From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
August 2 is the 214th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (215th in leap years), with 151 days remaining.
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 Gaius 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.
* 1869 - Japan’s samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).
* 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.
* 1918 - Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.
* 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.
* 1994 - Popular Japanese television and movie actor Beat Takeshi is seriously injured in a motorcycle accident.
* 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.
* 2003 - A 65th anniversary edition of The Beano is released.
Births
* 1533 - Theodor Zwinger, medical scholar (d. 1588)
* 1672 - Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss scholar (d. 1733)
* 1674 - Philip II, Duke of Orléans, regent of France (d. 1723)
* 1696 - Mahmud I, Ottoman Sultan (d. 1754)
* 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 - King Constantine I 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, actress (d. 1993)
* 1905 - Rudolf Prack, actor (d. 1981)
* 1912 - Vladimir Zerjavic, Croatian statistician (d. 2001)
* 1914 - Beatrice Straight, actress (d. 2001)
* 1915 - Gary Merrill, actor (d. 1990)
* 1924 - James Baldwin, American author (d. 1987)
* 1924 - Carroll O’Connor, actor (d. 2001)
* 1925 - Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentinian dictator
* 1932 - Peter O’Toole, Irish actor
* 1933 - Lorenzo Milam, author and broadcaster
* 1934 - Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
* 1937 - Garth Hudson, Canadian musician, organist/keyboardist with The Band
* 1939 - Wes Craven, film director
* 1941 - Doris Coley, singer (Shirelles) (d. 2000)
* 1942 - Isabel Allende, author
* 1944 - Jim Capaldi, British drummer, singer, and songwriter (Traffic) (d. January 28, 2005)
* 1948 - Dennis Prager, radio talk show host and author
* 1951 - Lance Ito, American judge
* 1953 - Butch Patrick, actor
* 1957 - Mojo Nixon, musician and actor
* 1961 - Linda Fratianne, figure skater
* 1964 - Mary-Louise Parker, actress
* 1969 - Fernando Couto, footballer
* 1970 - Tony Amonte, hockey player
* 1972 - Kevin Smith, actor, director, and screenwriter
* 1974 - Jeremy Castle, singer and songwriter
* 1974 - Mike Kavanagh, president, Arsenal America/prize-winning brewer/bad ass m*ther-f*cker
* 1975 - Xu Huaiwen, German badminton player
* 1977 - Edward Furlong, actor
* 1982 - Hélder Postiga, Portuguese footballer
* 1992 - Hallie Kate Eisenberg, actress
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)
* 1696 - Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, Scottish military commander at the Massacre of Glencoe (b. 1630)
* 1769 - Daniel Finch, 8th Earl of Winchilsea, English politician (b. 1689)
* 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, Scottish-born 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)
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
