August
August 1:
-In 1775 Thomas Paine, the editor of the Pennsylvania magazine, wrote the first article proposing women’s rights
-In 1879 Mary Eliza Mahoney graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children, becoming the first professional black nurse in America
August 2:
-Friendship Day
-1776 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania most of the 55 members of the Continental Congress signed the parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence.
August 3:
-1492 - Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three ships, Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Seeking a westerly route to the Far East, he instead landed on October 12th in the Bahamas, thinking it was an outlying Japanese island.
-1923 - Calvin Coolidge took the presidential oath of office on August 3, 1923, after the unexpected death in office of President Warren Harding. The new president inherited an administration plagued and discredited by corruption scandals. In the two remaining years of this term, Coolidge, long recognized for his own frugality and moderation, worked to restore the administration's image and regain the public’s trust. He went on to win the presidential election of 1924 in his own right.
August 4:
-44th President Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. -Three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were found murdered and buried in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.
August 5:
-Nelson Mandela, South African freedom fighter, imprisoned in 1962. He was not released until 1990.
-John Eliot was born in 1604. He was known as the "Apostle to the Indians"because of his translation of the Bible into an Indian language, which later became the first Bible to be printed in America.
August 6:
-1965 - The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Act suspended literacy, knowledge and character tests designed to keep African Americans from voting in the South. It also authorized the appointment of Federal voting examiners and barred discriminatory poll taxes. The Act was renewed by Congress in 1975, 1984 and 1991.
-1945 - The first Atomic Bomb was dropped over the center of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m., by the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay. The bomb detonated about 1,800 ft. above ground, killing over 105,000 persons and destroying the city. Another estimated 100,000 persons later died as a result of radiation effects.
August 7:
-In 1790 the United State Senate approves the Treaty of New York between the United Sates and the Creeks.
-August 7, 1964 - Following an attack on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, the U.S. Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Lyndon B. Johnson authority "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
August 8:
-International Day of the World's Indigenous People, Australia
-Matthew Henson, an African American explorer, was born in 1866
August 9:
-Leona Woods Marshall Libby was born. She was the only woman on the team that built the world’s first nuclear reactor, worked on the Manhattan Project, and was professor at New York University and UCLA
-In 1995 Roberta Cooper Ramo becomes the first woman to hold the office of president of the American Bar Association
August 10:
-Raksha Bandhan (Hindu) celebrates and honors the loving bond that exists between a brother and a sister.
-In 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve on the US Supreme Court
August 11:
-1841 - Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, spoke before an audience in the North for the first time. During an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, he gave a powerful, emotional account of his life as a slave. He was immediately asked to become a full-time lecturer for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society.
-August 11-21, 1965 - Riots began in the Watts area of Los Angeles, triggered by an incident between a white member of the California Highway Patrol and an African American motorist. Thirty-four deaths were reported and more than 3,000 people were arrested. Damage to property was estimated to be as much as $225 million.
August 12:
-President Obama posthumously awards Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009
-August 12, 1908 - The Model T Ford, known as the Tin Lizzie and the first mass-produced car, went on sale.
August 13:
-Women's rights pioneer Lucy Stone was born in 1818. She dedicated her life to the elimination of slavery and the emancipation of women and aided in the founding of the American Suffrage Association.
-Eva Dykes, first African-American woman to earn a doctoral degree, was born in 1893.
August 14:
-1945 - V-J Day, commemorating President Truman's announcement that Japan had surrendered to the Allies.
-Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper retires from active duty in the US Navy. She was the oldest officer still on active duty at the time of her retirement
August 15:
-1969 - Woodstock began in a field near Yasgur's Farm at Bethel, New York. The three-day concert featured 24 rock bands and drew a crowd of more than 300,000 young people. The event came to symbolize the counter-culture movement of the 1960’s.
-August 15, 1812 - Potawatomi Indians massacred soldiers and settlers of Fort Dearborn, in what is now Chicago, Illinois.
