Some of the significant events which took place on August 9 taken from the leaf of History:
48 BC – Julius Caesar, Roman commander and statesman, decisively defeats Pompey at Pharsalus and Pompey flees to Egypt.
378 – Battle of Adrianople: Goth army defeats Roman forces under Emperor Valens.
681- Bulgaria is founded as a Khanate on the south bank of the Danube, after defeating the Byzantine armies of Emperor Constantine IV south of the Danube delta.
1173- Construction of the Tower of Pisa begins, and it takes two centuries to complete.
1253- Clare of Assisi’s rules confirmed by Pope Innocent IV for Clare’s Order of Poor Ladies.
1329- Quilon the first Indian Diocese was erected by Pope John XXII and Jordanus was appointed the first Bishop.
1378 – Cardinals declare pope Urbanus VI lawless (anti-Christian/devil).
1483 – Opening of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
1559 – Willem of Orange becomes viceroy of Holland/Zealand/Utrecht.
1596 -Henry van Cuyk becomes bishop of Roermond.
1638 – Jonas Bronck of Holland becomes 1st European settler in Bronx.
1790 – Robert Gray’s Columbia Rediviva returns to Boston after 3 year journey, 1st American ship to circumnavigate the Globe.
1898 – Rudolf Diesel of Germany obtains patent #608,845 for his internal combustion engine, later known as the diesel engine.
1942- Mahatma Gandhi and 50 others arrested in Bombay after passing of a “quit India” motion and campaign by the All-India Congress.
1945 – US drops 2nd atomic bomb “Fat Man” on Japan destroys part of Nagasaki. 1965 – Singapore separates from the Federation of Malaysia and gains its independence.
1974 – Richard Nixon resigns as US President and VP Gerald Ford swears the oath of office to take his place as the 38th US President
1902 – Edward VII was crowned king of Britain following the death of his mother, Queen Victoria.
1936 – Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal at the Berlin Olympics as the United States took first place in the 400-meter relay.
1944 – 258 African-American sailors based at Port Chicago, California, refused to load a munitions ship following a cargo vessel explosion that killed 320 men, many of them black. (Fifty of the sailors were convicted of mutiny, fined and imprisoned.)
1945 – Three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, a U.S. B-29 Superfortress code-named Bockscar dropped a nuclear device (”Fat Man”) over Nagasaki, killing an estimated 74,000 people.
1969 – Actress Sharon Tate and four other people were found brutally slain at Tate’s Los Angeles home; cult leader Charles Manson and a group of his followers were later convicted of the crime.
1982 – A federal judge in Washington ordered John W. Hinckley Jr., who’d been acquitted of shooting President Ronald Reagan and three others by reason of insanity, committed to a mental hospital.
1992 – Closing ceremonies were held for the Barcelona Summer Olympics, with the Unified Team of former Soviet republics winning 112 medals, the United States 108.
1995 – Jerry Garcia, lead singer of the Grateful Dead, died in Forest Knolls, California, of a heart attack at age 53.
1997 – Haitian immigrant Abner Louima was brutalized in a Brooklyn, New York, stationhouse by Officer Justin Volpe, who raped him with a broken broomstick. (Volpe was later sentenced to 30 years in prison.) An Amtrak train with more than 300 people aboard derailed on a bridge near Kingman, Arizona; 183 people were injured.
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