Friday, Jan. 2:

1920 : Raids ordered by Attorney General Mitchell Palmer and facilitated by a young J. Edgar Hoover led to the unlawful arrest and detention of 3,000 to 10,000 people in over 30 cities who were accused of being communists and anarchists.

1959 : Luna 1 was launched by the Soviet Union. It was the first spacecraft to escape Earth’s orbit, first craft to reach the Moon and to be placed in a heliocentric orbit.

1974 : President Richard Nixon signed the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which set a new national maximum speed limit to 55 mph on all national highways, in response to the OPEC crisis at the time.

Thursday, Jan. 1:

45 BC : A new calendar, commissioned by Roman dictator Julius Caesar, entered into effect.

1772 : The London Credit Exchange Company issued the first traveler’s check.

1818 : 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus' was first published anonymously by Mary Shelley in London.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln signed and issued the groundbreaking Emancipation Proclamation, which called for slaves within the Confederate states to be freed. It affected more than 3.5 million enslaved African Americans at that time.

1892 : Annie Moore, a 15-year-old Irish immigrant, became the very first person to be processed on Ellis Island.

1994 : The North American Free Trade Agreement between the United States, Canada and Mexico went into effect, removing many trade and tariffs barriers between the three countries.

Tuesday, Aug. 18:

1227: Genghis Khan died at 65. Born to a minor Mongol chieftain, he united tribes by force and rose to build an empire that spanned Asia. Even after his death, his troops obeyed his order to level the kingdom of Xi Xia.

1587: The first English child, Virginia Dare, was born in the Americas. She was the first granddaughter of Roanoke Island’s English Gov. John White. By her third birthday, she had disappeared with the rest of the Roanoke colonists.

1920: The 19th Amendment was ratified, giving U.S. women the vote.

1962: The Beatles performed for the first time as John, Paul, George and Ringo.

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair ended in Bethel, New York. Organizer Max Yasgur told the crowd they had proven to the world 'that half a million kids can get together for fun and music and have nothing but fun and music.'

Monday, Aug. 17:

1590: John White and his sailors anchored off Roanoke Island, off what is now North Carolina, to see whether the English colonists he had left there were still alive. The following day they found only the word 'CROATOAN' carved into a tree without the agreed-upon distress signal. No one has ever unraveled the mystery; a popular theory is that the colonists joined Indigenous people on Croatoan Island.

1807: The first steamboat carrying paying passengers took its first journey, from New York City to Albany. The Clermont made the trip north in 32 hours.

1862: Deprived of land and provisions promised by the U.S. government, members of the Dakota Tribe raided a Minnesota farm for eggs, killing five settlers. Anticipating retaliation, the tribe continued to attack. The federal government quelled the uprising in September. More than 500 White people and about 190 Dakotans died.

1945: George Orwell’s 'Animal Farm' was published.

1982: Federal district Judge Jerry Buchmeyer ruled that Texas’ sodomy law violated constitutional rights to privacy and due process.

1987: Rudolf Hess, the last surviving member of Adolf Hitler’s inner circle, was found hanged in Spandau Prison in Berlin at the age of 93, an apparent suicide. Hess had been the only prisoner at Spandau since 1966.

Sunday, Aug. 16:

1829: Conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker arrived in Boston, having contracted with a British businessman to tour the world as a curiosity act. Their upbringing in Siam (now Thailand) gave rise to the term 'Siamese twins.'

1896: Skookum Jim Mason and Dawson Charlie of the Tagish tribe found gold near Klondike River in the Yukon with George Carmack of Seattle. During the first year of the resulting gold rush, an estimated 100,000 people raced to the remote region. Less than one-third made it.

1974: The Ramones performed for the first time at the East Village dive bar CBGB, which would become the center of punk in New York.

1988: IBM introduced a suite of software for artificial intelligence.

