1306 King Wenceslas of Poland is murdered.
1570 Charles IX France signs the Treaty of St. Germain, ending the third religion.
1636 Invading armies of Spain, Austria and Bavaria stopped 50 miles from France.
1648 Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, is thrown into prison, then assassinated.
1786 Jacques Balmat & Michael-Gabriel Baccard the first to climb Mont Blanc, France.
1844 Brigham Young is chosen to head the Mormon Church, succeeding Joseph Smith.
1863 Confederate President Jefferson Davis refuses General RE. Lee's resignation.
1876 Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph.
1899 The first household refrigerating machine is patented.
1925 The first national congress of the Ku Klux Klan opens.
1937 The Japanese Army occupies Beijing.
1940 German Luftwaffe attacks GB for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.
1942 U.S. Marines capture the Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal.
1944 U.S. forces complete the capture of the Marianas Islands.
1945 The Soviet Union declares war on Japan.
1950 U.S. troops repel the first N.Koreans at the battle of Naktong Bulge.
1963 The "Great Train Robbery"
1974 President Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency as a result of Watergate.
Born on August 8
1865 Matthew A. Henson, explorer with Robert Peary who reached the North Pole.
1883 Emilano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary leader.
1896 Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling.
1901 Ernest Orlando Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron wins the 1939 Nobel Physics.
1908 Arthur J. Goldburg, begins the AFLCIO.
1937 Dustin Hoffman, American actor.
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