This Week In History
August 2, 1990
Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered troops into Kuwait. The UN unanimously condemned the occupation and demanded that Baghdad withdraw
1865: The first print run of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, was pulped because the illustrator objected to the print quality
1880: Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) was officially adopted in Great Britain
1945: Allied leaders agreed on the demilitarisation and division of Germany at the Potsdam conference
2018: Apple became the world’s first public company to be worth $1 trillion, beating Amazon and Microsoft
August 3, 2005
The world’s first cloned puppy was presented in South Korea. Snuppy (above right) was grown from a single cell from the ear of a three-year-old male dog (left)
1610: Captain Henry Hudson, seeking a new passage to the Pacific, discovered the bay later named after him
1778: La Scala opera house was opened in Milan
2000: Former President Suharto of Indonesia was indicted on charges of embezzling $570 million
2010: Ecuador agreed a deal with the UN not to drill for oil in the Yasuni National Park for at least a decade in return for $3.6 billion
August 4, 1693
French Benedictine monk Dom Perignon is traditionally said to have invented champagne on this day, although he did not intend to produce a sparkling wine
1870: The Red Cross Society was founded in Britain, seven years after the international movement in Switzerland
1957: Argentine racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio won his fifth Formula
One world championship
1995: Croatia launched an offensive to regain the enclave of Krajina, held by its Serb minority for four years
1997: Cathy Freeman became the first Australian aborigine to win gold at the athletics world championships
August 5, 2019
India’s government revoked disputed Kashmir’s special status and deployed thousands of troops to the restive Muslim-majority region
1305: William Wallace, the champion of Scottish independence, was captured by the English and later executed
1914: The world’s first electric traffic signal, red and green with a buzzer, was installed in Cleveland, Ohio
1995: The United States and Vietnam formally established diplomatic ties, declaring an end to decades of enmity
2010: A major cave-in at the San Jose mine in Chile’s Atacama Desert trapped 33 men 700m underground
August 6, 1945
A US plane dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing around 80,000 people instantly and obliterating the city in the first use of a nuclear weapon in warfare
1825: Bolivia became independent after nearly 300 years of Spanish rule
1890: A convicted US murderer was executed in the electric chair, raising controversy over whether this new method was humane
2005: Iran’s new ultra-conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was sworn in to power in Tehran
2015: Egypt inaugurated a new 35km channel of the Suez Canal, roughly doubling the canal’s capacity
August 7, 1947
Thor Heyerdahl’s raft Kon-tiki reached Polynesia 101 days after leaving Peru, indicating pre-incan people could have colonised the area by drifting on ocean currents
1955: Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, later renamed Sony, sold its first transistor radios
1995: British triple jumper Jonathan Edwards leapt 18.29m (60ft), the first person to leap over 18 metres
2000: The discovery of nine more planets outside our solar system raised the known number to over 40
2010: Fidel Castro warned Cubans of the risk of a nuclear war between the United States and Iran
August 8, 2000
The US Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was raised after 136 years. The Civil War vessel, lost with all crew, was the first combat submarine to sink a warship
1815: Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for exile on St Helena
1854: Smith and Wesson patented their self-contained metal bullet
2016: Pokemon Go, the smash hit augmented reality smartphone game, notched up a record $200m in the first month after its launch 2018: New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, was declared entirely in drought after one of the driest winters on record