August 4
1753
George Washington, a young Virginia planter, became a Master Mason, the highest basic rank in the secret fraternity of Freemasonry. The ceremony was held at the Masonic Lodge No. 4 in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Washington was 21 years old and would soon command his first military operation as a major in the Virginia colonial militia. Presidents known to be Masons include Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, James Polk, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, James Garfield, William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford. Today there are an estimated two million Masons in the United States.
1892
Andrew and Abby Borden are found hacked to death in the Fall River, MA, home. Their daughter, Lizzie Borden was arrested and charged with the double homicide. As a result of the crime’s sensational nature, her trial attracted national attention. The evidence that the prosecution presented against Borden was circumstantial. The fact that no blood was found on Lizzie coupled with her well-bred Christian persona convinced the all-male jury that she was incapable of the gruesome crime and they quickly acquitted her. Today, the house where the Borden murders occurred is a bed and breakfast. Despite Lizzie Borden’s acquittal, the cloud of suspicion that hung over her never disappeared.
2006
"Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," an irreverent comedy based in the outlandish (fictionalized) world of American stock car racing, premiered in move theaters around the US. It starred Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, and Sacha Baron Cohen and offered an unapologetically exaggerated version of the NASCAR world, repeatedly poking fun at the stereotypical image of car-loving “good old boys” from the American South, in the style of shows like “The Dukes of Hazzard.” It also satirized NASCAR’s affection for product placement: The cars in the movie are covered with advertisements for brands such as Wonder Bread and Old Spice and the characters are constantly singing the praises of Domino’s Pizza, PowerAde and other products.
August 5
1961
Amusement park lovers “head for the thrills” as Six Flags Over Texas, the first park in the Six Flags chain, had its grand opening. Located on 212 acres in Arlington, Texas, the park was the first to feature log flume and mine train rides and later, the first 360-degree looping roller coaster, modern parachute drop and man-made river rapids ride. The park also pioneered the concept of all-inclusive admission price; until then, separate entrance fees and individual ride tickets were the standard. During its opening year, a day at Six Flags cost $2.75 for an adult and $2.25 for a child. A hamburger sold for 50 cents and a soda set the buyer back a dime.
1962
Movie actress Marilyn Monroe was found deceased in her home in Los Angeles. After a brief investigation, Los Angeles police concluded that her death was “caused by a self-administered overdose of sedative drugs and that the mode of death is probable suicide.” In recent decades, there have been a number of conspiracy theories about her death, most of which contend that she was murdered by John and/or Robert Kennedy, with whom she allegedly had love affairs and was gathering government secrets. Monroe's housekeeper even claimed Robert was there that night and quarreled, but the reliability of these and other statements made by Murray are questionable.
1981
President Ronald Reagan began firing 11,359 air-traffic controllers striking in violation of his order for them to return to work. The executive action, regarded as extreme by many, significantly slowed air travel for two months. Two days earlier, on August 3, almost 13,000 air-traffic controllers who were members of the Professional Air-Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO) went on strike after negotiations with the federal government to raise their pay and shorten their workweek proved fruitless. President Reagan called the strike illegal and threatened to fire any controller who had not returned to work within 48 hours. In addition, he declared a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
August 6
1928
Andy Warhol, one of the most influential artists of the latter part of the 20th century, was born Andrew Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A frail and diminutive man with a shock of silver-blond hair, Warhol was a major pioneer of the pop art movement of the 1960s but later outgrew that role to become a cultural icon. He was hailed as the leader of the pop art movement, in which Warhol and others depicted “popular” images such as a soup can or comic strip as a means of fusing high and low culture and commenting on both. In the 1980s, he returned to the contemporary art scene as a mentor and friend to a new generation of artists, including Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. With the rise of postmodern art, he came to be regarded as an archetypal role model by many young artists.
1930
New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater vanished on the streets of Manhattan near Times Square. The dapper 41-year-old's disappearance launched a massive investigation that captivated the nation, earning Crater the title of "the missingest man in New York." He was declared legally dead in 1939. In 2005, New York police revealed that new evidence had emerged in the case of the city’s missingest man. A woman who had died earlier that year had left a handwritten note in which she claimed that her husband and several other men, including a police officer, had murdered Crater and buried his body beneath a section of the Coney Island boardwalk. That site had been excavated during the construction of the New York Aquarium in the 1950s, long before technology existed to detect and identify human remains. As a result, the question of whether Judge Crater sleeps with the fishes remains a mystery.
1945
The United States became the first and only nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. Three days later, another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing nearly 40,000 more people. In the years since, a number of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged objective. First, of course, was to bring the war with Japan to a speedy end and spare American lives. It has been suggested that the second objective was to demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union.
August 7
1782
General George Washington, the commander in chief of the Continental Army, created the “Badge for Military Merit,” a decoration consisting of a purple, heart-shaped piece of silk, edged with a narrow binding of silver, with the word Merit stitched across the face in silver. The award was nearly forgotten about after the Revolutionary War, but reinstated in 1932 on Washington’s 200th birthday. The U.S. War Department announced the creation of the “Order of the Purple Heart." The Order of the Purple Heart, the oldest American military decoration for military merit, is awarded to member of the U.S. armed forces who have been killed or wounded in action against an enemy. It is also awarded to soldiers who have suffered maltreatment as prisoners of war.
