1859 – 1st successful oil well drilled near Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin Drake.
1881 – Hurricane hits Florida & Carolinas; about 700 die.
1910 – Using twenty 137,000 candlepower arc lights, 2 amateur baseball teams play a night game at White Sox Park.
1918 – Christy Mathewson resigns as Reds manager to accept a commission as a captain in chemical warfare branch of Army.
1918 – Spanish flu arrives in Boston, beginning of the second and deadliest wave in the US.
1927 – Parks College, America’s oldest aviation school opens.
1940 – Caproni-Campini CC-2, experimental jet plane, maiden flight (Milan)
1945 – US troops land in Japan after Japanese surrender.
1955 – Guinness Book of World Records” 1st published.
1961 – Francis the Talking Mule is mystery guest on “What’s My Line”
1972 -US bombs Haiphong, North Vietnam.
1978 – Yankee Catfish Hunter’s 6-2 win gives him a perfect 6-0 in August 1978.
1984 – US President Ronald Reagan announces “Teacher in Space” project.
1990 – Brewers-Blue Jays baseball game is delayed 35 minutes due to gnats.
1995 – 95th US Golf Amateur Championship won by Tiger Woods.
2003 – Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing 34,646,418 miles distant.
2006 – Comair Flight 5191 crashes on takeoff from Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, bound for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia killing 49 of 50 on board.
2008 – Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be nominated by a major political party for President of the United States.
2019 – Race car driver Jessi Combs dies while setting new fastest women’s land speed record of 522.783 mph at Alvord Desert, Oregon (posthumously awarded 2020)
2020 – Hurricane Laura makes landfall in Louisiana near the Texas border as a category 4 storm with 150 mph winds, killing at least 16.
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