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Aug. 4
Today in history
Today is Aug. 4. On this date in:
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1704: Britain captured the tiny but strategically important Rock of Gibraltar during the War of the Spanish Succession. Admiral George Rooke’s Anglo-Dutch fleet fired about 15,000 cannonballs into the 2.3-square-mile territory before making landfall. The Rock remains British today.
1790: Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton established the Revenue Cutter Service as Congress approved the building of 10 cutter ships. In 1915, the service merged with the Life-Saving Service to create the U.S. Coast Guard.
1892: Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were found slain by 29 (or 30) whacks in Fall River, Massachusetts. A jury later ruled that Lizzie did not pick up the ax.
1900: The Honorable Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon – or, as we knew her, the Queen Mum, wife of King George VI and mother to the late Queen Elizabeth II – was born in England.
1901: Louis Armstrong was born in New Orleans. He dropped out of school in the fifth grade and went to work for the Karnofsky family, which allowed him to buy his first cornet. The jazz pioneer took his first formal lessons while incarcerated at the Colored Waifs Home for Boys, a juvenile detention facility.
1914: Great Britain declared war on Germany after the Germans invaded Belgium. The decision also bound its colonies, including India, Australia and Canada. As Europe tumbled into the Great War, the United States would declare its neutrality.
1932: Pioneering computer scientist Frances Allen was born in northern New York. She became the first woman to win the A.M. Turing Award, the highest prize in computer science, for her work on compiler techniques at IBM. She also died on this day in 2020.
1944: The Nazis raided the “Secret Annex” in Amsterdam and sent Anne Frank and its seven other Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps. Only Anne’s father, Otto Frank, survived.
1958: Billboard published its first Hot 100. At the top: “Poor Little Fool” by Ricky Nelson. It held the spot for two weeks before being knocked off by Domenico Modugno’s “Volare.”
1964: The bodies of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found on a farm outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. The civil rights workers had been missing for more than a month; their murders spurred international outrage.
2010: In a victory for gay rights, federal District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8, the 2008 referendum that banned same-sex marriage in California with 52% support, violated the 14th Amendment’s promise of equal protection for all. “Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples,” Walker wrote.
2012: South African track star Oscar Pistorius, a Paralympic gold medalist, became the first amputee runner to compete at the Olympics after successfully challenging a decision that said his prosthesis gave him an unfair advantage. He made it to the semifinals of the 400-meter race. Years later, Pistorius went to prison after shooting his girlfriend; he was paroled in 2024.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, August 4