1942
The U.S. 1st Marine Division begins Operation Watchtower, the first U.S. offensive of WWII, by landing on Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands. Weeks earlier, the Japanese landed on Guadalcanal Island and began constructing an airfield there. Operation Watchtower was the codename for the U.S. plan to invade Guadalcanal and the surrounding islands. During the attack, American troops landed on five islands within the Solomon chain. The first Medal of Honor given to a Marine was awarded to Sgt. John Basilone for his fighting during Operation Watchtower. According to the recommendation for his medal, he “contributed materially to the defeat and virtually the annihilation of a Japanese regiment.”
1990
President George H.W. Bush ordered the organization of Operation Desert Shield in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait on August 2. The order prepared American troops to become part of an international coalition in the war against Iraq that would be launched as Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. On November 29, 1990, the United Nations Security Council authorized the use of “all means necessary” to remove Hussein’s forces from Kuwait, giving Iraq the deadline of midnight on January 16, 1991, to leave or risk forcible removal. After negotiations between U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Iraq’s foreign minister, Tariq Aziz, failed, Congress authorized President Bush to use American troops in the coming conflict.
1998
A massive truck bomb exploded outside the U.S embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, followed by another truck bomb detonated out the U.S. embassy in Dar es Salaam, the capital in neighboring Tanzania. The dual terrorist attackes killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded more than 4,500. The United States accused Saudi exile Osama bin Laden of masterminding the bombings.
August 8
1898
Corn Flakes was invented by accident when Dr. John Kellogg and his younger brother, Will Keith Kellogg, left some cooked wheat out that soon became stale. The cereal soon became a diet mainstay for clean living at their Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, a world-renowned health resort which was founded by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The breakfast cereal proved popular among the patients and Kellogg subsequently started what became the Kellogg Company to produce corn flakes for the wider public. A patent for the process was granted in 1896, after a legal battle between the two brothers.
1974
President Richard M. Nixon announced his intention to become the first president in American history to resign. With impeachment proceedings underway against him for his involvement in the Watergate affair, Nixon was finally bowing to pressure from the public and Congress to leave the White House. “By taking this action,” he said in a solemn address from the Oval Office, “I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.” After taking the oath of office, President Ford spoke to the nation in a television address, declaring, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” He later pardoned Nixon for any crimes he may have committed while in office.
2009
Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents, Sotomayor is the first Hispanic justice to serve on the nation's highest court. In addition to becoming the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor was the third woman named to the bench. The following year, Justice Elena Kagan would become the fourth. Since her appointment, Sotomayor has been notable for her forceful dissent in several cases regarding racial discrimination, as well as siding with the majority in a 5-4 decision that upheld the Affordable Care Act.
August 9
1854
Henry David Thoreau's classic "Walden", or, "A Life in the Woods", was released. The American transcendentalist writer’s work is a first-person account of his experimental time of simple living at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, starting in 1845, for two years and two months. The book explores Thoreau’s views on nature, politics and philosophy. “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived,” he wrote.
1988
Edmonton Oilers center Wayne "The Great One" Gretzky is traded to the Los Angeles Kings. At age 27, Gretzky was already widely considered the greatest player in hockey history. Fan reaction to the trade ran the gamut from shocked and saddened to angry. After the announcement, Oilers owner Peter Pocklington defended the move by explaining that Gretzky had asked to be traded to Los Angeles. Gretzky himself explained the decision this way: “I felt I was still young enough and capable enough to help a new franchise win a Stanley Cup.” After saying the trade was made “for the benefit of Wayne Gretzky, my new wife and our expected child in the new year,” the hockey star then walked away from the microphone, overcome with emotion at leaving the city where he had established himself as a Canadian hero.
1995
Like his band the Grateful Dead, which was still going strong three decades after its formation, Jerry Garcia defied his life-expectancy not merely by surviving, but by thriving creatively and commercially into the 1990s—far longer than most of his peers. His long, strange trip came to an end, however, when he died on this day of a heart attack in a residential drug-treatment facility in Forest Knolls, California. A legendary guitarist and cultural icon, Jerry Garcia was 53 years old. During the final decade of Jerry Garcia’s life, following his recovery from a five-day diabetic coma in 1986, the Dead played an average of 100 to 150 live shows per year, frequently to sold-out audiences that included a significant proportion of tie-dye-wearing college students who were not yet alive when the Grateful Dead first made their name.
August 10
1945
Just a day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan submitted its acquiescence to the Potsdam Conference terms of unconditional surrender, as President Harry S. Truman ordered a halt to atomic bombing. Emperor Hirohito, having remained aloof from the daily decisions of prosecuting the war, rubber-stamping the decisions of his War Council, including the decision to bomb Pearl Harbor, finally felt compelled to do more. He implored the council to consider accepting the terms of the Potsdam Conference, which meant unconditional surrender. “It seems obvious that the nation is no longer able to wage war, and its ability to defend its own shores is doubtful.”
1981
Pete Rose of the Philadelphia Phillies got the 3,631st hit of his baseball career, breaking Stan Musial’s record for most hits by a National Leaguer. The record-breaking hit came in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, the team with whom Musial had spent his entire career, and the former hits king was on hand to congratulate Rose. After he led off the inning with a single between third base and shortstop, the crowd rewarded him with a standing ovation, and Musial ran out to first base to offer his congratulations. Amazingly, it was only Rose’s 2,886th game; it had taken Musial 3,026 games to set the mark.
1984
The action thriller Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze, opened in theaters as the first movie to be released with a PG-13 rating. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which oversees the movie rating system, had announced the new PG-13 category in July of that same year. Founded in 1922 as a trade group for the American film industry, the MPAA introduced its first-ever movie rating system in November 1968. The system came in response to groups who wanted better guidelines for parents to determine whether or not a movie’s content and themes were child-appropriate.