Category: History

August 15 The American-built waterway across the Isthmus of Panama, to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, is inaugurated with the passage of the U.S. vessel Ancon, a cargo and passenger ship. – 1914. Emperor Hirohito broadcasts the news of Japan’s surrender to the Japanese people. In Japan’s Shinto religious...

August 8 President Harry S Truman signs the United Nations Charter and the United States becomes the first nation to complete the ratification process and join the new international organization. – 1945. August 9 A second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally...

August 1 Four days after Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, two more great European powers, Russia and Germany, declare war on each other; the same day, France orders a general mobilization. The so-called Great War that ensued would be one of unprecedented destruction and loss of life, resulting in the...

July 25 Workers stage a general strike, believed to be the Nation’s first, in St. Louis, in support of striking railroad workers. The successful strike was ended when approximately 3,000 federal troops and 5,000 deputized special police kill at least 18 individuals in skirmishes around the city. – 1877. Louise...

July 18 A fire erupts in Rome and spreads rapidly throughout the market area in the center of the city. When the flames finally die out more than a week later, nearly two-thirds of Rome is destroyed. Emperor Nero used the fire as an opportunity to rebuild Rome in a...

July 11 On this day in 1916, in a ceremony at the White House, president Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Aid Road Act. The law established a national policy of federal aid for highways. – 1916. Fulfilling agreements reached at various war-time conferences, the Soviet Union promises to hand power...

July 4 In Philadelphia, Pa., the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. The declaration came 442 days after the first volleys of the American Revolution were fired at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts...

June 27 The Germans set up two-way radio communication in a newly-occupied French territory and employ their most sophisticated coding machine, Enigma. – 1940. U.S. president Harry S Truman announces that he is ordering U.S. air and naval forces to South Korea to aid the democratic nation in repulsing an...

June 20 Oil begins moving through the Alaska pipeline. Seventy thousand persons worked on building the pipeline, history’s largest privately-financed construction project. – 1977. June 21 In Neshoba County in central Mississippi, three civil rights field workers disappear after investigating the burning of an African American church by the Ku...