On Tuesday, August 23, 1927, 36-year-old Nicola Sacco and 39-year-old Bartolomeo Vanzetti died on the same date and at the same location, executed after a lengthy, controversial trial for a murder and robbery, committed on April 15, 1920. The two were anarchists and Italian immigrants to America. The means of execution was the electric chair for both; the times of execution were between noon and 12:30 on that Tuesday.
On August 22, 1902, the Cadillac Motor Company was founded — and on the same day Theodore Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile, riding through the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in a Columbia Victoria electric car. Though TR’s public statement was supportive of the new technology, privately he referred automobiles “a trial” and “as distinct additions to the discomfort of living.”
His predecessor in office, William McKinley, had himself ridden in an automobile, but did not do so in public.
Also in 1902, the federal government bought a Stanley Steamer for presidential outings, the first automobile in general service by what the Founding Fathers referred to as the “general government.”
On August 21, 1791, a Vodou ceremony led by Dutty Boukman turned into a violent slave rebellion, thereby starting the Haitian Revolution.
On August 20, 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declared the American Civil War over.
On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. Earlier, British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-imperialist Herbert Spencer (pictured), “Patriotism” (Facts and Comments, 1902).
On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, a crucial event leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In 1999, a mass rally of Serbians demanded the resignation of Slobodon Milosevic.
August 18, 1590, John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returned from a supply trip to England only to find his settlement deserted. The cryptic word “CROATOAN” was found carved into the palisade of the deserted camp.
On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women’s suffrage.
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.