Today in History: August 2

Today in History: August 2

338 BC 
Macedonian army led by Philip II defeats combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean

216 BC
Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae - Carthaginian army lead by Hannibal defeats numerically superior Roman army under command consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro

257
St Stephen I ends his reign as Catholic Pope

1057 
Frederik van Lotharingen elected as 1st Belgium Pope Stephen IX [X]

1100 
King William II of England (William Rufus) is killed by an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrell while hunting in the New Forest

1542 
French troops leave Flanders

1610
During his fourth voyage to the Western Hemisphere, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into what is now known as Hudson Bay.

1776 
Members of the Second Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.

1862
The Ambulance Corps for the Army of the Potomac was created at the order of Maj. Gen. George McClellan during the Civil War.

1922
Alexander Graham Bell, generally regarded as the inventor of the telephone, died in Nova Scotia, Canada, at age 75.

1923
The 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.

1934
German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover.

1939
Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program. President Roosevelt signed the Hatch Act, which prohibited civil service employees from taking an active part in political campaigns.

1945
President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Britain’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.

1980 
85 people were killed when a bomb exploded at the train station in Bologna, Italy.

1985
137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

1990
Kuwait invaded. Iraq invaded Kuwait on this day in 1990, and Saddam Hussein's subsequent refusal to withdraw his troops sparked the Persian Gulf War, in which an international force led by the United States quickly defeated Iraq.

2014
Dr. Kent Brantly, the first Ebola victim to be brought to the United States from Africa, was safely escorted into a specialized isolation unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where he recovered from the disease.

Births On This Day – 2 August

1981 Alexander Emelianenko
Russian mixed martial artist

1964 Mary-Louise Parker
American actress

1932 Peter O'Toole
Irish actor

1892 Jack Warner
Canadian/American film producer

1820 John Tyndall
British physicist

Deaths On This Day – 2 August

1997 Fela Kuti
Nigerian singer-songwriter, musician, activist

1934 Paul von Hindenburg
Prussian/German field marshal, politician, 2nd President of Germany

1923 Warren G. Harding
American politician, 29th President of the United States

1922 Alexander Graham Bell
Scottish/American engineer, invented the Telephone

1921 Enrico Caruso
Italian tenor