Some of the significant events which took place on August 4 taken from the leaf of History:
1735 – Freedom of the press was established with an acquittal of John Peter Zenger. The writer of the New York Weekly Journal had been charged with seditious libel by the royal governor of New York. The jury said that “the truth is not libelous.”
1753 – George Washington became a Master Mason. For Washington, joining the masons served a rite of passage and a reflection of his dedication to civic responsibility. After the American Revolution, some masons floated the notion of organizing a “Grand Lodge of the United States,” with Washington becoming its first grand master. But the idea never gained traction. Soon, independent grand lodges formed themselves within each state.
1790 – The Revenue Cutter Service was formed. This U.S. naval task force was the beginning of the U.S. Coast Guard.
1821 – “The Saturday Evening Post” was published for the first time as a weekly.
1845 – Great Indian lawyer and social worker Pherozshah Merwanji Mehta was born.
1914 – Britain declared war on Germany. The U.S. proclaimed its neutrality.
1921 – The first radio broadcast of a tennis match occurred. It was in Pittsburgh, PA.
1922 – The death of Alexander Graham Bell, two days earlier, was recognized by AT&T and the Bell Systems by shutting down all of its switchboards and switching stations. The shutdown affected 13 million phones.
1929: Popular Bolywood actor and playback singer Kishor Kumar was born. Kishore Kumar was born as Abhas Kumar Ganguly in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh. His father was a lawyer and his mother belonged to a wealthy Bengali family.
1932 – U.S.A. Warren G. Harding: Warren G. Harding, former president of the United States, lay in a funeral train as people from all stations of life bared their heads and bowed. Some were in groups of hundreds, others in dozens. Military men were to escort Harding’s remains from the White House to Washington for the funeral. Harding’s remains were to lie in state at the White House. His successor was Calvin Coolidge.
1934 – Mel Ott became the first major league baseball player to score six runs in a single game.
1935: Government of India Act got the Royal assent.
1941 – Nazi troops within 50 miles of Kiev: Nazi troops marched within 50 miles of Kiev. Both Russians and Nazis reported catastrophic casualties in the 44 day battle. Hitler’s high commissioners boasted that 2,300 Soviets were dead, 71 tanks were captured, and 10,000 Russian soldiers were taken captive. Russia claimed that in a counteroffensive they killed 1,000 Nazis, and wrecked 100 tanks. Mussolini summed World War II up to his troops, “the line-up is now complete between the two worlds with Rome, Berlin, and Tokyo on one side and London, Washington, and Moscow, on the other.”
1944 – Anne Frank Captured: The Nazi Gestapo captures 15-year-old Jewish diarist Anne Frank and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse.
1944 – Nazi police raided a house in Amsterdam and arrested eight people. Anne Frank, a teenager at the time, was one of the people arrested. Her diary would be published after her death.
1950 – U.S.A. Polio cases increase: Both Snyder and Abilene in Texas had a total of six polio cases involving children recently, which indicates and upswing in this disease. One child was so badly affected that she had to be on a respirator.
1956: India’s first nuclear research reactor Apsara was commissioned.
1967 – Nuclear worries over China: The world’s nuclear fears were aroused when China exploded an H-bomb on June 17, 1966, under the presidency of Mao Tse-Tung. An editorial a year later in The Ada Evening News focused on fear mongering about nuclear war and remembered the horrors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima 22 years before the Chinese got the bomb.
1972 – Governor George Wallace: Arthur Bremer, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has been found guilty of the shooting and attempted murder of White House hopeful Mr Wallace at a political rally in Laurel, Maryland on 15th May. He has been sentenced to 63 years in jail by a court in Maryland, USA. Mr Wallace, was paralyzed by the shots and three other people were injured in the incident.
1972 – Philippines monsoon: Floodwaters finally recede revealing total devastation and hundreds dead. During July in the monsoon season nearly 70 inches of rain fell causing several dikes to fail and less than a week later, a typhoon dropped even more rain on the already saturated region causing more dikes throughout the area to fail causing many hundreds of thousands of acres to flood and leaving many dead and many more homeless, following on Cholera and typhoid epidemics broke out and because most of the crops had also been damaged food also became scarce.
1978 – Lebanon Israeli attack: An Israeli air attack on southern Lebanon occurred in retaliation for a Palestinian bombing of a Tel Aviv market place. The Israelis claimed that the Palestinian bomb contained nails and ball bearings, killing one and wounding 48. Israelis planes bombed a guerrilla headquarters in Dahar-a-Tutah.
1989 – Savings and loan crisis: The Savings and Loan crisis which involved more than 500 savings and loan associations led President George Herbert Bush to consider a $150 billion bailout in an unprecedented piece of legislature. The Ways and Means Committee Chairperson, Dan Rostenkowski and his partners, were opposed to the bill. If the bill passed, $75 million a year would go to the Justice Department to be the watch dog for institutional fraud. The reasons believed to cause the problems for the Savings and loan institutions included the issue of the new high-interest money-market funds, long term mortgages at low fixed interest rates (Interest Rates Year End Federal Reserve 10.50% from our 1989), and finally poor lending practices to risky ventures.
1999 – ATM Usage Goes Down: The Bank News Network has discovered that there has been a drop in the usage of ATM machines. Angry consumers are annoyed by the service charges for ATM usage and there is a 2.9% decrease in ATM transactions. This is the first time in a decade that there has been a decrease. Debit card transactions, however, have increased 35%.
2000 – Queen Mother Celebrates 100 yrs. old: Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother is celebrating her birthday and 100 years old. The Queen Mother and the rest of the royal family appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace where thousands of well-wishers gather to wish her happy birthday.
2005 – A Russian mini-submarine carrying seven Russians became caught on a part of the Russian secret coastal defense installation in the Pacific Ocean. The men were rescued three days later with help from a British remote-controlled vehicle that cut away the undersea cables that had snarled the mini-sub.
2006 – A total of 1.2 million Ford vehicles such as Econoline vans had defective cruise control switches that could overheat and cause fires. Ford vehicles were recalled from the periods of 1994-1996. The Econoline vans were produced in Ohio. This recall has shaken the 103 year old Ford Motor Company.
2006 – Ukraine New Prime Minister: After a four month period of political deadlock, Viktor Yanukovych became Ukraine’s prime minister. The former leader had been forced out in 2004 believed in forming a closer bond with Russia and was elected by a clear majority of parliament.
2008 – United States Morgan Freeman: Morgan Freeman, the academy award winning actor, was involved in a serious car accident on this day. Freeman and a passenger were airlifted to a hospital in serious condition. The accident was not fatal, and despite having injuries Freeman was lucid and speaking when the emergency response arrived on the scene.
2009 – North Korea Clinton Diplomacy: Two American journalists (Euna Lee and Laura Ling), who had been arrested and imprisoned for illegal entry into North Korea earlier in the year are granted a pardon following a meeting between former president Clinton and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
2011 – Warren Jeffs Convicted in Texas: Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs was convicted of child sexual assault by a jury in Texas. Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints faced charges after police raided a compound in west Texas in 2008 in which many underage girls who had been forced into “spiritual marriages” were found pregnant. He was later sentenced to life in prison.
2012 – Michael Phelps Wins 18th Gold: Michael Phelps wins his eighteenth gold medal of his Olympic swimming career after winning the 4x100m medley relay with the US men’s swim team. The win brought his total Olympic medals to twenty-two and of those eighteen are gold. This was his last Olympic event before he stated he would go into retirement. However, Phelps eventually decided not to retire and participated in the 2016 Rio Olympics where he won another 6 medals (5 gold, 1 silver).
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