Wikipedia: August 2

August 2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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

Events

338 BC - Philip of Macedon crushes Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea.
216 BC - Battle of Cannae Hannibal destroys the Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Publius Terentius Varro in what is considered one of the great masterpieces of the tactical art.
1798 - End of the Battle of the Nile between French and British navies.
1870 - Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway opens in London
1903 - Unsuccessful uprising of Balkan people against Turkey.
1934 - Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
1945 - Potsdam Conference concludes.
1955 - Velcro patented
1967 - 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.
1985 - A Delta Airlines 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

1533 - Theodor Zwinger
1672 - Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, savant (+ 1733)
1754 - Pierre Charles L'Enfant, architect, city planner (+ 1825)
1788 - Leopold Gmelin, chemist (+ 1853)
1815 - Adolf Friedrich von Schack, writer (+ 1894)
1854 - Milan I, king of Serbia
1868 - Constantine I of Greece, king of Greece (+ 1923)
1871 - John Sloan, artist (+ 1951)
1892 - Jack Warner, film producer (+ 1978
1897 - Max Weber, Swiss Federal Councilor (+ 1974)
1900 - Helen Morgan, actress (+ 1941)
1905 - Karl Amadeus Hartmann, composer (+ 1963)
1905 - Myrna Loy, Academy Award winning actress (+ 1993)
1905 - Rudolf Prack, actor (+ 1981)
1914 - Beatrice Stgraight, Academy Award winning actress (+ 2001)
1915 - Gary Merrill, actor (+ 1990)
1924 - Carroll O'Connor, actor (+ 2001)
1924 - James Baldwin, author (+ 1987)
1932 - Peter O'Toole, actor: Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter
1934 - Valery Bykovsky, cosmonaut
1939 - Wes Craven, horror film director
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
1972 - Kevin Smith, actor, director, screenwriter
1977 - Edward Furlong, actor
1992 - Hallie Kate Eisenberg, actress, Pepsi-Cola spokesperson

Deaths

461 - Majorian, Roman Emperor (assassination)
1100 - King William II of England
1921 - Enrico Caruso, opera singer
1922 - Alexander Graham Bell, inventor
1934 - Paul von Hindenburg, general and politician
1936 - Louis Blériot, French aviation pioneer
1945 - Pietro Mascagni, composer
1976 - Fritz Lang, film director
1976 - Andrea Wilborn, daughter of Priscilla Davis
1976 - Stan Farr, TCU Basketball star, boyfriend of Priscilla Davis
1986 - Roy Cohn, politician, anti-Communist
1997 - William S. Burroughs, writer
1998 - Shari Lewis, puppeteer

Holidays and observances

Costa Rica - Our Lady of the Angels

See Also:

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

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December