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Aug. 2
Today in history
Today is Aug. 2. On this date in:
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1776: Most congressional delegates formally signed the Declaration of Independence, about a month after the Second Continental Congress voted to approve it.
1790: Data collection began for the first U.S. Census. Although the survey took months, census takers were told to record information as of Aug. 2 – Census Day. The count covered the original 13 states plus what is now Kentucky, Maine, Tennessee and Vermont. It totaled 3.9 million people.
1835: Inventor Elisha Gray was born. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell beat him to the patent office by just hours with plans for a telephone. Gray later designed the telegraph printer and the first electronic musical instrument, the synthesizer. His rival Bell died on this day in 1922.
1876: Western gunfighter “Wild Bill” Hickok was fatally shot from behind while playing poker in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, now South Dakota. Legend says Hickok had a two-pair hand of black aces and eights, which became known as the “dead man’s hand.”
1923: President Warren G. Harding died in San Francisco. The cause of death was likely a heart attack, but his wife’s decision to refuse an autopsy and order immediate embalming sparked rumors for a generation.
1924: Novelist, essayist, playwright and activist James Baldwin was born in New York City. He grew up in poverty and became outspoken in support of civil rights and gay rights.
1934: Chancellor Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany after President Paul von Hindenburg died. The German democratic state would not revive until after World War II.
1956: Missouri became the first state to award a construction contract for a section of the new U.S. interstate highway system. The first contract signed was for Route 66 in Laclede County.
1986: Roy Cohn died of complications of AIDS in Bethesda, Maryland. Famous as a lawyer for Sen. Joe McCarthy’s Communist “witch trials,” Cohn, a closeted gay man, claimed to the end that he had liver cancer.
1990: Iraq invaded its wealthy neighbor Kuwait. President Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw, setting off the U.S.-led Gulf War.
1992: At the Barcelona Games, Jackie Joyner-Kersee became the first heptathlete to win two consecutive Olympic gold medals.
1995: President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12968, which banned discrimination based on sexual orientation when determining which government employees may access classified information.
2018: TikTok, the short-form video-sharing social media network, became available worldwide after merging with Musical.ly.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, August 2