August 16:
-Martin Luther King Jr. protests for black voting right in Miami in 1961
-Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863
August 17:
-Elaine Hedges, educator, helped create the field of Women’s Studies, founding member of the National Women’s Studies Association, founded the Women’s Studies Program at Towson University, one of the oldest programs in the country, writer and editor for The Feminist Press, was born in 1927
August 18:
-1920 - The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote.
-1959 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Hawaii to the Union as the 50th state.
August 19:
-Vera Weisbord, radical activist, labor organizer, and feminist, organized women textile worker strikes in the 1920s, and was active in the Civil Rights Movement, was born in 1895.
-Donna Allen, founder of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press in 1972 to publicize and research women’s issues which she thought were ignored by the main stream media, was born in 1920.
August 20:
-President Andrew Johnson formally declares civil war over in 1866
-(1794) Battle of Fallen Timbers leading to the Treaty of Greeneville and the surrender of vast Indian lands west and north of the Ohio River.
August 21:
-Marine James Anderson Jr. is the first African-American Medal of Honor winner in 1968.
-In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th U.S. state
August 22:
-Althea Gibson becomes the first African-American competitor in a national tennis competition in 1950
-Ruth Underhill, anthropologist and professor, wrote of the Papago Native American culture, and taught in the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, was born in 1883
August 23:
-Macario Garcia becomes the first Mexican national to receive a U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor in 1943
-August 23, 1861 James Stone of Ohio enlisted to become the first black to fight for the Union during the Civil War. He was very light skinned and was married to a white woman. His racial identity was revealed after his death in 1862.
August 24:
-1814 - During the War of 1812, Washington, D.C., was invaded by British forces that burned the Capitol, the White House and most other public buildings along with a number of private homes. The burning was in retaliation for the earlier American burning of York (Toronto).
Amelia Earhart, was the first woman to fly across the United States in 1932.
-In 1912 Alaska becomes US territory
August 25:
-Women's Equality Day- a day to look back on all women's rights issues and progress.
-National Association of Colored Nurses forms in 1908
August 26:
-19th Amendment (Woman Suffrage) ratified in 1920
-Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run as a vice-presidential candidate for a major party, was born
August 27:
-Mother Teresa (1910-1997) was born (as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) in Skopje, Yugoslavia. She founded a religious order of nuns in Calcutta, India, called the Missionaries of Charity and spent her life working to help the poor and sick of India.
-Del Martin dies (founded the first lesbian organization in the United States and fought for more than 50 years for the rights of lesbians and gays). She was married shortly before she died in California.
August 28:
-1963 - The March on Washington occurred as over 250,000 persons attended a Civil Rights rally in Washington, D.C., at which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his now-famous I Have a Dream speech.
-Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born Saint, was born in 1774
August 29:
-In 1758 the first Indian reservation was established
-1865 - The Battle of Tongue River occurs when General Patrick Edward Connor led over 200 troops in an attack on Chief Black Bear’s Arapaho village in Wyoming. The soldiers destroy all the winter's food supply, tents and clothes and kill over 50 of the Arapaho villagers.
August 30:
- Civil rights leader Roy Wilkins was born in 1901.
-Lt. Col. Guion S. Bluford Jr. becomes the first African American astronaut in space in 1983
August 31:
-1997 - Britain's Princess Diana died at age 36 from massive internal injuries suffered in a high-speed car crash, reportedly after being pursued by photographers. The crash occurred shortly after midnight in Paris inside a tunnel along the Seine River at the Pont de l'Alma bridge, less than a half mile north of the Eiffel Tower. Also killed in the crash were Diana's companion, Dodi Fayed, 42, and chauffeur Henri Paul. A fourth person in the car, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, was seriously injured.
-The First International Symposium on Issues of Women with Disabilities is held in Beijing, China in combination with the Fourth World Conference on Women.
