August 6

0258 Death: St. Sixtus II, pope from 257 to 258. He was set upon, beheaded and entombed in a catacomb as he was celebrating mass there.

0523 Death: St. Hormisdas, pope from 514 to 523. He effected the union of Orthodox and Catholic churches.

0768 Constantine ends his reign as Catholic Pope.

0939 During the Battle at Simancas, Spain beat the Moors.

1181 A supernova is observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers.

1492 One of Christopher Columbus's three ships, the Pinta, looses her rudder.

Cabot's World Map

1497 John Cabot returns to Bristol from North-America.

1504 Birth: Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, he had an extremely long nose and was extremely inquisitive, hence the expression 'nosy parker' and 'nosy.'

1600 Henry IV of France invades Savoy after negotiations break down over Saluzzo, controlled by Savoy since 1588. 

1637 Death: Ben Jonson, the first poet laureate, in poverty.

1651 Birth: Francois Fanelon, French priest and scholar. His 1697 writing, Christian Perfection, provided a reasoned defense of mystical spirituality, though it afterward brought him into disfavour with the pope. (Playing for Time).

1661 Holland sells Brazil to Portugal for 8 million guilders.

1667 Birth: (Jean) Johann(I) Bernoulli, in Switzerland, mathematician, investigated the then new mathematical calculus, which he applied to the measurement of curves, to differential equations, and to mechanical problems. Died 1 January 1748.

1697 Birth: Charles the Seventh, who would rule much of Baroque-era Europe under the name of the Holy Roman Empire (1742-45).

1726 Russia becomes part of the Treaty of Vienna and puts 30,000 troops at the disposal of her allies in return for support against a possible war with the Ottoman Empire. Emperor Karel VI and Tsarina Catharina the Great also sign the military treaty.

1727 French Ursuline nuns first arrived at New Orleans, where they set up the first Catholic charitable institution in America; an orphanage, a girl's school and a hospital.

1774 English religious leader Ann Lee (1736-1784) and a small band of followers first arrive in America. Her sect calls itself the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, but to the rest of the world her followers come to be known as the "Shakers."

1775 Birth: Daniel O'Connell, Catholic political leader. Died in 1847.

1787 The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia begins. The articles of the US Constitution draft are to be debated.

1801 The Great Religious Revival of the American West begins at a Presbyterian camp meeting in Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Presbyterian evangelist Barton W. Stone calls the week-long evangelical meeting and 25,000 people attend.

1806 German emperor Francis II officially dissolves the Holy Roman Empire when he abdicates. The Empire was a medieval state formed in 962AD that embraced most of central Europe and Italy under the rule of German kings. Although it was intended to be a continuation of the ancient Roman Empire, long before its dissolution it had ceased to be a major political power. Said Voltaire, "It was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire".

1824 In the Peruvian War of Independence Colombian patriots with Simon Bolivar defeat the Spanish at the battle of Junin north west of Lima.

1825 Bolivia declares independence from Peru after nearly 300 years of Spanish rule. Now a National Day.

1855 Anti-Catholic riots occur in Louisville, Kentucky.

1838 Abraham Lincoln is re-elected to the Illinois General Assembly, becoming Whig floor leader.

1844 The first UK press telegram is sent to The Times, announcing the birth of Prince Alfred to Queen Victoria.

1854 The US Congress passes the Confiscation Act.

1861 US Civil War: US President Abraham Lincoln signs a law freeing slaves being used by the Confederates in their war effort.

1862 US Civil War: Confederate ironclad CSA Arkansas is badly damaged in a Union attack.

1870 Reconstruction: White conservatives suppress the black vote and capture the Tennessee legislature.

1879 Death: Johann Von Lamont, aged 73. Born 13 December 1805 in Scotland. Physicist, astronomer, noted for discovering that the magnetic field of the Earth fluctuates with a period somewhat in excess of 10 years.

1881 Birth: Sir Alexander Fleming, in Ayrshire, Scotland, scientist, Scottish bacteriologist, discoverer of penicillin (1928) and lysozyme (1922), an antibacterial substance found in saliva and other body secretions. Educated at St. Mary's Hospital Medical School, University of London, where he later became professor of bacteriology, he published many articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy. He shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Ernst B. Chain and Sir Howard W. Florey for work on penicillin. Fleming was knighted in 1944. Died 11 March 1955 aged 73.

