On Aug. 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain with three ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria, on the expedition that carried him to America.
In 1887 poet, novelist and editor Rupert Brooke was born in Rugby, England.
In 1900 World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle was born in Dana, Ind. (He would become one of the first correspondents killed in the Pacific theater.)
In 1904 Britain, worried about Russian influence in Tibet, occupied the country with troops from India as the 13th Dalai Lama fled.
In 1905 social activist and Gray Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn was born in Buffalo, N.Y.
In 1914 Germany declared war on France.
In 1924 author Leon Uris was born in Baltimore.
In 1926 singer Tony Bennett was born in New York.
In 1936 the State Department urged Americans in Spain to leave because of that country’s civil war.
In 1940 Hall of Fame flanker and receiver Lance Alworth was born in Houston.
In 1941 lifestyle guru Martha Stewart was born Martha Kostyra in Jersey City, N.J.
In 1943 Gen. George Patton slapped a private at an Army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice. (Patton later was ordered by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower to apologize for this and a second similar episode.)
In 1948 Whittaker Chambers, a Time magazine editor and admitted ex-communist, named Alger Hiss, a former State Department official, as a onetime key member of the communist underground in Washington; Hiss denied the charge. (Hiss’ first trial, in 1949, ended in a hung jury; he was found guilty in 1950 in his second trial.)
In 1949 the National Basketball Association was formed.
In 1951 the U.S. Military Academy dismissed 90 cadets for cheating on exams.
In 1958 the atomic-powered submarine Nautilus made the first undersea crossing of the North Pole.
In 1966 comedian Lenny Bruce died from a morphine overdose in Hollywood; he was 40.
In 1977 Orthodox Archbishop Makarios, the president of Cyprus, died in Nicosia; he was 63.
In 1980 closing ceremonies were held in Moscow for the 1980 Summer Olympics, which had been boycotted by dozens of countries, including the United States.
In 1981 U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, despite a warning from President Ronald Reagan that they would be fired, which they were.
In 1987 the Iran-contra congressional hearings ended, with none of the 29 witnesses tying President Ronald Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to Nicaraguan rebels.
In 1993 the Senate voted 96-3 to confirm Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In 1994 Stephen Breyer was sworn in as the Supreme Court’s newest justice in a private ceremony at Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s Vermont summer home. Also i n 1994 Arkansas carried out the nation’s first triple execution in 32 years.
In 1995 a Palestinian, Eyad Ismoil, was flown to the United States from Jordan to face charges that he had driven a bomb-laden van into New York’s World Trade Center. (The 1993 explosion killed six people and injured more than 1,000; Ismoil is serving a life sentence.)
In 1996, at the Atlanta Olympics, the U.S. men’s basketball “Dream Team” beat Yugoslavia 95-69 to win the gold medal.
In 1997 Nellie Fox, star second baseman for the White Sox in the 1950s, was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame.
In 1999 arbitrators ruled the government had to pay the heirs of Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder $16 million for his film of the assassination of President John Kennedy.
In 2000 Texas Gov. George W. Bush accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s convention in Philadelphia, presenting himself as an outsider who would return “civility and respect” to Washington politics.
In 2003 the Episcopal Church’s House of Deputies further paved the way for Rev. V. Gene Robinson to become the denomination’s first openly gay bishop, approving him on a 2-1 vote. Also in 2003 Annika Sorenstam completed a career Grand Slam at the Women’s British Open, beating Se Ri Pak.
In 2004 Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge defended the decision to tighten security in New York and Washington even though the intelligence behind the latest terror warnings was as much as four years old. Also in 2004 the Statue of Liberty pedestal in New York reopened to the public for the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