Saturday, Aug. 15:

1057: Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane, at least in legend. At the Battle of Lumphanan, Malcolm Canmore killed King Macbeth of Scotland, who had killed Canmore’s father, King Duncan I, 17 years before. Contrary to Shakespeare’s play, Canmore didn’t become king until 18 weeks later, after he also killed Macbeth’s stepson.

1790: John Carroll was consecrated as the Roman Catholic Church’s first U.S. bishop. The Maryland native chose Baltimore to be the seat of the first diocese.

1914: The Panama Canal opened to traffic with a U.S. ship sailing from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

1939: 'The Wizard of Oz' premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

1947: India and Pakistan won independence from Great Britain and were partitioned into separate countries. The Indian Independence Act was effective at midnight, while Pakistan celebrates its Independence Day on Aug. 14.

1960: The Republic of the Congo declared independence from France.

1969: The Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened on a farm in Bethel, New York.

2021: With full U.S. troop withdrawal imminent, Afghanistan’s democratic government collapsed as Taliban leaders took control of Kabul.

Friday, Aug. 14:

1784: Seeking a base in the Aleutian Islands, Russian forces led by fur trader Grigory Shelikhov opened fire on Sitkalidak Island’s Aleut and Alutiiq residents. They killed an estimated one-quarter of the villagers and established Three Saints Bay, the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska.

1862: President Abraham Lincoln invited five Black men for a policy discussion, the first time a president had done so. He said Black people would never be equal in the United States and urged his guests to rally support for emigration to Liberia or Panama, offering government funds to do so. Northern newspaper editors and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass were furious.

1935: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act.

Thursday, Aug. 13:

1521: Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés won Mexico for Spain by capturing Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec empire, and Emperor Cuauhtémoc, after a three-month siege. Today, the location is known as Mexico City.

1913: English metallurgist Harry Brearley cast the first true stainless steel in Sheffield, England, seeking an erosion-resistant material for rifle barrels.

1969: The United States celebrated the Apollo 11 astronauts in a hectic series of transnational events: a New York City ticker tape parade with a ceremony at the United Nations, a parade in Chicago and a state dinner with President Richard Nixon in Los Angeles. The astronauts had spent three weeks in quarantine.

1997: The animated show 'South Park' debuted on Comedy Central.

Wednesday, Aug. 12:

1898: Spain signed an armistice with the United States ending combat in the brief Spanish-American War. The agreement virtually dissolved the Spanish Empire, which agreed to cede Puerto Rico to the U.S. government and give up control of Cuba.

1981: IBM introduced its first personal computer. Developed in a year with off-the-shelf parts, it had 16 kilobytes of memory and came with two programs – one for word processing, one for spreadsheets – and no storage.

1990: Paleontologist Susan Hendrickson discovered three huge bones jutting out of a cliff on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. After an ownership controversy, excavation revealed they were part of one of the biggest and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons ever found. The 65-million–year-old dinosaur was named Sue, for Hendrickson.

Tuesday, Aug. 11:

1911: At a Honolulu swim meet, Duke Kahanamoku broke the 100-yard freestyle record by 4.6 seconds, using the then-unique combination of the Australian crawl stroke with a flutter kick. He went on to win Olympic medals, break more records and become the father of modern surfing.

1972: The last U.S. ground combat unit left the Da Nang area in South Vietnam, ending America’s ground war and eight-year direct intervention.

1973: Hip-hop was born at a party in the Bronx when Jamaican American DJ Kool Herc (Clive Campbell) played the same album on two turntables, using them to extend the drum break for dancing.

Monday, Aug. 10:

1793: France’s revolutionary government opened the Musée Central des Arts in a former royal residence called the Louvre. Its collection began with 537 paintings.

1897: Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist working for Bayer, successfully synthesized a pure, stable form of acetylsalicylic acid, better known as aspirin.

1937: The U.S. Patent Office granted the first patent for an electrical guitar, to G.D. Beauchamp of the Electro String Instrument Corp. for a device called the Rickenbacker Frying Pan.

