History Today

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 15th. More than 800,000 ships pass through the Panama Canal every day, but during its first year of operation, which began on this day in 1914, that number was just about 1,000. The U.S. completed the construction of the canal only after President Theodore Roosevelt engineered a Panamanian independence movement from Colombia--which owned the land and refused to give the U.S. control over the area.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 14th. If you live in the eastern part of the U.S. or Canada, then you might remember where you were on this day in 2003, when 21 power plants shut down in just 3 minutes, causing a massive blackout. Fifty million people were affected, including residents of New York, Cleveland and Toronto.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 13th. As America struggles to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, we look back to this day in 1878, when Kate Bionda, a Memphis restaurant owner, became her city’s first victim of a yellow fever epidemic that would eventually infect 100,000 people in the Southeast, and kill 20,000. Bionda became infected when a man quarantined on a nearby steamboat escaped and visited her restaurant.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 12th. Amid new evidence that a massive asteroid impact led to the demise of the dinosaurs, we look back to this day in 1990, when fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson discovered three huge bones jutting out of a South Dakota cliff. They turned out to be part of the largest-ever Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ever discovered, a 65 million-year-old specimen dubbed Sue, after its discoverer.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 11th. Dead Poets Society. Good Morning, Vietnam. Mrs. Doubtfire. These successful and beloved films all had one thing in common--they starred the beloved comedian and actor, Robin Williams, who died on this day in 2014. Williams appeared in more than 70 films in his career, winning three Academy Awards for Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, and The Fisher King.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 10th.

The Louvre in Paris, one of the most famous museums in the world, is home to the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo in addition to nearly 400,000 other works of art. And it all got started on this day in 1793 when the Louvre, a former royal palace, was opened to the public by France’s revolutionary government.

Hello, and welcome to this Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 8th. After news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s cancer has returned, we look back to this day in 2009 and the swearing in of her fellow female justice, Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first-ever Hispanic justice, and just the third woman to be named to the bench. Sotomayor's mother was an orphan from rural Puerto Rico.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 7th. As the American Museum of Natural History prepares to remove a statue of former President Teddy Roosevelt that has been criticized as racist and colonialist, we look back to this day in 1912, when Roosevelt was nominated as the Bull Moose Party’s candidate for president. Surprising fact? A former Republican, Roosevelt had already served two terms as the 26th U.S.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 6th. It remains among the most significant legislation in American history-- on this day in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Votings Right Act into law. The Voting Rights Act guaranteed the right of African Americans to vote, making it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state or local elections that were designed to deny the vote to Black citizens.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on August 5th. Tax Day was moved to July this year, more than 150 years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the very first federal income tax into law on this day in 1861. Strapped for cash to pay for the costly Civil War, Lincoln and Congress agreed to impose a 3 percent tax on incomes over $800.