On Aug. 19, 1848, the New York Herald reported the discovery of gold in California.
In 1883 Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the influential French designer, was born in Saumur, France.
In 1886 eight men were found guilty of murder in connection with the May 4 Haymarket Riot in Chicago. (The next day, seven were sentenced to death and the eighth to 15 years in prison. Of the eight, four were hanged, one committed suicide and three were pardoned in 1893.)
In 1929 the comedy program “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” starring Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, made its coast-to-coast radio debut on NBC.
In 1931 Bill Shoemaker, considered the greatest American jockey of the second half of the 20th Century, was born near Fabens, Texas.
In 1934 a plebiscite in Germany approved the vesting of sole executive power in Adolf Hitler.
In 1942 about 6,000 Canadian and British soldiers launched a disastrous raid against the Germans at Dieppe, France, suffering about 50 percent casualties.
In 1951 the owner of the St. Louis Browns, Bill Veeck, sent in Eddie Gaedel, a 3-foot-7-inch midget, to pinch-hit in a game against Detroit. (Gaedel, whose function was to draw walks, was later barred from play by the American League president.)
In 1955 severe flooding in the Northeast caused by the remnants of Hurricane Diane claimed about 200 lives.
In 1960 a tribunal in Moscow convicted American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage.
In 1977 comedian Groucho Marx died in Los Angeles; he was 86.
In 1989 Polish President Wojciech Jaruzelski formally nominated Tadeusz Mazowiecki to become Poland’s first non-Communist prime minister in four decades.
In 1991 Soviet hard-liners announced to a shocked world that President Mikhail Gorbachev had been removed from power. (The coup collapsed two days later.)
In 1994 President Bill Clinton abruptly halted the nation’s three-decade open-door policy for Cuban refugees.
In 1996 Ralph Nader accepted the presidential nomination of the Green Party.
In 2002 Abu Nidal, a Palestinian schoolteacher-turned-terrorist mastermind, was reported to have died in Baghdad of multiple gunshot wounds.
