TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: AUGUST 9
480 BC The Persian army defeats Leonidas and his Spartan army at the Battle Thermopylae, Persia.
48 BC Caesar’s civil war: Battle of Pharsalus – Julius Caesar decisively defeats Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey flees to Egypt.
1483 Pope Sixtus IV celebrates the first mass in the Sistine Chapel, which is named in his honor.
1790 Robert Gray’s Columbia Rediviva returns to Boston after 3 year journey, 1st American ship to circumnavigate the Globe
1805 Austria joins Britain, Russia, Sweden and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia in the third coalition against France.
1814 Andrew Jackson and the Creek Indians sign the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving the whites 23 million acres of Creek territory.
1842 The Webster-Ashburton treaty fixes the border between Maine and Canada’s New Brunswick.
1854 Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, recounting his experiment in solitary life on the shores of Massachusetts’ Walden Pond, was published.
1898 Rudolf Diesel of Germany obtains patent #608,845 for his internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine
1910 The first complete, self-contained electric washing machine is patented.
1941 President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The meeting produces the Atlantic Charter, an agreement between the two countries on war aims, even though the United States is still a neutral country.
1944 Fictional character Smokey Bear (“Only you can prevent forest fires”) created by US Forest Service and the Ad Council.
1945 The U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The bombing came three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. About 74,000 people were killed. Japan surrendered August 14.
1956 1st state-wide, state-supported educational TV network, Alabama
1969 Charles Manson’s followers kill actress Sharon Tate and her three guests in her Beverly Hills home.
1974 Gerald Ford is sworn in as president of the United States after the resignation of President Richard Nixon.
1985 Arthur J. Walker, a retired Navy officer, was found guilty of seven counts of spying for the Soviet Union.
1999 Russian president Boris Yeltsin fires his prime minister and, for the fourth time, fires the entire cabinet.
2001 U.S. President George W. Bush announced he would support federal funding for limited medical research on embryonic stem cells.
2004 Trump Hotel and Casion Resorts announced plans to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
2020 Disputed Belarusian presidential election sees long time dictator Alexander Lukashenko officially win 80% of the votes but unofficially lose 60-70% of the votes to main opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Sparks widespread protests in Belarus and international condemnation.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
