On August 13, 1831, Nat Turner witnessed a solar eclipse, which he interpreted as a sign from God. Eight days later he and 70 other slaves killed approximately 55 whites in Southampton County, Virginia.
On this day in 1898, an Armistice ended the Spanish-American War, a war commemorated best by sociologist and economist William Graham Sumner in his classic essay “The Conquest of the United States by Spain.”
Our national economy is sick and has been for some time. It requires increasing doses of money to make it function in a manner satisfying to the public. Surely, it is time for the public to face up to the consequences of its expectations. Do we want to end up addicted to paper money to such an extent that productivity ceases and everyone ends up speculating on what few goods and services are left?
Tonie Nathan, “Inflation and Addiction,” Willamette Valley Observer (1977), in On Libertarianism: Historical Notes & Articles (1981).
The truth is that no gun-control law works because ‘bad’ people who want guns can always get them. Either they’ll buy them in the underworld or they’ll simply steal them from good folks like you and me.
Harry Browne, “The Limits of Gun Ownership” (October 23, 2003).
On August 11, 1972, the last of American ground combat troops exited South Vietnam.
Crime is not nearly the problem that injustice is. Rebellion (lawlessness) is a symptom of the . . . legal contradictions that are now constantly confronting the average citizen.
Tonie Nathan, “Individualism, Rebellion, and Crime,” Eugene Register-Guard, February 1977, in On Libertarianism: Historical Notes & Articles (1981).
On August 10, 1809, Ecuadorans attempted independence from Spain with the Declaration of Independence of Quito, but failed with the execution of all the conspirators a few days less than a year later.
Independence finally occurred in 1822.
You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
Jeannette Rankin, the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, was the only American politician to have voted against America’s involvement in both World War I and World War II.
On August 9, 1942, British forces arrested Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, spurring the Quit India Movement into nationwide action.
In 1999, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and his entire cabinet.
Francis Hutcheson [pictured, below at right], philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume and Adam Smith, was born in Ireland on August 8, 1694.
Followers of Mahatma Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement against the British rule on August 8, 1942.
On the same day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon resigned.