1950: 'Sunset Boulevard' had its world premiere at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

1977: A New York City-wide panic ended with the arrest of serial killer 'Son of Sam.' David Berkowitz pleaded guilty to murdering six people and was sentenced to 365 years in prison.

Sunday, Aug. 9:

1173: In Pisa, Italy, construction began on a bell tower whose engineering flaws have drawn international fame for more than 800 years.

1854: Henry David Thoreau published 'Walden; or, Life in the Woods.'

1877: After the Nez Perce tribe refused government demands to move off its land, U.S. troops fired upon tribal members at dawn by Big Hole River in Montana Territory. Between 60 and 90 tribal members were killed. The Nez Perce fought back but were eventually scattered and captured.

1936: American track star Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the Berlin Olympics, in the 4x100-meter relay. The triumph of the Black athlete struck a symbolic blow to Adolf Hitler’s racist policies.

1945: The United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Japan: a plutonium bomb code-named 'Fat Man.' Between 60,000 and 80,000 Nagasaki residents died.

1974: Gerald R. Ford took the presidential oath of office one day after President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. After the ceremony, Ford spoke on television, saying, 'My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.'

2014: A White police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, a Black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri. Days of civil rights protests followed locally and around the world. A federal investigation later found that Ferguson police routinely violated Black residents’ rights.

Saturday, Aug. 8:

1844: Elders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chose Brigham Young to be the church’s next leader in Nauvoo, Illinois. Founder Joseph Smith and his brother had been murdered in jail six weeks earlier.

1945: President Harry S. Truman signed the United Nations Charter, making the United States the first country to complete the ratification process and join the new organization.

1974: Facing almost guaranteed impeachment for his role in the Watergate scandal, President Richard M. Nixon submitted to pressure and resigned.

1975: The term 'global warming' appeared in print for the first time, according to NASA. Columbia University professor Wallace Smith Broecker titled his paper in the journal Science, 'Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?'

1988: On 8/8/88, Ruthless Records released N.W.A.’s landmark debut album 'Straight Outta Compton,' which would take so-called 'gangsta rap' mainstream. The Library of Congress added the album to its National Recording Registry in 2016.

Friday, Aug. 7:

1782: Gen. George Washington created the first U.S. military decoration, the Badge of Military Merit, now called the Purple Heart.

1974: Tightrope artist Philippe Petit spent almost an hour walking, sitting and even bowing on a high wire 1,350 feet above New York City, slung between the newly built World Trade Center towers. He was arrested, but the charges were dismissed on the condition that he stage a show for the public ? Much closer to the ground.

1978: President Jimmy Carter declared a health emergency for the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, and Gov. Hugh Carey announced the government would buy homes made toxic by chemicals seeping from a landfill. It was one of the worst chemical-waste disasters in U.S. history.

1990: President George H.W. Bush ordered Operation Desert Shield in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Thursday, Aug. 6:

1806: After 1,000 years, the Holy Roman Empire quietly came to its official end. Emperor Francis II of Austria laid down his imperial crown following Napoleon’s military victories as 16 German states declared that they were seceding to form a new confederation.

1890: The first person was executed via electric chair: convicted murderer William Kemmler in Auburn, New York. Kemmler required two shocks to die.

1945: The Enola Gay bomber dropped the uranium bomb code-named 'Little Boy' on Hiroshima, Japan, killing more than 70,000 people. It was the first atomic bomb used in combat.

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, barring racial discrimination in voting.

Wednesday, Aug. 5:

1775: The first Europeans, led by Spain’s Juan de Ayala in his ship the San Carlos, sailed into what is now called San Francisco Bay, anchoring behind Angel Island. Most earlier European explorers failed to notice the strait.

1861: Needing money to pay for the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Revenue Act, imposing the first federal income tax. It set a 3% tax on annual incomes over $800 and lasted 10 years.

1921 : KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh presented the first radio broadcast of a Major League Baseball game.

1962: Actor Marilyn Monroe was found dead at 36 in her Los Angeles home. The iconic sex symbol overdosed on barbiturates. Police concluded 'the mode of death is probable suicide.'

