Though he had been in poor health for some time, President Warren G. Harding’s death on August 2, 1923, shocked a nation that had watched him greet cheering crowds only days earlier. The lack of an autopsy, combined with scandals emerging from his administration, soon encouraged rumors that lasted for decades.
Born on August 1, 1779, in western Maryland, Francis Scott Key became forever linked to the flag he saw above Fort McHenry after a 25-hour British bombardment. That sight inspired the four-stanza poem that became “The Star-Spangled Banner,” though the song did not become the national anthem until 1931.
Civil rights leader Whitney Moore Young Jr. was born on July 31, 1921, in Shelby County, Kentucky. He served as Executive Director of the National Urban League, helped organize the March on Washington, and advised several presidents.
On July 30, 1864, Union forces launched the surprise Battle of the Crater. They dug tunnels under Confederate positions and set off explosives to catch them by surprise, but poor decisions led the battle to turn against them.
On July 29, 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. The new civilian agency was formed during a tense Cold War race that had moved from laboratories and missile ranges into orbit.
On July 14, 1853, President Franklin Pierce opened a glass-and-iron palace in New York City filled with machinery, art, and manufactured goods from around the world. The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations became the first major world’s fair in the United States and tested whether New York could rival London as a center of industry and culture.
On July 9, 1850, President Zachary Taylor died just 16 months after taking office. His sudden death ended the presidency of a career soldier who had won national fame on the battlefield, then faced one of the most dangerous political crises in the nation’s history.
On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence. One of America’s founding documents, it explained why the 13 colonies were at war with Great Britain and that they declared themselves to be independent sovereign states no longer under British rule.
The Olympic Mountains are not especially tall. Mount Olympus, the park’s highest peak, rises 7,980 feet. But the range stands close to the Pacific Ocean, and that location shapes nearly everything in the park. Moist air from the ocean moves inland and is pushed upward by the mountains. As the air cools, it drops rain in the valleys and snow on the peaks.
On August 2, 1943, future president John F. Kennedy saved the majority of his PT-109 crew after a Japanese destroyer rammed them.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, the designer of the Statue of Liberty, was born on August 2, 1834, in Colmar, France.
Artist John French Sloan was born on August 2, 1871, in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania. He was a renowned painter who helped found the Ashcan School and participated in the famed 1913 Armory Show.
On August 2, 1873, Clay Street Hill Railroad inaugurated San Francisco’s now-famous cable car system.
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