Here’s a closer look at a significant date on the calendar and those who share the day as a birthday.

On This Day in History

  • 1497 — John Cabot returns to England after his first successful journey to the Labrador coast.
  • 1863 — The CSS Alabama captures the USS Sea Bride near the Cape of Good Hope.
  • 1888 — Martha Turner is murdered by an unknown assailant, believed to be Jack the Ripper, in London, England.
  • 1890 — William Kemmler becomes the first man to be executed by the electric chair.
  • 1904 — The Japanese army in Korea surrounds a Russian army retreating to Manchuria.
  • 1914 — Ellen Louise Wilson, the first wife of the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, dies of Barite’s disease.
  • 1927 — A Massachusetts high court hears the final plea from Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italians convicted of murder.
  • 1942 — The Soviet city of Voronezh falls to the German army.
  • 1945 — Paul Tibbets, the commander of Enola Gay, drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.It was the second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, that induced the Japanese to surrender.
  • 1962 — Jamaica becomes independent, after 300 years of British rule.
  • 1965 — President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, outlawing the literacy test for voting eligibility in the South.
  • 1972 — Atlanta Braves’ right fielder Hank Arron hits his 660th and 661st home runs, setting the Major League record for most home runs by a player for a single franchise.
  • 1973 — Singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder is in an automobile accident and goes into a four-day coma.
  • 1979 — Twelve-year-old Marcus Hooper becomes the youngest person to swim the English Channel.
  • 1981 — Argentina’s ex-resident Isabel Peron freed from house arrest.
  • 1988 — A melee that became known as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot in New York City leads to NYPD reforms.
  • 1991 — Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first-ever website, Info.cern.ch.
  • 1993 — Pope John Paul II publishes “Veritatis splendor encyclical,” regarding fundamentals of the Catholic Church’s role in moral teachings.
  • 1997 — Microsoft announces it will invest $150 million in troubled rival Apple Computer, Inc.
  • 2012 — New Zealand’s Mount Tongariro erupts for the first time since 1897.

Notable People Born on August 6th

  • 1809 — Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet laureate (1850), wrote “The Charge of the Light Brigade.”
  • 1881 — Alexander Flemming, Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928.
  • 1889 — Major General George Kenney, commander of the U.S. Fifth Air Force in New Guinea and the Solomons during World War II.
  • 1911 — Lucille Ball, American actress and comedian.
  • 1916 — Richard Hofstadter, historian who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work.
  • 1927 — Andy Warhol, American pop artist.
  • 1934 — Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, science fiction and fantasy author (Xanth series).
  • 1950 — Winston E. Scott, US Navy commander and astronaut.
  • 1970 — M. Night Shyamalan, Indian-American screenwriter, director and producer (The Sixth Sense, The Village).
  • 1991 — Joshua Ginter, some guy.