August 4

It’s US Coast Guard Day

ON THIS DAY…
1693 Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon’s invention of Champagne
1735 A jury finds John Peter Zenger, publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, not guilty of seditious libel; the case marks the first victory for American freedom of the press
1753 George Washington becomes a master mason
1790 A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard)
1809 Prince Metternich, who will dominate European affairs for much of the next four decades, becomes foreign minister of the Austrian Habsburg empire
1873 Whilst protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, clash for the first time with the Sioux (near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed)
1892 The family of Lizzie Borden is found murdered in their Fall River, MA home
1902 The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opens
1914 Britain enters World War I by declaring war on Germany after Germany refuses to honor the neutrality of Belgium
1921 A facsimile was transmitted by radio across the Atlantic Ocean using the Belinograph invented by Eduard Belin; a written message from the managing editor of the New York Times was scanned by the equipment and sent by radio from Annapolis, MD, within seven minutes to Belin’s laboratories at La Malmaison, France
1922 Every telephone in North America was silent for one minute at sunset marking the time funeral services were taking place for Alexander Graham Bell
1924 The diplomatic relations between Mexico and the Soviet Union were established
1944 In Amsterdam, Nazi officers arrest 15-year-old diarist Anne Frank and four other Jews in the annex where they have been hiding for two years; Frank will die in the Belsen concentration camp the next year
1954 Britain’s first supersonic fighter plane, the P-1 English Electric Lightning, made its maiden flight
1958 The first potato-flake plant was established in the US at Grand Fork, ND
1964 Over a month after their disappearance was reported, the bodies of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, are unearthed in Philadelphia, MS
1964 US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin report an attack by North Vietnam; the unconfirmed report, along with an earlier encounter, leads Congress to approve US military involvement in Vietnam
1977 President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy
1993 A federal judge sentences LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King’s civil rights

BORN:
1792 Percy Bysshe Shelley, romantic poet who is widely considered to be among the finest lyric poets of the English language
1901 Louis Armstrong, jazz trumpeter and singer who was a foundational influence on jazz, shifting the music’s focus from collective improvisation to solo performers
1942 Don S. Davis, actor (Twin Peaks, A League of Their Own, Needful Things, Stargate SG-1)
1944 Richard Belzer, actor who has played Detective John Munch in 8 different series (Homicide: Life on the Street, Law & Order, Law & Order: Trial by Jury, The X-Files, The Beat, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, The Wire, Arrested Development)
1955 Billy Bob Thornton, actor, director and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Sling Blade, One False Move, Tombstone, Armageddon)
1961 Barack Obama, the junior United States Senator from Illinois, the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election, and the first African American to be a major party’s presumptive nominee for President of the United States

DIED:
1875 Hans Christian Anderson, author and poet, most famous for his fairy tales; among his best-known stories are The Snow Queen, The Little Mermaid, Thumbelina, The Little Match Girl, The Ugly Duckling and The Red Shoes, dies at 70
1999 Victor Mature, actor (Footlight Serenade, My Darling Clementine, Samson and Delilah, Androcles and the Lion, The Robe, Head), dies of leukemia at 86