August 2 - Definition and Overview

August 2 is the 214th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (215th in leap years), with 151 days remaining.

Events

400 BC-AD 1899

• 338 BC - Rise of Macedon: Philip of Macedon crushes Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea.
• 216 BC - Punic Wars: In the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal destroys the Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Publius Terentius Varro in what is considered one of the great masterpieces of the tactical art.
• AD 461 - Majorian resigns as Western Roman Emperor; shortly afterwards Libius Severus is declared western Roman emperor by Ricimer
• 1776 - Delegates to the Continental Congress begin to sign the Declaration_of_Independence.
• 1790 - First US Census; records are missing for five states: Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey and Virginia. Destroyed somewhere between that date and 1830.
• 1798 - Second Coalition: End of the Battle of the Nile between French and British navies; France defeated.
• 1870 - Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.

1900-1999

• 1903 - Fall of the Ottoman Empire: Unsuccessful uprising of the Bulgarians against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden uprising.
• 1916 - World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.
• 1934 - Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
• 1943 - PT-109, with future president of the United States Lieutenant John F. Kennedy aboard, sinks.
• 1944 - Beginning of the Treblinka uprising.
• 1945 - World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.
• 1950 - The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was published on Yankee Stadium, New York.
• 1955 - Velcro is patented.
• 1964 - North Vietnam fires on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
• 1967 - The second Blackwall Tunnel opened in Greenwich, London.
• 1975 - In New Orleans, Louisiana, the Superdome officially opens with an American football game between the New Orleans Saints and Houston Oilers.
• 1976 - An intruder breaks into Priscilla Davis's Mockingbird Lane mansion in Fort Worth, Texas. Priscilla Davis and a friend are injured while Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr are killed. T. Cullen Davis is tried and found innocent of the crime.
• 1980 - Hard rock band AC/DC release Back in Black, their first album with lead singer Brian Johnson and their best-selling
• 1985 - A Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, killing 137.
• 1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.
• 1997 - Australian ski instructor Stuart Diver is rescued as the sole survivor from the Thredbo landslide in New South Wales, Australia, in which 18 lives were lost.

Births

1500-1899

• 1533 - Theodor Zwinger, medical scholar (d. 1588)
• 1672 - Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, savant (d. 1733)
• 1754 - Pierre Charles L'Enfant, architect, city planner (d. 1825)
• 1788 - Leopold Gmelin, chemist (d. 1853)
• 1815 - Adolf Friedrich von Schack, writer (d. 1894)
• 1834 - Frédéric Bartholdi, sculptor (d. 1904)
• 1854 - Milan I, king of Serbia
• 1868 - Constantine I of Greece, king of Greece (d. 1923)
• 1871 - John Sloan, artist (d. 1951)
• 1892 - Jack Warner, film producer (d. 1978
• 1897 - Max Weber, Swiss Federal Councilor (d. 1974)

1900-1999

• 1900 - Helen Morgan, actress (d. 1941)
• 1905 - Karl Amadeus Hartmann, composer (d. 1963)
• 1905 - Myrna Loy, Academy Award-winning actress (d. 1993)
• 1905 - Rudolf Prack, actor (d. 1981)
• 1912 - Vladimir Zerjavic, Croat - UN statistician (d. 2001)
• 1914 - Beatrice Straight, Academy Award-winning actress (Network, Poltergeist) (d. 2001)
• 1915 - Gary Merrill, actor (d. 1990)
• 1924 - James Baldwin, author (d. 1987)
• 1924 - Carroll O'Connor, actor (d. 2001)
• 1932 - Peter O'Toole, actor: Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter
• 1934 - Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
• 1939 - Wes Craven, horror film director
• 1941 - Doris Coley, singer, member of the Shirelles (d. 2000)
• 1942 - Isabel Allende, author
• 1948 - Dennis Prager - radio talk show host and author
• 1951 - Lance Ito, judge in the O. J. Simpson case
• 1953 - Butch Patrick, actor
• 1957 - Mojo Nixon, rockabilly musician, actor
• 1961 - Linda Fratianne, Olympics figure skater
• 1964 - Mary-Louise Parker, actress
• 1969 - Fernando Couto, football player
• 1970 - Tony Amonte, NHL star, Stan Chudnovsky, engineer, vodka infuser
• 1972 - Kevin Smith, actor, director, screenwriter
• 1977 - Edward Furlong, actor
• 1982 - Hélder Postiga, football player
• 1992 - Hallie Kate Eisenberg, actress, Pepsi-Cola spokesperson

Deaths

400-1899

• 461 - Majorian, Roman Emperor (assassination) (b. 457)
• 1100 - King William II of England (b.c. 1056)
• 1611 - Kato Kiyomasa, Japanese daimyo and samurai (b. 1562)
• 1876 - Wild Bill Hickock, gunfighter (b. 1837)

1900-1999

• 1921 - Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor (b. 1873)
• 1922 - Alexander Graham Bell, inventor (b. 1847)
• 1923 - Warren G. Harding, 29th president of the United States (b. 1865)
• 1934 - Paul von Hindenburg, general and politician (b. 1847)
• 1936 - Louis Blériot, French aviation pioneer (b. 1872)
• 1939 - Harvey Spencer Lewis, founder of AMORC (b. 1883)
• 1945 - Pietro Mascagni, composer (b. 1863)
• 1976 - Fritz Lang, film director (b. 1890)
• 1976 - Andrea Wilborn, daughter of Priscilla Davis (b. 1964)
• 1976 - Stan Farr, TCU basketball star, boyfriend of Priscilla Davis
• 1978 - Carlos Chávez, composer
• 1979 - Thurman Munson, Yankees catcher
• 1986 - Roy Cohn, politician, anti-Communist (b. 1927)
• 1988 - Raymond Carver, writer, poet (b. 1938)
• 1990 - Norman Mclean, writer (b. 1902)
• 1997 - William S. Burroughs, writer (b. 1914)
• 1998 - Shari Lewis, puppeteer (b. 1933)

2000-2099

• 2003 - Don Estelle, British actor
• 2003 - Mike Levey, famous American infomercial host
• 2004 - Wilhelm Fresenius, German chemist (b. 1913)
• 2004 - Don Tosti, Latin jazz musician (b. 1923)
• 2004 - Henri Cartier-Bresson, French photographer (b. 1908)

Holidays and observances

• Costa Rica - Our Lady of the Angels
• Bulgaria/Republic of Macedonia - Ilinden (St. Ilya Day), a day of remembrance of the Ilinden Uprising

August 1 - August 3 - July 2 - September 2 -- listing of all days