-In 1775 Thomas Paine, the editor of the Pennsylvania magazine, wrote the first article proposing women’s rights
-In 1879 Mary Eliza Mahoney graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children, becoming the first professional black nurse in America
August 2:
-Friendship Day
-1776 - In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania most of the 55 members of the Continental Congress signed the parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence.
August 3:
-1492 - Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, with three ships, Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Seeking a westerly route to the Far East, he instead landed on October 12th in the Bahamas, thinking it was an outlying Japanese island.
-1923 - Calvin Coolidge took the presidential oath of office on August 3, 1923, after the unexpected death in office of President Warren Harding. The new president inherited an administration plagued and discredited by corruption scandals. In the two remaining years of this term, Coolidge, long recognized for his own frugality and moderation, worked to restore the administration's image and regain the public’s trust. He went on to win the presidential election of 1924 in his own right.
August 4:
-44th President Barack Obama was born on August 4th, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. -Three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were found murdered and buried in an earthen dam outside Philadelphia, Mississippi.
August 5:
-Nelson Mandela, South African freedom fighter, imprisoned in 1962. He was not released until 1990.
-John Eliot was born in 1604. He was known as the "Apostle to the Indians"because of his translation of the Bible into an Indian language, which later became the first Bible to be printed in America.
August 6:
-1965 - The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Act suspended literacy, knowledge and character tests designed to keep African Americans from voting in the South. It also authorized the appointment of Federal voting examiners and barred discriminatory poll taxes. The Act was renewed by Congress in 1975, 1984 and 1991.
-1945 - The first Atomic Bomb was dropped over the center of Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m., by the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay. The bomb detonated about 1,800 ft. above ground, killing over 105,000 persons and destroying the city. Another estimated 100,000 persons later died as a result of radiation effects.
August 7:
-In 1790 the United State Senate approves the Treaty of New York between the United Sates and the Creeks.
-August 7, 1964 - Following an attack on two U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin off North Vietnam, the U.S. Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, granting President Lyndon B. Johnson authority "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
August 8:
-International Day of the World's Indigenous People, Australia
-Matthew Henson, an African American explorer, was born in 1866
August 9:
-Leona Woods Marshall Libby was born. She was the only woman on the team that built the world’s first nuclear reactor, worked on the Manhattan Project, and was professor at New York University and UCLA
-In 1995 Roberta Cooper Ramo becomes the first woman to hold the office of president of the American Bar Association
August 10:
-Raksha Bandhan (Hindu) celebrates and honors the loving bond that exists between a brother and a sister.
-In 1993 Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sworn in as the second woman and 107th Justice to serve on the US Supreme Court
August 11:
-1841 - Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave, spoke before an audience in the North for the first time. During an anti-slavery convention on Nantucket Island, he gave a powerful, emotional account of his life as a slave. He was immediately asked to become a full-time lecturer for the Massachusetts Antislavery Society.
-August 11-21, 1965 - Riots began in the Watts area of Los Angeles, triggered by an incident between a white member of the California Highway Patrol and an African American motorist. Thirty-four deaths were reported and more than 3,000 people were arrested. Damage to property was estimated to be as much as $225 million.
August 12:
-President Obama posthumously awards Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009
-August 12, 1908 - The Model T Ford, known as the Tin Lizzie and the first mass-produced car, went on sale.
August 13:
-Women's rights pioneer Lucy Stone was born in 1818. She dedicated her life to the elimination of slavery and the emancipation of women and aided in the founding of the American Suffrage Association.
-Eva Dykes, first African-American woman to earn a doctoral degree, was born in 1893.
August 14:
-1945 - V-J Day, commemorating President Truman's announcement that Japan had surrendered to the Allies.
-Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper retires from active duty in the US Navy. She was the oldest officer still on active duty at the time of her retirement
August 15:
-1969 - Woodstock began in a field near Yasgur's Farm at Bethel, New York. The three-day concert featured 24 rock bands and drew a crowd of more than 300,000 young people. The event came to symbolize the counter-culture movement of the 1960’s.
-August 15, 1812 - Potawatomi Indians massacred soldiers and settlers of Fort Dearborn, in what is now Chicago, Illinois.
