TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: AUGUST 8
1570 Charles IX of France signs the Treaty of St. Germain, ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.
1648 Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, is thrown into prison, then assassinated.
1786 US Congress unanimously chooses the dollar as the monetary unit for the United States of America
1844 Brigham Young is chosen to head the Mormon Church, succeeding Joseph Smith.
1860 Queen of Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) arrives in NYC
1863 Confederate President Jefferson Davis refuses General Robert E. Lee’s resignation.
1899 The first household refrigerating machine is patented.
1918 6 US soldiers are surrounded by Germans in France, Alvin York is given command & shoots 20 Germans & captures 132 more
1925 1st national march of Ku Klux Klan (between 25,000 and 40,000 marchers) in Washington, D.C.
1945 The Soviet Union declares war on Japan.
1963 England’s “Great Train Robbery;” 2.6 million pounds ($7.3 million) is stolen
1969 Sharon Tate, wife of director Roman Polanski, and four others were murdered by members of Charles Manson’s “family.”
1974 President Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal.
1979 Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein executes 22 political opponents.
1983 Brigadier General Efrain Rios Montt is deposed as president of Guatemala in the country’s second military coup in 17 months.
1983 Jury in KC, Mo, awards TV anchorwoman Christine Craft $500,000 in sex discrimination suit against KMBC-TV (later overturned)
1988 Ceasefire between Iran & Iraq takes effect after 8 years of war
1990 Iraq annexes the state of Kuwait as its 19th province, six days after Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait.
1991 John McCarthy, a British TV producer, was released by his Lebanese kidnappers. He had been held captive for more than five years. A rival group abducted Jerome Leyraud in retaliation and threatened to kill him if any more hostages were released.
2007 An EF2 tornado hits Brooklyn, New York, the first in that borough since 1889.
2008 Georgia invades South Ossetia, touching off a five-day war between Georgia and Russia.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
