Today is Saturday, Aug. 2, the 214th day of 2025. There are 151 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On August 2, 1921, a jury in Chicago acquitted seven former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal (though they would later be banned from Major League Baseball for life by Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis).
Also on this date:
In 1790, the first United States Census began under the supervision of Thomas Jefferson; a total of 3,929,214 people were counted in the census, nearly 700,000 of whom were enslaved.
In 1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.
In 1876, frontiersman “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall, who was later hanged.
In 1923, the 29th president of the United States, Warren G. Harding, died in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge became president.
In 1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler’s complete takeover.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman, Soviet leader Josef Stalin and Britain’s new prime minister, Clement Attlee, concluded the Potsdam conference.
In 1974, former White House counsel John W. Dean III was sentenced to one to four years in prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. (Dean ended up serving four months.)
In 1985, 137 people were killed when Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, crashed while attempting to land at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.
In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out by the U.S. in Operation Desert Storm.)
Today’s Birthdays:
- Author Isabel Allende is 83.
- Actor Butch Patrick (TV: “The Munsters”) is 72.
- Rock music producer/drummer Butch Vig is 70.
- Actor Mary-Louise Parker is 61.
- Filmmaker Kevin Smith is 55.
- Actor Sam Worthington is 49.
- Actor Edward Furlong is 48.
- Actor Lily Gladstone is 39.
- Singer Charli XCX is 33.
- Olympic swimming gold medalist Simone Manuel is 29.
