On this Day August 9

Click each item below to learn more!

History Highlights
History Highlights

1936 – African American track star Jesse Owens captures his fourth Gold medal at the Berlin Olympic Games in the 4×100-meter relay. His relay team set a new world record of 39.8 seconds. In their strong showing in track and field, Owens and other African American athletes struck a publicity blow to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, who planned to use the international event to showcase supposed Aryan superiority.

1945 – Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, the U.S. drops a second atomic bomb on Japan. This time the target is Nagasaki. The attack leads to Japan’s unconditional surrender and brings hostilities in World War II to a close. The combined attacks leave some 200,000 people dead and level both cities.

1969 – In one of the most horrifying crimes of the 1960s, members of Charles Manson’s cult, the Manson Family, murder five people in the Beverly Hills home of director Roman Polanski. Polanski’s pregnant wife, 26-year-old actress Sharon Tate, is among the victims.

1974 – Gerald Ford becomes the 38th U.S. president, taking the oath of office on the heels of the Richard Nixon resignation. 

1975 – The Louisiana Superdome opens and an exhibition game there sees the Houston Oilers trounce the hometown New Orleans Saints by a score of 31-7.

2010 – JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater quits his job in dramatic fashion after his flight lands at New York’s JFK International Airport. He gets on the public address system, swears at a passenger whom he claimed treated him rudely, grabs a beer and slides down the plane’s emergency chute onto the tarmac.

On this Day July 3

Click each item below to learn more!

History Highlights
History Highlights

1775 – George Washington rides out in front of the American troops gathered at Cambridge Common in Massachusetts and draws his sword, formally taking command of the 16,000-member Continental Army.

1863 – On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s last attempt at breaking the Union line ends in failure, bringing the most decisive battle of the American Civil War to an end.

1958 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Rivers and Harbors Flood Control Bill, which allocates funds to improve flood-control and water-storage systems across the United States.

1985 – The sci-fi adventure/comedy “Back to the Future,” starring Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd and directed by Robert Zemeckis, opens in U.S. theaters. It becomes a cult classic, spawning two sequels, an animated series, a theme park ride, several video games, a series of comic books and a stage musical.

1986 – President Ronald Reagan, with First Lady Nancy Reagan by his side, presides over the relighting of the renovated Statue of Liberty. It re-opens to the public two days later during Liberty Weekend, celebrating the monument’s centennial.

1988 – While sailing through the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes shoots down an Iranian passenger jet that it mistakes for a hostile fighter plane. All 290 people on board are killed. The U.S. government admits to the error a month later, and in 1996, agrees to pay $62 million in damages to the families of the Iranians that perished in the attack.