Category: Today

On August 24, 1682, William Penn received an area of territory to add it to his colony of Pennsylvania. The area comprises, today, the state of Delaware.

In 1814 on this day, British forces burnt down the White House. Unlike audience reaction to the 1996 movie Independence Day, there was no widespread cheering among Americans for the building’s destruction.

One year later, the modern Constitution of the Netherlands received its empowering signatures.

August 24 birthdays include that of British anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Argentine literary genius Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and French historian and author of a magisterial study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985),

The Ukraine celebrates its independence from the Soviet Union with a National Day on August 24.

On August 23, 1989, two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands, as part of the “Singing Revolution” that helped set the Soviet Union to its implosion.

On August 22, 1952, France closed its penal colony on Devil’s Island.

At first a leper colony, it had been transformed by the end of the 19th century into a prison tasked primarily with housing enemies of the French state.

On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led slaves and freed black Americans in a rebellion that was quickly suppressed.

On August 20, 1991, Estonia issued a decision to re-establish independence on the basis of historical continuity of the Baltic country’s pre-World War II statehood, sloughing off Soviet rule since 1940.

On August 20, 1935, Ron Paul was born. Paul is now famous for his heroic congressional record, his several presidential campaigns, and for books such as End the Fed and Liberty Defined.

On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. The British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an earlier, infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-imperialist Herbert Spencer, “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.

On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women’s suffrage.

Eighty-eight years later, Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharaf resigned under threat of impeachment.

The next year, Rose Director Friedman, economist, wife of economist Milton Friedman, sister of economist Aaron Director and mother of economist David D. Friedman, died. With her husband she had written one of the most popular pro-liberty books of our time, Free to Choose. She had been born in late December, 1910, in Staryi Chortoryisk, in Ukraine, to the Director family, prominent Jewish residents. With her husband she co-authored their memoirs, Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People, which appeared in 1998. Together they founded the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, with the aim of promoting the use of school vouchers and freedom of choice in education. She also helped produce the PBS television series, Free to Choose, and assisted her husband in writing his 1962 political philosophy book Capitalism and Freedom.

On August 17, 1786, American backwoods hero and politician, David Crockett, was born. Famous as a politician, he brought personal principle and honor and a “common sense” approach in representing Tennessee in the U.S. House of Representatives. He later served in the Texas Revolution, dying at the Battle of the Alamo.

Crockett grew up in East Tennessee, where he gained a reputation for hunting and storytelling, which helped make him a legend in his own time. After being made a colonel in the militia of Lawrence County, Tennessee, he was elected to the Tennessee state legislature in 1821.

In 1825, Crockett was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he vehemently opposed many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson, most notably the Indian Removal Act.

On August 16, 1841, U.S. President John Tyler vetoed a bill to re-establish the Second Bank of the United States. Enraged Whig Party members — feeling betrayed by the WINO* Tyler — rioted outside the White House in history’s most violent demonstration on White House grounds.

* “Whig In Name Only,” anachronistic joke term. A play on the contemporary initialisms “Republican in Name Only” (RINO) and “Democrat in Name Only” (DINO).

On a sad August 15 in 1971, President Richard Nixon removed the last vestiges of the once-great bulwark of capitalism, America’s adherence to the international gold standard, ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors. The dollar has remained fiat money ever since, but did not succeed in retaining its previous value.

But then, the dollar under the previous quasi-gold, Bretton-Woods Agreement wasn’t stable either, which is why Nixon had to close the gold window.