August 2

August 2 is the 214th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (215th in leap years), with 151 days remaining.

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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 Publius 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.
• 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.
• 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 – 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.
• 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.

Births

• 1533 – Theodor Zwinger, medical scholar (d. 1588)
• 1672 – Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, savant (d. 1733)
• 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
• 1865 – Irving Babbitt, American literary critic (d. 1933)
• 1868 – Constantine I of Greece, king 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, Academy Award-winning actress (d. 1993)
• 1905  – Rudolf Prack, actor (d. 1981)
• 1912 – Vladimir Zerjavic, Croat – UN statistician (d. 2001)
• 1914 – Beatrice Straight, Academy Award-winning actress (Network, Poltergeist) (d. 2001)
• 1915 – Gary Merrill, actor (d. 1990)
• 1924 – James Baldwin, author (d. 1987)
• 1924  – Carroll O'Connor, actor (d. 2001)
• 1932 – Peter O'Toole, actor: Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter
• 1933 – Lorenzo Milam, author, broadcaster
• 1934 – Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
• 1939 – Wes Craven, horror film director
• 1941 – Doris Coley, singer, member of the Shirelles (d. 2000)
• 1942 – Isabel Allende, author
• 1948 – Dennis Prager – radio talk show host and author
• 1951 – Lance Ito, judge in the O. J. Simpson case
• 1953 – Butch Patrick, actor
• 1957 – Mojo Nixon, rockabilly musician, actor
• 1961 – Linda Fratianne, Olympics figure skater
• 1964 – Mary-Louise Parker, actress
• 1969 – Fernando Couto, football player
• 1970 – Tony Amonte, NHL star,
• 1972 – Kevin Smith, actor, director, screenwriter
• 1977 – Edward Furlong, actor
• 1982 – Hélder Postiga, Portuguese football player
• 1992 – Hallie Kate Eisenberg, actress, Pepsi-Cola spokesperson

Deaths

• 461 – Majorian, Roman Emperor (assassinated) (b. 457)
• 686 – Pope John V
• 1100 – King William II of England (b.c. 1056)
• 1589 – King Henry III of France (b. 1551)
• 1611 – Kato Kiyomasa, Japanese daimyo and samurai (b. 1562)
• 1788 – Thomas Gainsborough, English artist (b. 1727)
• 1859 – Horace Mann, American educator and abolitionist (b. 1796)
• 1876 – James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok, American gunfighter (b. 1837)
• 1921 – Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor (b. 1873)
• 1922 – Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (b. 1847)
• 1923 – Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States (b. 1865)
• 1934 – Paul von Hindenburg, German general and politician (b. 1847)
• 1936 – Louis Blériot, French aviation pioneer (b. 1872)
• 1939 – Harvey Spencer Lewis, founder of AMORC (b. 1883)
• 1945 – Pietro Mascagni, Italian composer (b. 1863)
• 1976 – Fritz Lang, film director (b. 1890)
• 1976 – Stan Farr, basketball player
• 1978 – Carlos Chávez, Mexican composer
• 1979 – Thurman Munson, baseball player
• 1986 – Roy Cohn, American politician and anti-communist (b. 1927)
• 1988 – Raymond Carver, writer, poet (b. 1938)
• 1990 – Norman Mclean, writer (b. 1902)
• 1997 – William S. Burroughs, writer (b. 1914)
• 1998 – Shari Lewis, puppeteer (b. 1933)
• 2003 – Don Estelle, British actor
• 2003 – Mike Levey, American television personality
• 2004 – Wilhelm Fresenius, German chemist (b. 1913)
• 2004 – Don Tosti, musician (b. 1923)
• 2004 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer (b. 1908)

Holidays and observances

• Costa Rica – Our Lady of the Angels
• Bulgaria/Republic of Macedonia – Ilinden (St. Ilya Day), a day of remembrance of the Ilinden Uprising

External links

• BBC: On This Day

August 1 – August 3 – July 2 – September 2 — listing of all days