August 2

It’s National Ice Cream Sandwich Day

ON THIS DAY…
1622 Nathaniel Butter and William Sheffard publish Newes from Most Parts of Christendom, the first regular newspaper printed in England but because of political restrictions, it covers mainly foreign news
1695 A British patent was granted to Daniel Quare for a portable portable weather-glass column (barometer) “which,” in the words of the patent “may be removed and transported to any place, though turned upside down, without spilling one drop of the quicksilver, or letting any air into the tube, or excluding the pressure of the atmosphere”
1776 Delegates to the Continental Congress begin signing the United States Declaration of Independence
1790 The first US Census is conducted
1791 Samuel Briggs and his son, Samuel Briggs, Jr. became the first father-son pair to receive a joint US patent; their invention was a nail-making machine
1869 Japan’s samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system (Shin?k?sh?) is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms
1870 Tower Subway, the first tube railway in the world, was opened under the River Thames in London, England
1880 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was adopted officially by the British Parliament
1918 Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I
1933 Albert Einstein, representing fellow physicists who have discovered that an atomic bomb could be built from uranium, urges President Franklin D. Roosevelt to promote such research before Germany does
1937 The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, essentially rendering marijuana and all its by-products illegal
1938 The first nylon-bristle toothbrush in the US was described in a New York Times business report; Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft toothbrush, a new product from the Weco Products Company, was the first to use synthetic DuPont nylon bristles instead of natural hog bristles
1943 A Japanese destroyer rams a U.S. Navy PT boat commanded by John F. Kennedy; Kennedy and the other survivors swim for hours to a nearby island and are rescued four days later
1956 The first new contract to build a section of the U.S. Interstate Highway system, awarded after the signing of the Highway-Aid Act of 1956, was for U.S. Route 66 in Laclede County, MO which became Interstate 44
1979 Gilda Radner Live From New York premiered on Broadway
1990 Shortly after midnight, 150,000 Iraqi troops invade neighboring Kuwait, capturing the capital city by dawn; the Iraqis will be driven from Kuwait in February at the end of the Persian Gulf War
2008 Breaking Dawn, fourth book in the Twilight series saga written by Stephenie Meyer was released

BORN:
1892 Jack Warner, president and driving force behind the successful development of Warner Brothers Studios in Hollywood; his 45-year career was lengthier than that of any other traditional Hollywood studio mogul
1905 Myrna Loy, actress (The Thin Man, A Connecticut Yankee (1931), The Mask of Fu Manchu, Manhattan Melodrama)
1920 Bill Scott, cartoon producer, writer, voice artist: Bullwinkle J. Moose, Dudley Do-right, and Mr. Peabody on The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
1924 Carroll O’Connor, 5-time Emmy Award-winning actor (All in the Family, In the Heat of the Night, Cleopatra, Hawaii)
1932 Peter O’Toole, BAFTA Award-winning actor (Lawrence of Arabia, Becket, The Last Emperor, The Lion in Winter, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Ruling Class, The Stunt Man)
1939 Wes Craven, director, writer, producer (The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Swamp Thing, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream)
1945 Joanna Cassidy, actress (Blade Runner, Buffalo Bill, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Tommyknockers, Chain Reaction, Six Feet Under)
1953 Butch Patrick (Patrick Alan Lilley), former American child actor best known for his role as Eddie Munster in the television show The Munsters
1959 Victoria Jackson, actress and comedienne (Saturday Night Live, UHF, The Pick-up Artist, I Love You to Death)
1964 Mary-Louise Parker, Emmy Award-winning actress (Angels in America, Weeds, The West Wing, Red Dragon, Fried Green Tomatoes)
1970 Kevin Smith, screenwriter, writer, film director, actor and comic book writer
1977 Edward Furlong, actor (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Brainscan, American History X, The Crow: Wicked Prayer)

DIED:
1876 Wild Bill Hickok (James Butler Hickok), a legendary figure in the American Old West. His skills as a gunfighter and scout, along with his reputation as a lawman, provided the basis for his fame, is shot from behind while playing poker in a Deadwood, South Dakota, saloon; Hickock’s final hand, pairs of aces and eights, becomes known as the “dead man’s hand” at 39
1923 Warren G. Harding, 29th President of the United States (1921-1923), US Senator from Ohio (1899 – 1903, 1915-1921), 28th Lieutenant Governor of Ohio (1904-1906), dies in San Francisco, four days after collapsing from an embolism at 57
1976 Fritz Lang, film director and screenwriter (M, Metropolis, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler), dies at 85
1988 Raymond Carver, short story writer and poet who is considered a major American writer of the late 20th century and also a major force in the revitalization of the short story in the 1980s, dies of lung cancer at 50
1997 William S. Burroughs, novelist, essayist, social critic, painter and spoken word performer; he was a primary member of the Beat Generation, he was an avant-garde author who affected popular culture as well as literature, dies at 83