Tuesday, Aug. 4:

1704: Britain captured the tiny but strategically important Rock of Gibraltar during the War of the Spanish Succession. The Rock remains British today.

1914: Great Britain declared war on Germany after the Germans invaded Belgium. The decision also bound its colonies, including India, Australia and Canada.

1944: The Nazis raided the 'Secret Annex' in Amsterdam and sent Anne Frank and its seven other Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps. Only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived.

2010: In a victory for gay rights, federal District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8, the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in California with 52% support, violated the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection for all.

Monday, Aug. 3:

1492: Columbus sailed the ocean blue, launching from the port of Palos in Spain with the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria. The explorer hoped to find a western sea route to the spice-rich countries of Asia.

1908: Three clergymen discovered a nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton in a cave in La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France. The 'Old Man of La Chapelle' was relatively old when he died. A paleontologist depicted the man as bow-legged and hunched – a stereotype that persists to this day; in fact, the skeleton was that of an arthritic man.

1914: Two days after declaring war on Russia, Germany declared war on France, which had refused to promise neutrality.

1921: Eight Chicago White Sox players were banned for life from Major League Baseball after being accused of taking bribes to lose the 1919 World Series. They had been acquitted at trial the day before, but baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis said that even just meeting with gamblers irrevocably tainted the players.

1923: Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president after the sudden death of President Warren Harding.

1936: American Jesse Owens won the 100-meter dash for the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics.

Sunday, Aug. 2:

1776 : Most congressional delegates formally signed the Declaration of Independence, about a month after the Second Continental Congress voted to approve it.

1790: Data collection began for the first U.S. Census. The count covered the original 13 states plus what is now Kentucky, Maine, Tennessee and Vermont. It totaled 3.9 million people.

1876 : Western gunfighter 'Wild Bill' Hickok was fatally shot from behind while playing poker in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, now South Dakota. Legend says Hickok had a two-pair hand of black aces and eights, which became known as the 'dead man’s hand.'

1923: President Warren G. Harding died in San Francisco. The cause of death was likely a heart attack, but his wife’s decision to refuse an autopsy and order immediate embalming sparked rumors for a generation.

1934: Chancellor Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany after President Paul von Hindenburg died.

1990 : Iraq invaded its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. President Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw, setting off the U.S.-led Gulf War.

2018: TikTok became available worldwide after merging with Musical.ly.

Saturday, Aug. 1:

1866: Cherokee chief Tsan-Usdi, known as John Ross in English, died. After unsuccessfully resisting the government’s efforts to seize his tribe’s lands in Georgia, he was forced to lead his people on the Trail of Tears migration west of the Mississippi River.

1943: In Harlem, community anger over racially unjust treatment boiled over into the Harlem Race Riot of 1943 when a Black soldier tried to intervene in the arrest of a Black woman in a hotel lobby for disorderly conduct, and a White police officer shot him.

1944: Anne Frank wrote her last diary entry in Amsterdam’s 'Secret Annex.' The 15-year-old described herself as a 'bundle of contradictions' and wrote that she was 'trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be.'

1981: 'Video Killed the Radio Star' as the Music Television Network – MTV – debuted on cable. July 26

1788: New York became the 11th state after it ratified the U.S. Constitution on a vote of 30-27.

1847: Liberia proclaimed its independence from the United States, making it the first democratic republic in Africa.

1908: The FBI was established.

1945: The Potsdam Declaration was issued by President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and China’s Chairman Chiang Kai-shek. It called for the complete and unconditional surrender of Japan during World War II or the 'alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.'

1948: Military segregation in the U.S. armed forces was abolished.

1990: President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Friday, July 31:

1715: Eleven Spanish treasure ships heading to Spain from Havana, Cuba, sank off the east coast of Florida after a hurricane struck. An estimated 1,000 to 1,500 sailors perished. While the Spanish government was able to recover most of the treasures, some remain lost in the depths of the sea.