1889 Erfundenes Einzelteil: The bloody bowling ball bludgeoning of Belgian Brigadiers abruptly abates.

1890 The electric chair is used for the first time when Auburn State Prison in New York execute William Kemmler for the axe murder of his girlfriend.

1896 The French parliament votes for the annexation of Madagascar.

1914 WW1: Austria-Hungary declares war against Russia. Italy temporarily remains neutral, claiming its obligations to the Triple Alliance are void because Austria had initiated the war.

1914 WW1: A German Zeppelin bombs Liege City, 9 people are killed.

1914 WW1: The USS Tennessee sails to Europe with $6 million in gold to help American citizens stranded by the war.

1915 WW1: Hamilton attempts new landings at Gallipoli after the arrival of reinforcements, but because of the fear of German submarines, no battleships are available to provide artillery support and the operation fails. Russia is permanently cut off from its allies.

1916 WW1: General Cadorna again strikes the Austrian Isonzo front. In this Sixth Battle of the Isonzo the Italians take Gorizia, but no breakthrough is achieved. Psychologically, the operation boosts Italian morale, lowered by the heavy losses in the Trentino.

1918 WWI: The last German attack on the Western Front, the Second Battle of the Marne, ends. The Germans suffer at least 100,000 casualties.

1925 The German Reichstag ratifies the Dawes Plan.

1929 August 6-13 The Hague conference on the Young Plan. German acceptance of this plan leads to the evacuation of the Rhineland by French troops.

1930 Haven't Seen Him Since: Joseph Force Crater, a New York Supreme Court Justice, mysteriously disappears. He is declared legally dead in 1939.

1935 The Reich Association of Jewish Cultural Unions, established by the Reich Chamber of Culture, is placed under the control of Goebbel's propaganda ministry.

1934 US troops leave Haiti, which had been occupied since 1915. Note: The US has occupied Haiti numerous times and has consistently failed to bring a stable democracy to this island nation so close to home.

1936 Spanish Civil War: The US declares its strict neutrality in the conflict.

1937 President Franco's artillery fires on Madrid.

1939 Mussolini, fearing Germany will go to war with Poland, discusses with Count Galeazzo Ciano, his son-in-law and Foreign Minister, possible ways to evade the terms of the Pact of Steel, which commits them to aiding Germany. Mussolini believes Italy is still 3 years short of readiness for war.

1939 German authorities in Danzig tell the Poles that their customs officials can no longer work in the port.

1940 Estonia is formally absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.

1941 The Japanese present proposals involving concessions in China and Indochina to the US, asking in return for an end to the freeze on Japanese assets. These proposals are quickly rejected by Roosevelt, and the Japanese ask for a meeting between the President and Prime Minister Kenoye to settle their differences. (See September 3)

1942 WW2: Queen Wilhemina of the Netherlands becomes the first reigning queen to address a joint session of US Congress, telling lawmakers that despite Nazi occupation, her people's motto remains, "No surrender."

1942 WW2: Winston Churchill fires General Auchinlek as Middle-East commandant.

1944 Holocaust: August 6-30 70,000 Jews from Lodz, the last of the "working" ghettos, are sent to Auschwitz. (Atlas)

1945 WW2: Before sunrise, on 6 August 1945, an American B-29 bomber named Enola Gay set off from Tinian Island, in the Marianas. Over Hiroshima, Japan, at approximately 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, it dropped the world's first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people were killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 were injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. US President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on 5 August, while a conventional bombing of Japan was underway, 'Little Boy,' (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets' plane on Tinian Island in the Marianas.

Tibbets' B-29, named the Enola Gay after his mother, left the island at 2:45 a.m. on 6 August. Five and a half hours later, 'Little Boy' was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. The bomb had several inscriptions scribbled on its shell, one of which read "Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis" (the ship that transported the bomb to the Marianas). President Truman told the American people: "Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the sky the likes of which has never been seen on this earth."