August 16:
-Martin Luther King Jr. protests for black voting right in Miami in 1961
-Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863
August 17:
-Elaine Hedges, educator, helped create the field of Women’s Studies, founding member of the National Women’s Studies Association, founded the Women’s Studies Program at Towson University, one of the oldest programs in the country, writer and editor for The Feminist Press, was born in 1927
August 18:
-1920 - The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, granting women the right to vote.
-1959 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a proclamation admitting Hawaii to the Union as the 50th state.
August 19:
-Vera Weisbord, radical activist, labor organizer, and feminist, organized women textile worker strikes in the 1920s, and was active in the Civil Rights Movement, was born in 1895.
-Donna Allen, founder of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press in 1972 to publicize and research women’s issues which she thought were ignored by the main stream media, was born in 1920.
August 20:
-President Andrew Johnson formally declares civil war over in 1866
-(1794) Battle of Fallen Timbers leading to the Treaty of Greeneville and the surrender of vast Indian lands west and north of the Ohio River.
August 21:
-Marine James Anderson Jr. is the first African-American Medal of Honor winner in 1968.
-In 1959 Hawaii became the 50th U.S. state
August 22:
-Althea Gibson becomes the first African-American competitor in a national tennis competition in 1950
-Ruth Underhill, anthropologist and professor, wrote of the Papago Native American culture, and taught in the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, was born in 1883
August 23:
-Macario Garcia becomes the first Mexican national to receive a U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor in 1943
-August 23, 1861 James Stone of Ohio enlisted to become the first black to fight for the Union during the Civil War. He was very light skinned and was married to a white woman. His racial identity was revealed after his death in 1862.
August 24:
-1814 - During the War of 1812, Washington, D.C., was invaded by British forces that burned the Capitol, the White House and most other public buildings along with a number of private homes. The burning was in retaliation for the earlier American burning of York (Toronto).
Amelia Earhart, was the first woman to fly across the United States in 1932.
-In 1912 Alaska becomes US territory
August 25:
-Women's Equality Day- a day to look back on all women's rights issues and progress.
-National Association of Colored Nurses forms in 1908
August 26:
-19th Amendment (Woman Suffrage) ratified in 1920
-Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman to run as a vice-presidential candidate for a major party, was born
August 27:
-Mother Teresa (1910-1997) was born (as Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu) in Skopje, Yugoslavia. She founded a religious order of nuns in Calcutta, India, called the Missionaries of Charity and spent her life working to help the poor and sick of India.
-Del Martin dies (founded the first lesbian organization in the United States and fought for more than 50 years for the rights of lesbians and gays). She was married shortly before she died in California.
August 28:
-1963 - The March on Washington occurred as over 250,000 persons attended a Civil Rights rally in Washington, D.C., at which Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made his now-famous I Have a Dream speech.
-Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born Saint, was born in 1774
August 29:
-In 1758 the first Indian reservation was established
-1865 - The Battle of Tongue River occurs when General Patrick Edward Connor led over 200 troops in an attack on Chief Black Bear’s Arapaho village in Wyoming. The soldiers destroy all the winter's food supply, tents and clothes and kill over 50 of the Arapaho villagers.
August 30:
- Civil rights leader Roy Wilkins was born in 1901.
-Lt. Col. Guion S. Bluford Jr. becomes the first African American astronaut in space in 1983
August 31:
-1997 - Britain's Princess Diana died at age 36 from massive internal injuries suffered in a high-speed car crash, reportedly after being pursued by photographers. The crash occurred shortly after midnight in Paris inside a tunnel along the Seine River at the Pont de l'Alma bridge, less than a half mile north of the Eiffel Tower. Also killed in the crash were Diana's companion, Dodi Fayed, 42, and chauffeur Henri Paul. A fourth person in the car, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones, was seriously injured.
-The First International Symposium on Issues of Women with Disabilities is held in Beijing, China in combination with the Fourth World Conference on Women.