadway Opry ’79” closes at St James Theater NYC after 6 performances
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1979 Gilda Radner Live From New York opens on Broadway
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1980 Fascist bomb attack on Bologna Italy train station, 86 killed
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1980 US swimmers set 3 world records at National championships
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1981 Australia set 151 to win, all out 121, Botham 5-11 in 14 overs
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1981 Donna Caponi Young wins LPGA Boston Five Golf Classic
- 1982 Oakland’s Rickey Henderson steals his 100th base of the season
- 1982 Roger Ebert’s “Movie News” premieres on ABC FM network
- 1983 STS-8 vehicle moves to launch pad
- 1983 US District Court begins trying Yonkers accused of race discrimination
- 1984 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1985 5 die in a train crash in Westminster Colo
- 1985 Delta Lockheed L-1011 crashes at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, 137 die
- 1986 Jackie Joyner-Kersee (US) sets record for heptathlon (7161 pts)
- 1986 TODAY/PC born today
- 1986 13th Commonwealth Games close in Edinburgh, Scotland
- 1987 25th Tennis Fed Cup: Germany beats USA in Vancouver Canada (2-1)
- 1987 Christa Johnson wins Columbia Savings LPGA National Golf Pro-Am
- 1987 Cincinnati Red Eric Davis becomes 7th & earliest 30 HR 30 steal man
- 1987 Don Brown sets flight record for handbow (1,336 yds 1’3″)
- 1987 Eric Davis is 7th to hit 30 HRs & steal 30 bases in one season
- 1987 Kevin Seitzer (KC Royals), gets 6 hits in one baseball game
- 1987 Michael Andretti runs fastest Indy car race in history (171.49 MPH)
- 1987 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1988 Raymond Acevedo is retired from singing group Menudo
- 1988 System Enhancement Association settles case with PKware (ARC vs PKARC)
- 1989 NASA confirmed Voyager 2’s discovery of 3 more moons of Neptune designated temporarily 1989 N2, 1989 N3 & 1989 N24
- 1990 Iraq invades & occupies Kuwait, Emir flees to Saudi Arabia
- 1990 Yankees rookie Kevin Maas hits his 10th home run in just 77 at bats
- 1990 23rd San Diego Comic-Con International opens at Holiday Inn
- 1991 Hedy Lamaar is arrested for shoplifting in LA
- 1991 Mike Jeffcoat is 1st AL pitcher to get an RBI since 1972
- 1991 Space shuttle STS 43 (Atlantis 9) launched
- 1991 Pan Am games open in Havana
- 1992 “Death & the Maiden” closes at Brooks Atkinson NYC after 159 performances
- 1992 Dottie Mochrie wins LPGA Welch’s Golf Classic
- 1992 Tom Seaver, R Fingers, Hal Newhouser, & B McGowan enter Hall of Fame
- 1993 NYC radio (WFAN) personality Don Imus’ lung collapes
- 1993 Peter Angelos & William DeWitt purchase Orioles
- 1993 Train crash in tunnel at Vega de Anzo Spain, 12 killed
- 1993 Shamrock Broadcasting, a Disney company, officially takes ownership of Cleveland’s WMMS-FM/100.7 & WHK-AM/1420
- 1994 Congressional hearings begin on White Water
- 1994 Explosion in lead/zinc mine in Guangxi China, 120+ killed
- 1994 NY Supreme Court refuses Howard Stern’s non financial disclosure
- 1994 Noureddine Morceli runs world record 3000m (7:25.11)
- 1995 Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd issues a decree replacing all members of the Council of Ministers who do not have blood ties so the royal Family
- 1998 26th du Maurier Golf Classic: Brandie Burton
- 1998 30th Curtis Cup: US wins 10-8 at The Minikahda Club (Minneapolis, Minnesota, US)
- 1998 San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds is hit by a pitch and charges the mound, causing a bench-clearing brawl
- 1998 85th Tour de France won by Marco Pantani of Italy
- 1999 “The Sixth Sense”, starring Bruce Willis, Toni Collette, and Haley Joel Osment, premieres
- 2008 “Breaking Dawn”, 4th book in Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight Saga” is published by Little Brown at midnight with a print run of 3.7 million copies
- 2012 23 people are killed after two blasts in a fruit market in Lahore, Pakistan
- 2013 40 people are killed after an ammunition depot explodes in Homs, Syria
- 2013 Carl Icahn sues computer giant Dell in an attempt to derail a buyout bid by the CEO, Michael Dell