Today in History

Georgia invades South Ossetia, touching off a five-day war between Georgia and Russia.

An EF2 tornado hits Brooklyn, New York, the first in that borough since 1889.

The Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to surface, 136 years after it sank following its successful attack on USS Housatonic in the outer harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

Iraq annexes the state of Kuwait as its 19th province, six days after Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait.

NASA Space Shuttle Columbia begins its eighth flight, NASA’s 30th shuttle mission.

Angola, Cuba and South Africa sign a cease-fire treaty in the border war that began in 1966.

Brigadier General Efrain Rios Montt is deposed as president of Guatemala in the country’s second military coup in 17 months.

Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein executes 22 political opponents.

Pioneer-Venus 2 is launched to probe the atmosphere of Venus.

President Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency as a result of the Watergate scandal.

 M. Ashman, author, co-editor of Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, and a founding member of TED Global, the international organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading.

England’s “Great Train Robbery;” 2.6 million pounds ($7.3 million) is stolen

U.S. troops repel the first North Korean attempt to overrun them at the Battle of Naktong Bulge, which continued for 10 days.

Svetlana Y Savitskaya, Soviet cosmonaut, the first woman to walk in space (July 25, 1984).

The Soviet Union declares war on Japan.

U.S. forces complete the capture of the Marianas Islands.

U.S. Marines capture the Japanese airstrip on Guadalcanal.

The German Luftwaffe attacks Great Britain for the first time, beginning the Battle of Britain.

Dustin Hoffman, American actor.

The first national congress of the Ku Klux Klan opens.

Arthur J. Goldberg, labor lawyer instrumental in the merger of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Ernest Orlando Lawrence, inventor of the cyclotron and winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize for physics.

The first household refrigerating machine is patented.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of The Yearling.

Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary leader.

Thomas Edison patents the mimeograph.

Matthew A. Henson, explorer with Robert Peary who first reached the North Pole (though some recent scholarship disputes this claim).

Confederate President Jefferson Davis refuses General Robert E. Lee‘s resignation.

Brigham Young is chosen to head the Mormon Church, succeeding Joseph Smith.

Jacques Balmat and Dr. Michel-Gabriel Paccard become the first men to climb Mont Blanc in France.

Ibrahim, the sultan of Istanbul, is thrown into prison, then assassinated.

The invading armies of Spain, Austria and Bavaria are stopped at the village of St.-Jean-de-Losne, only 50 miles from France.

Charles IX of France signs the Treaty of St. Germain, ending the third war of religion and giving religious freedom to the Huguenots.

King Wenceslas of Poland is murdered.