There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city's 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before - only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying. According to John Hersey's classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load. There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them. Two days after Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan (as agreed at the February Yalta Conference between the big three = Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin and invaded Japanese-held Manchuria. Still today, debates continue, as to the necessity of using nuclear weapons against Japan.

1946 The US officially submits to jurisdiction of the World Court.

1948 A Jewish correspondent (Americanus) writing in the London "Jewish Chronicle," states, "Most of the persons who have cudgeled their wits over the problem, have neglected one of the most obvious impacts on American life Jews have made, in the mass entertainment media -- radio, films, the stage, night clubs. One might almost say that American culture as a whole has taken on certain Jewish overtones." Antisemites quickly picked up on this assertion and added it as an editor's note to a new edition of Henry Ford's "The International Jew."

1960 Nationalization of US and foreign-owned property in Cuba begins.

1961 Gherman S. Titov is the second Russian in space aboard Vostok 2. The first case of motion sickness in space is also reported. Titov is sick on his way around the world 17 times before returning safely to the Soviet Union.

1962 Jamaica becomes an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.

1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Federal Voting Rights Act into law, which guarantees black voting rights. It would bring to an end, state-sponsored poll taxes and literacy tests, which had been used to deny minority citizens their voting rights.

1981 Fire fighters in Indianapolis answer a false alarm. When they return to their station it is ablaze due to a grease fire.

1983 In Saturday radio addresses, House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. challenges President Reagan to drop plans for cutting back government nutrition programs for the poor, while Reagan said recent economic news showed that "things are looking up for America."

1985 The 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing brings tens of thousands of Japanese and foreigners to Hiroshima.

1988 Iraq's president says his country will agree to a cease-fire with Iran provided the Iranians promise to hold direct talks immediately after the truce takes effect.

1989 The highest twin prime numbers are found in Santa Clara, California. They were 1,706,595 x 2^11,235 - 1 and 1,706,595 x 2^11,235 + 1. Note: One wonders what, exactly, they were doing in California?

1990 Gulf War 1: The UN Security Council orders a worldwide trade embargo against Iraq. The embargo is to punish Iraq for invading Kuwait. The United Nations (UN) Security Council voted 13-0 (2 abstensions Cuba & Yemen) to ban trade with Iraq except for medicine and some food for humanitarian relief after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

1992 President George HW Bush grants full diplomatic recognition to the former Yugoslav republics of Bosnia-Hercegovina, Slovenia and Croatia, the same day Britain's Independent Television News shows videotape of emaciated detainees at a pair of Serb prison camps.

1993 The US Senate joins the House in passing President Clinton's budget plan, 51-to-50, with a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Al Gore.

1993 Morihiro Hosokawa is elected the new prime minister of Japan by the country's lower house of Parliament.

1993 US Congress completes action on a $6.2 billion flood relief package.

1994 In Wedowee, Alabama, an apparent arson fire destroys the Randolph County High School, which had been the focus of tensions over the principal's stand against interracial dating.

1995 Some 100,000 people in Hiroshima, Japan, set glowing lanterns afloat in rivers, capping a day of tributes on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing.

1996 NASA announces the discovery of evidence of primitive life on Mars. Note: The evidence comes in the form of a meteorite that is found in Antarctica but believed to have come from Mars, which contains a fossil.

1996 Officials announce the Air Force had punished 16 officers in connection with the crash that killed Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others the previous April.

1998 Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky spends 8 1/2 hours testifying before a grand jury about her relationship with US President Clinton.

1998 The House Government Reform and Oversight Committee votes to cite Attorney General Janet Reno for contempt of Congress for her refusal to turn over reports recommending that she seek an independent counsel to investigate campaign fundraising.

1998 Indian students staged a Peace Festival in Mumbai for the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing to protest their country's recent nuclear weapons testing. Peace Together 98, on the campus lawns of St. Andrews College in the Mumbai suburb of Bandra, India feature free performances from top Hindi pop artists such as Lucky Ali, Sagarika, Mehnaaz, Uday Benega, and Vikas Bhalla.

2004

Hiroshima
2004

2004