Learning about historical happenings makes you imagine and create mental pictures of things that happened before you were born. While some historical dates remind us of a particular achievement and some help us learn from the mistakes of others, some historical dates make us sad for some victims of circumstances. This article is about historical events that happened in the month of August.
August 1, 1944: Anne Frank Wrote Her Last Diary Entry
Three days before the Nazis captured her, Anne Frank wrote her last diary entry. The Nazi Gestapo captured the 15-year-old Jewish girl and her family in a sealed-off area of an Amsterdam warehouse. They were sent off to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Her last entry read, “[I] keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would like to be, and what I could be, if…there weren’t any other people living in the world.” Anne died in the camp on the 15th of March, 1945.
August 2, 1939: Hiroshima is Bombed
Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt concerning the possibility of atomic weapons. Albert explained the destructive power of this type of bomb, saying it could destroy a whole port and its surrounding territory. Well, what followed isn’t a surprise.
Six years later, America dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. On August 6, 1945, the United States developed the first Atomic Bomb and dropped it on the Japanese port of Hiroshima. It killed thousands of people.
August 4, 1961: The First Black US President was Born
Barack Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on August 4, 1961. Forty-seven years later, Obama became the first African American US president, serving from 2009 to 2017. Before his terms in office, he was a member of the Illinois State Senate and a US Senator from Illinois.
He advocated for several stimulus measures to combat the Great Recession as president. He is also known for effectively legalizing same-sex marriage and starting the process of normalizing relations with Cuba for the first time in more than 50 years.
August 14, 2003: The Northeastern Blackout
A major power outage that hadn’t happened before occurred across the Eastern United States, parts of Canada, and New York. Many refer to this power cut as the worst that had ever happened in North American history, as it affected over 50 million people.
It caused traffic lights to stop, underground railways failing, and people trapped in elevators. It was one of the hottest days of the year, with temperatures approaching 32°C (89F), some of the worst effects were caused due to the lack of air conditioning.
August 28, 1963: Martin Luther King Jr. Gave His Famous Speech
More than 200,000 people gathered for a peaceful civil rights rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Martin Luther King, Jr. made one of the most well-known and quoted speeches in Modern Day History, saying the immortal words “I have a dream…”
He gave the speech to the peaceful demonstrators, black and white, poor and rich, who had come together in the nation’s capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans. Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
