1909:	Aug 10	Leo Fender, inventor of the electric guitar, is born.
1940:	Aug 10	Righteous Brother Bobby Hatfield is born..
1945:	Aug 14	Japan agrees to surrender unconditionally to the Allies.
	Aug 25	In the northern Chinese province of Anhwei, Baptist missionary and U.S. army intelligence specialist John Birch is killed by Chinese Communists.
1947:
	Aug 10	Ian Anderson, flautist and singer for Jethro Tull, is born as is Ronettes lead singer Ronnie Spector
	Aug 15	The Indian Independence Bill, which carved the independent nations of India and Pakistan out of the former Mogul Empire, comes into force at the stroke of midnight.
	Aug 18	Paris is re-established as the center of haute couture when Christian Dior introduces the "New Look" on August 18, 1947. Dior’s trim waistlines and lightly padded full-skirts has a dazzling impact on the clothing industry and revolutionizes the girdle world.
1948:	Aug 16	Baseball great Babe Ruth dies in New York after a long illness.
1949:	Aug 3	The National Basketball Association is formed by a merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League.
	Aug 29	At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the U.S.S.R. successfully detonates its first atomic bomb, codenamed "First Lightning."
1951:	Aug 17	The American Telephone and Telegraph Company inaugurates its microwave radio relay system for transmitting telephone calls and television programs between New York City and San Francisco.
1954:	Aug 6	The Enola Gay, a U.S. B-29 bomber, drops the first atomic weapon ever used in combat on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
	Aug 16	Sports Illusrated was first published by Time Inc.
	Aug 19	The United States Congress approves a bill outlawing the Communist party.
1957:	Aug 5	"American Bandstand," with Dick Clark as host, makes its network debut on A-B-C.
1958:	Aug 3	The nuclear-powered submarine "Nautilus" becomes the first vessel to cross the North Pole underwater.
1959:	Aug 7	From the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida, the U.S. unmanned spacecraft Explorer 6 is launched into an orbit around the earth. The spacecraft, popularly known as the "paddlewheel satellite," features a photocell scanner that transmits a crude picture of the earth’s surface and cloud cover from a distance of 17,000 miles.
1960:	Aug 16	Cyprus becomes independent.
	Aug 19	In the U.S.S.R., American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years in a Soviet prison for his confessed espionage.
1961:	Aug 6	Gherman Titov becomes the first man to orbit the Earth more than once when he made 17 orbits in the space capsule "Vostok Two."
	Aug 15	East Germany begins building the Berlin Wall, the most tangible symbol of Cold War division.
1962:	Aug 5	Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home. Beside her bed is an empty bottle that had contained fifty sleeping pills, leading police to determine her death a suicide.
	Aug 5	Nine days after the Korean War armistice was signed at Panmunjom, "Operation Big Switch," the final exchange of prisoners of war, begins along the 38th parallel.
	Aug 6	Jamaica becomes an independent dominion within the British Commonwealth.
1963:	Aug 8	In the early morning hours on a stretch of railway track in Buckinghamshire, England, sixteen masked men ambush the Glasgow-to-London mail train as it halted at a red signal. The bandits get away with money and property valued at more than two-and-a-half-million pounds sterling (or about six-million dollars), making it the largest train robbery in history.
	Aug 9	The BBC's rock & roll television show, "Ready! Steady! Go!" debuts.
	Aug 18	James Meredith, the first African American to attend the University of Mississippi, graduates with a degree in government.
	Aug 28	On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the civil-rights movement reaches its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr. speakes to the over 200,000 demonstrators present at the March on Washington. The famous "I Have a Dream" passage of the address is actually improvised by King, who departs from his prepared speech midway to make oratory history.
	Aug 30	On August 30, 1963, the U.S. Defense Department announces that a direct communications link between Washington and Moscow is operational.
1964:	Aug 4	The remains of three civil-rights workers whose disappearance on June 21 garnered national attention are found buried in an earthen dam in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
	Aug 7	By a unanimous vote in the House of Representatives and a vote of eighty-eight to two in the Senate, Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Lyndon B. Johnson unprecedented executive authority to act in Indochina and "take all necessary steps... to prevent further aggression."
1965:	Aug 11	In the Watts section of Los Angeles, California, racial tension in the city reaches a breaking point after police brutally beat an African-American motorist suspected of drunken driving. Widespread rioting, arson, and looting rapidly spread across south-central Los Angeles, and police are unable to suppress the rioters.
	Aug 16	With the assistance of 20,000 National Guardsmen, a race riot in South-Central Los Angeles, California, is suppressed after six days of violence, mass arrests, and property damage.
1966:	Aug 1	On the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, Charles Joseph Whitman, a twenty-five-year-old architectural engineering student and ex-Marine, climbs to the observation deck of the university’s tower and opens fire on the students, professors, and staff below.
	Aug 4	John Lennon announces that the Beatles are "more popular than Jesus."
	Aug 9	While performing at the Sunberry Jazz and Blues Festival in England, Jerry Lee Lewis gets the crowd going in such a frenzy that festival officials halt his show and ask him to leave the stage.
