TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Wednesday, August 8, the 220th day of 2018. There are 145 days left in the year.

1220 Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula. 1264 Mudéjar revolt: Muslim rebel forces took the alcázar of Jerez after defeating the Castilian garrison.

1503 King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor, daughter of King Henry VII of England at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland. 1509 Krishnadeva Raya is crowned Emperor of Vijayanagara at Chittoor.

1576 The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg observatory is laid on the island of Hven.

1585 John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search of the Northwest Passage.

1605 The city of Oulu, Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.

1648 Mehmed IV ( 1648– 1687) succeeds Ibrahim I ( 1640– 1648) as Ottoman Emperor.

1709 Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in an audience before the king of Portugal in Lisbon, Portugal.

1794 Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska.

1870 The Republic of Ploie? ti, a failed Radical- Liberal rising against Domnitor Carol of Romania.

1876 Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

1929 The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round- the- world flight.

1940 The “Aufbau Ost” directive is signed by Wilhelm Keitel.

1942 Quit India Movement is launched in India against the British rule in response to Mohandas Gandhi’s call for swaraj or complete independence.

1963 Great Train Robbery: In England, a gang of 15 train robbers steal £ 2.6 million in bank notes.

1969 The Manson Family commits the Tate murders.

1973 Kim Dae- jung, a South Korean politician and later president of South Korea, is kidnapped.

1974 President Richard Nixon, announces his resignation in a nationwide television address, from the office of the President of the United States.

1991 The Warsaw radio mast, at one time the tallest construction ever built, collapses.

2000 Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor and 30 years after its discovery by undersea explorer E. Lee Spence.

2007 An EF2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York, the most powerful tornado in New York to date and the first in Brooklyn since 1889.

2010 China Floods: A mudslide in Zhugqu County, Gansu, China, kills more than 1,400 people.