1941: With instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi leader Hermann Göring ordered SS General Reinhard Heydrich to submit a plan to carry 'out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.' The final solution was the mass systematic genocide of any individual who the Nazi identified as Jewish.

2006: Communist Cuban leader Fidel Castro, suffering from severe health problems, provisionally handed presidential power to his brother Raúl Castro.

Thursday, July 30:

762: This is the proposed date on which Baghdad was founded by Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur.

1956: The phrase 'In God We Trust' became the national motto of the United States after President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a joint resolution by Congress.

1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed amendments to the Social Security Act of 1935 into law, creating two federal health programs: Medicare and Medicaid.

1975: Union leader James 'Jimmy' Hoffa disappeared in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, never to be heard from again. Hoffa, who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was known to be heavily involved in organized crime and was thought to have been murdered by the Mafia.

Wednesday, July 29:

1588: English naval forces under the command of Lord Charles Howard and Sir Francis Drake defeated the supposedly invincible Spanish Armada off the coast of Gravelines, France.

1836: After 30 years of construction, the Arc de Triomphe was officially inaugurated in Paris.

1921: Adolf Hitler assumed leadership of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party.

1954: J.R.R. Tolkien published the first volume of his epic fantasy 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, 'The Fellowship of the Ring.'

1958: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation to create NASA.

1976: Donna Lauria and Jody Valenti were shot while sitting in Valenti’s car in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx, New York. Lauria was killed instantly, but Valenti survived. The incident was the first in a string of shootings that terrorized the city and were perpetrated by David Richard Berkowitz, known as the 'Son of Sam.'

Tuesday, July 28:

1821: José de San Martín and his forces proclaimed Peru’s independence from Spain.

1868: The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was certified and officially adopted. The landmark amendment guaranteed citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, including former slaves.

1914: One month after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, Sophie, and after a breakdown in negotiations, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, effectively starting World War I.

1917: The Silent Parade began on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Organized by the NAACP and community leaders, an estimated 10,000 Black Americans silently marched to Madison Square to protest the escalating violence toward Black people and condemn racial violence and discrimination.

2005: The Irish Republican Army announced that it would end its 36-year armed campaign against British rule and that all its members were 'to assist the development of purely political and democratic programs through exclusively peaceful means.'

Monday, July 27:

1919: A race riot ignited between Black and White residents in Chicago when White beachgoers pelted Eugene Williams and his friends with rocks at a South Side beach. Williams drowned, but police refused to arrest the man responsible for his death. Riots broke out, leading to 38 deaths and more than 500 injuries.

1921: Surgeon Frederick Banting and medical student Charles Best successfully isolated the sugar-regulating hormone insulin in a lab at the University of Toronto. Months later, with the help of biochemist John Macleod, an insulin treatment was created and tested on humans.

1940: Bugs Bunny was first introduced in his fully realized incarnation with the release of the Warner Bros. animated short film 'A Wild Hare.'

1953: The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed by representatives of the United Nations Command, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army and the Korean People’s army, ending armed hostilities and bringing an unofficial end to the Korean War. However, Syngman Rhee, president of South Korea, refused to sign the armistice but instead vowed to observe it.

1974: The first article of impeachment – for obstruction of justice – against President Richard Nixon was passed by the House Judiciary Committee on a vote of 27-11. Two more articles were passed a few days later. Nixon resigned in early August 1974.

1981: A 6-year-old, Adam John Walsh, was abducted from a department store at the Hollywood Mall in Hollywood, Florida. His remains were later found in a canal. His death led his father, John Walsh, to become an advocate for child victims and the creation of the long-running TV show 'America’s Most Wanted.'

1995: The Korean War Veterans Memorial, located on the National Mall in Washington, DC, was dedicated.

1996: A nail-laden pipe bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the Summer Olympics. One person died and over 100 others were injured. The bombing was the first of four perpetrated by Eric Rudolph, who received consecutive life sentences for domestic terrorism.