July 31
1715: A fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast.
1777: The 19-year-old Marquis de Lafayette received a commission as major general in the Continental Army.
1919: Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic’s National Assembly.
2012: At the London Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps won his 19th medal, becoming the most decorated Olympian in history.
Aug. 1
1876: Colorado was admitted as the 38th state in the Union.
1936: Adolf Hitler presided over the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in Berlin.
1966: Charles Whitman, 25, killed 14 people in a shooting spree from the University of Texas clock tower in Austin.
1971: The Concert for Bangladesh, a benefit organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, was held at Madison Square Garden.
1981: MTV launched its U.S. broadcast, debuting with “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.
Aug. 2
1921: A jury in Chicago acquitted seven former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal.
1790: The first United States Census began under the supervision of Thomas Jefferson.
1876: Frontiersman “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall.
Aug. 3
1492: Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, on his first voyage that took him to the present-day Americas.
1916: Irish-born British diplomat Roger Casement, a strong advocate of independence for Ireland, was hanged for treason.
1936: Jesse Owens of the United States won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics as he took the 100-meter sprint.
Aug. 4
1790: President George Washington signed a law authorizing revenue cutters to enforce tariffs and prevent smuggling, laying the foundation for the U.S. Coast Guard.
1944: Fifteen-year-old Anne Frank was arrested with her family and others by the Gestapo after two years in hiding in Amsterdam.
1964: 44 days after their murders, the bodies of missing civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were found in Mississippi.
Aug. 5
1936: Jesse Owens of the United States won the 200-meter dash at the Berlin Olympics, collecting the third of his four gold medals.
1962: Marilyn Monroe, 36, was found dead in her Los Angeles home from probable suicide by acute barbiturate poisoning.
1962: South African anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela was arrested for inciting a strike and leaving the country without a passport—marking the start of his 27-year imprisonment.
Aug. 6
1806: Emperor Francis II abdicated, marking the end of the Holy Roman Empire after nearly a thousand years.
1945: During World War II, the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing an estimated 140,000 people.
1962: Jamaica gained independence from the United Kingdom.
1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.
1991: The World Wide Web debuted to the public as a way to access webpages via the Internet.