	Aug 21	The modern United States receives its crowning star when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a proclamation admitting Hawaii into the Union as the fiftieth state.
1968:	Aug 20	Alexander Dubcek, leader of Czechoslovakia, is forced to abandon his liberal reforms after several hundred thousand Soviet troops invade his nation on August 20, 1968. Dubcek’s efforts to establish "communism with a human face" had been celebrated across the country, and the brief period of freedom was known as the "Prague Spring."
	Aug 27	As the Democratic National Convention gets underway in Chicago, Illinois, thousands of antiwar demonstrators take to Chicago’s streets to protest the Vietnam War and its support by the top Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.
1969:	Aug 8	On an estate above Beverly Hills, California, Sharon Tate, the wife of film director Roman Polanski, are brutally murdered along with four others by followers of cult leader Charles Manson.
	Aug 15	The Woodstock music festival opens in New York State, attracting about 500-thousand fans.
1972:	Aug 9	Gilbert O'Sullivan receives a gold record for "Alone Again Naturally." It's Number One for six weeks in the summer.
	Aug 12	The last American combat ground troops leave Vietnam.
	Aug 16	One year after he survived an abortive coup against his rule, King Hassan II of Morocco nearly perishes when the airliner carrying him back to Rabat was fired on by his own air force.
1973:	Aug 12	Jack Nicklaus wins the PGA championship, giving him fourteen major tournament titles and breaking the record set by Bobby Jones.
	Aug 14	According to the terms of the Vietnam peace agreement signed in Paris earlier in the year, the U.S. officially ends its bombing of alleged Communist positions in Cambodia.
	Aug 17	Idi Amin seizes control of Uganda in 1971. On August 17, 1973, he expells all Asians from the country, who comprise an important portion of the work force.
1974:	Aug 8	President Richard Nixon announces his intention to resign effective noon the next day.
	Aug 9	At noon, in accordance with his statement of resignation the previous evening, Richard M. Nixon officially ends his term as the thirty-seventh president of the United States.
1975:	Aug 9	The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium is the site of the first annual Rock Music Award Show. The Don Kirshner produced broadcast on CBS proves to be an alternative to the Grammys. Those taking home awards: Bad Company, the Eagles, Roger Daltrey, Joan Baez and Stevie Wonder.
1977:	Aug 10	The biggest manhunt in the history of New York City ends with the arrest of postal worker David Berkowitz as the Son of Sam marauder, who killed six people and wounded seven others in one year.
	Aug 12	In the first atmospheric flight of a space shuttle, the Enterprise is lifted to a height of twenty-five thousand feet by a Boeing 747 airplane, and then released, gliding back to California’s Edwards Air Force Base on its own accord.
	Aug 16	Elvis Presley dies on August 16, 1977, at the age of forty-two.
1978:	Aug 6	Pope Paul the Sixth dies at the age of 80.
	Aug 9	Blues legend Muddy Waters performs at a White House picnic for President Jimmy Carter.
	Aug 19	The Double Eagle, a helium-filled balloon piloted by Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman of Albuquerque, New Mexico, touches down in Paris, France. The three Americans had set off from Presque Island, Maine, six days earlier, thus accomplishing the first transatlantic balloon crossing in history.
1981:	Aug 3	13-thousand U-S air traffic controllers go on strike, despite a warning from President Reagan that they would be fired if they did not return to work.
1982:	Aug 5	A Chicago woman burst into flames and dies. She is the eighth recorded victim of human spontaneous combustion, based on records dating back to the 18th century.
	Aug 9	Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," which is the theme song for the hit movie "Rocky III," goes gold..
	Aug 20	During the Lebanese Civil War, a multinational force featuring eight hundred U.S. Marines land in Beirut to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon.
1983:	Aug 30	U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission.
1984:	Aug 5	Actor Richard Burton dies of a cerebral hemmorhage at a hospital in Geneva at the age of 58.
1986:	Aug 6	American William Schroeder, the world’s longest surviving heart transplant recipient of a permanent artificial heart, dies after living 620 days with the "Jarvik Seven" man-made pump.
1987:	Aug 17	Ninety-three-year-old Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, is found hanged to death in Spandau Prison in Berlin, apparently the victim of suicide.
1990:	Aug 8	Iraq officially annexes Kuwait.
1991:	Aug 10	During renovation work, the Warszawa Radio mast loses its structural integrity and comes crashing to the ground. Located in Konstantynow, Poland, the radio-transmitting tower is the tallest structure in the world at the time.
	Aug 21	The hardliner coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ends with the arrest of the seven living conspirators. The same day, Gorbachev returns from house arrest in the Crimea to reassume leadership of the U.S.S.R., but finds that in his absence popular support had shifted to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
1992:	Aug 13	Actor/director Woody Allen begins legal action against actress Mia Farrow to win custody of their three children. A judge rules against Allen the following June.
1995:	Aug 9	Grateful Dead singer, guitarist and spiritual leader Jerry Garcia dies of a heart attack while undergoing drug rehabilitation. He was 53.
1997:	Aug 31	Prince Diana died tragicly in an accident in Paris.