On This Day - 7th August

1876 - Mata Hari born.
1884 - Billie Burke born
1903 - Louis Leakey born
1904 - Ralph Bunche born
1926 - Stan Freberg born
1927 - Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer born
1942 - Garrison Keillor born
1958 - Washington's Court of Appeals quashes playwright Arthur Miller's conviction for contempt of Congress after a two-year legal battle.
1960 - David Duchovny born
1972 - The Ugandan leader, Idi Amin, sets a deadline for the expulsion of most of the country's Asians.
1975 - Charlize Theron born
1987 - American Lynne Cox, 30, took two hours and six minutes to cross the Bering Strait to become the first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union.
Lynne Cox, 30, took two hours and six minutes to cross the Bering Strait which separates the Arctic and Pacific oceans - and the two superpowers.
1998 - At least 200 people are killed and many more injured when US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are bombed within minutes of each other.
2001 - The British government re-nationalisead a private hospital for the first time.
2003 - Amrozi bin Nurhasyim is convicted for the Bali nightclub bombings which killed 190 people in 2002.
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On This Day - 6th August

1890 - The Electric Chair is introduced as a form of execution in New York
1893 - The Corinth Canal opens
1911 - Lucille Ball born
1917 - Robert Mitchum born
1926 - Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel
1928 - Andy Warhol born
1945 - The first atomic bomb is dropped by a United States aircraft on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
1961 - The Soviet Union astonishes the world by launching Major Gherman Titov into orbit for a whole day.
1962 - Michelle Yeoh born
1965 - David Robinson born
1971 - A British man becomes the first to sail the world non-stop in the "wrong" direction - east to west - against the prevailing winds and currents.
1972 - Geri Estelle Halliwell born
1987 - SDP leader Dr David Owen resigns after members of his party voted to merge with the Liberals.
1995 - Up to 50,000 people attend a memorial service in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
2012 - Astronomer and Physicist Bernard Lovell dies aged 98.

On This Day - 5th August

1895 - Communist father Friedrich Engels dies
1906 - John Huston born
1930 - Neil Armstrong born
1946 - Loni Anderson born
1956 - Maureen McCormick born
1962 - Film actress Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her bed with an empty bottle of sleeping tablets by her side.
1962 - Patrick Ewing is born
1964 - Adam Yauch born
1973 - Three people are killed and 55 wounded when two Arab gunmen open fire on a crowded passenger lounge at Athens airport.
1975: The Forestry Commission announce that Dutch elm disease is spreading having attacked over 3 million trees in Britain.
1983 - Twenty two members of the IRA are jailed for a total of more than 4,000 years following one of Northern Ireland's biggest mass trials.
2010 - A cave-in leaves 33 Chilean miners trapped 2,300 feet (700 metres) vertically underground in a small copper-and-gold mine near the northern Chilean city of Copiapó, 500 miles (800km) north of Santiago.

On This Day - 4th August

1792 - Percy Bysshe Shelley born
1901 - Louis Armstrong born
1912 - Raoul Wallenberg born
1955 - Billy Bob Thornton born
1961 - Barack Obama born
1962 - Roger Clemens born
1964 - FBI agents uncover the bodies of three missing civil rights workers at a dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
1971 - Jeff Gordon born
1972 - The man who tried to assassinate Governor George Wallace is sentenced to 63 years in jail.
1987 - Moors murderer Ian Brady claims he was involved in another five killings.
2000 - Celebrations take place all over the United Kingdom to mark the 100th birthday of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
2002 - Police have say they are "extremely concerned" over the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman from their homes in Soham, Cambridgeshire.

On This Day - 3rd August

1871 - Foundry worker Thomas Rule born in Whitehaven, Cubria.
1926 - Tony Bennett born
1940 - Martin Sheen born
1941 - Martha Stewart born
1950 - John Landis born
1951 - Jay North born
1957 - Tunku Abdul Rahman, a British-educated Malay prince, is elected as head of state of Malaya ahead of independence from Britain.
1963 - James Hetfield born
1977 - Tom Brady born
1978 - The Queen officially opens the 11th Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Canada.
1990 - A weather station in Leicestershire has recorded the highest temperature ever known in Britain (37.1C, or 99F).
1992 - British sprinter Linford Christie wins the gold medal for the 100m at the Olympic Games in Barcelona.
2003 - The Anglican Church in America votes to approve the appointment of an openly gay bishop, angering religious leaders around the world.
2001 - A bomb explodes in a busy west London street, injuring seven people.
2002 - 10 year old school girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman go missing in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
2003 - Gene Robinson is appointed as the first openly gay bishop of the Anglecan church

On This Day - 2nd August

1905 - Myrna Loy born
1924 - Carroll O'Connor born
1924 - James Baldwin born
1932 - Peter O'Toole born
1950 - Judge Lance Ito born
1959 - Victoria Jackson born
1965 - Thousands of British holiday makers abandon their tents as forest fires devastate the south of France
1973 - More than 30 people die in a fire which gutted the Summerland leisure resort on the Isle of Man.
1974 - Jeremy Castle born
1977 - Edward Furlong born
1980 - A huge bomb devastates Bologna railway station, killing at least 75 people.
1990 - More than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers backed up by 700 tanks invade the Gulf state of Kuwait in the early hours of the morning.

On This Day - 1st August

1779 - Francis Scott Key born. A Minor player in the 1812 U.S Anglo war he was responsible for writing the U.S. national anthem.
For further information see: http://www.usflag.org/history/francisscottkey.html
1819 - Herman Melville born
1834 - Slavery is abolished in all British Colonies
1873 - San Francisco's cable cars go into operation for the first time
1876 - Colorado becomes the 38th US State
1933 - Dom DeLuise born
1936 - Yves Saint Laurent born
1937 - Buchenwald Concentration camp opened
1942 - Jerry Garcia born
1944 - The Polish Underground Army begins battle to liberate Warsaw, the first European city to fall to the Germans.
1956 - Tom Leykis born
1963 - Coolio born
1971 - Apollo 15 astronauts uncovered a rock which dated back to the origin of the Moon. The so-called Genesis rock was found by lunar module pilots David Scott and James Irwin when they dug into the slope of Spur crater, on the flank of the Apennine Mountains on their second day on the surface.
1976 - F1 racing driver Niki Lauda was in a critical condition in hospital after crashing at the German Grand Prix.
1994 - Thousands of historic documents and more than 100,000 books are destroyed in a blaze which ripped through Norwich Central Library early today.
2003 - The Hutton inquiry begins and the judge investigating the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly says his first task is to flesh out "a fuller picture of the facts".