On August 2, 1790, the United States of America took its first count of the population. The U.S. Constitution ratified in 1789, mandated that a census be conducted to enumerate the people to apportion seats in the House of Representatives and assess direct taxes…
Read More
On August 1, 1800, the Acts of Union were passed by the parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland, legally binding the two into a single political entity: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The union, which took effect on January 1, 1801,…
Read More
On August 1, 30 BC, a defining moment in ancient history unfolded as Octavian, the future Augustus Caesar, conquered the city of Alexandria. This conquest marked the culmination of a power struggle that would reshape the Roman Empire and influence the course of Western…
Read More
August 1, 1944, saw one of the largest urban uprisings of World War II. Since the beginning of the war and the joint Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, the Polish government had existed in exile in London. By the summer of 1944, with…
Read More
On July 31, 1790, the fledgling United States took a decisive step toward promoting innovation and industrial progress: it issued its first patent. The recipient was Samuel Hopkins of Philadelphia, who secured legal recognition for a novel process of making potash—an essential ingredient in…
Read More
The history of the lunar rover, an extraordinary feat of engineering, began with its debut on the moon on July 31, 1971, during the Apollo 15 mission. The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), also known simply as the lunar rover, was a crucial development for…
Read More
On July 31, 1777, a 19-year-old French aristocrat, Marie-Joseph Paul Roch Yves Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, received a commission, without pay, from the Continental Congress making him a major-general in the Continental Army. Lafayette had developed a great interest in the colonial…
Read More
On the morning of July 30, 1864, Union forces launched a bold yet catastrophically mishandled attempt to break the Confederate lines outside Petersburg, Virginia—an effort that would become known as the Battle of the Crater. As part of the larger Petersburg Campaign, the battle…
Read More
In the summer of 1676, Virginia’s tidewater region simmered with discontent. Economic hardship, political grievances, and ongoing frontier conflicts converged to ignite one of the most significant uprisings in colonial American history: Bacon’s Rebellion. The colony of Virginia in the 17th century was a…
Read More
Only July 30, 1975, the famous, or infamous, leader of the Teamsters Union went to the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in suburban Detroit for dinner and was never seen again. “James Riddle Hoffa was one of America’s foremost labor organizers, known for his leadership…
Read More
