Category: Today

On August 3, 2008, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at age 90. His novels, such as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward, explored life under totalitarian Communism, and remain classics of modern literature. His huge survey of Soviet concentration camps, The Gulag Archipelago, was an important contribution to the demise of Communism as a popular ideology, showing just how horrifying the repression in the Soviet Union had become.

The Declaration of Independence was signed by members of the Continental Congress of the United States, on August 2, 1776.

On August 1, 1834, Great Britain’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took force, freeing slaves throughout the British empire.

Technically, it freed slaves under the age of six. On the August 1 date in 1838 and 1840, the rest of the empire’s slaves were freed, practically speaking.

August 1 births include Francis Scott Key (1779), composer of the poem “The Star-Spangled Banner”; American authors Richard Henry Dana, Jr. (1815) and Herman Melville (1819); and Thomas E. Woods, Jr. (1972), historian and popularizer of Austrian economics (pictured at right), podcaster of the Tom Woods Show.

On July 31, 1703, Daniel Defoe — who would later become famous as the author of Robinson Crusoe and other literary works — was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. The sedition pertained to a satirical pamphlet he had published, “The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church.” The mob pelted him with flowers.

On the same date in 1912, Milton Friedman was born. Friedman became one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, and one of the most effective advocates of free markets, as well. His books include Capitalism and Freedom and two famous collaborations, A Monetary History of the United States (with Anna Schwartz) and Free to Choose (with his wife, Rose Friedman).

On July 30, 1419, the First Defenestration of Prague: Jan Želivský, a Hussite priest at the church of the Virgin Mary of the Snows, led his congregation on a procession through the streets of Prague to the New Town Hall, on Charles Square. While they were marching, a stone was thrown at Želivský from the window of the town hall. The mob, enraged, stormed the hall. Once inside, the group threw the judge, the burgomaster, and some thirteen members of the town council out of the window and into the street, where they were killed by the fall or dispatched by the mob.

King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, upon hearing this news, was so stunned, the legend goes, that he died soon after.

On July 30, 1619, the first representative assembly in the Americas, the House of Burgesses, convened for the first time in Jamestown, Virginia. On the same date in 1676, Nathaniel Bacon issued the “Declaration of the People of Virginia,” beginning Bacon’s Rebellion against the rule of Governor William Berkeley.

On this date in 1863, representatives of the United States and tribal leaders (including the Shoshone’s Chief Pocatello) signed the Treaty of Box Elder.

July 30 birthdays include Henry Ford (1863), Gen. Smedley Butler (1881), C. Northcote Parkinson (1909), and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947).

Vanuatuans celebrate Independence Day on July 30.

On July 29, 1805, Alexis de Tocqueville was born. His most famous book, Democracy in America (1835, 1840), quickly became a classic of social and political research and analysis, and remains the most important early book about the United States of America. He is often referred to as a founder of sociology as well as a major figure in the development of classical liberalism.

On July 28, 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was certified.

July 27 births include that of Samuel Smith (1872; pictured), an American who served as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, and later as a politician in several capacities in the state of Maryland; Hillaire Belloc (1870), author of a classic analysis of modern political governance, The Servile State; and American singer and songwriter Bobbie Gentry (1944).

On July 27, 1694, the Bank of England received a royal charter, beginning a long history of central banking in England. Subsequent inflationary booms and deflationary busts are subsequently considered “mysterious” by people connected with the bank.

On July 26, 1533, Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish conquistadors strangled to death Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, thereby ending 300 years of Inca civilization. The conquistadors were greedy and murderous, but the Inca civilization, arguably, was worse: totalitarian and radically inegalitarian. But they made great high-mountain roads. (Arguments about infrastructure promoted by Big Government continue to this very day.)

On this day in 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. military.

On July 25, 1861, the U.S. Congress passed the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution, stating that the war with the seceded states of the Confederacy was being fought to preserve the Union, not to end slavery.