Category: Today

On August 17, 1807, Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat left New York City for Albany, New York, on the Hudson River, inaugurating the first commercial steamboat service in the world.

On August 16, 1841, U.S. President John Tyler vetoed a bill to re-establish the Second Bank of the United States. This made him deeply unpopular with his former supporters in the Whig Party — which was the party of “internal improvements” as well as an anti-Jacksonian party, and Andrew Jackson had previously set himself against central banking. It is apparent that Tyler did this because he had come to believe a central bank was unconstitutional.

We have a central bank, now, of course. It is called the Federal Reserve.

On August 15, 1281, the Mongolian fleet of Kublai Khan was destroyed by a “divine wind” for the second time in the Battle of Kōan.

On August 14, 1765, Sam Adams led the first rebel mob against enforcers of the Stamp Act in Britain’s American colonies.

On this day in 1980, Lech Wałęsa led strikes at the Gdańsk, Poland, shipyards.

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 August 12, 1944, French forces under General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque liberated Alençon from Nazi rule — the first city in World War II France to be rescued by the French themselves.

On August 11, 1972, the last of American ground combat troops exited South Vietnam.

On August 10, 1809, Ecuadorians 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 was finally achieved in 1822.

On August 9, 1942, British forces arrested Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, spurring the Quit India Movement into nationwide action.

In 1999 on this 221st day of the year, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and his entire cabinet.

Francis Hutcheson, philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume and Adam Smith, was born in Ireland on August 8, 1694. He died on his birthday in 1746.

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.