August 2
216 BC The Carthaginian army led by
Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army at the
Battle of Cannae. Hannibal loved it when a plan came together.
1274
Edward I of England returns from the
Ninth Crusade and is crowned King seventeen days later.
1343 After the execution of her husband,
Jeanne de Clisson sells her estates and raises a force of men with which to attack French shipping and ports.
1610 During
Henry Hudson's search for the
Northwest Passage, he sails into what is now known as
Hudson Bay.
1869 Japan's
samurai class system is abolished as part of the
Meiji Restoration reforms.
1873 The
Clay Street Hill Railroad begins operating the first cable car in San Francisco's famous cable car system.
1923 Vice President
Calvin Coolidge becomes U.S. President
upon the death of President
Warren G. Harding.
1937 The
Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, the effect of which is to render marijuana and all its by-products illegal.
1939
Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the
Manhattan Project to develop a nuclear weapon.
1943 World War II: The
Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer
Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. President, saves all but two of his crew.
1947 A British South American Airways
Avro Lancastrian airliner
crashes into a mountain during a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Santiago, Chile. The wreckage would not be found until
1998.
1962 -
Robert Allen Zimmerman legally became Bob Dylan having signed a music publishing deal with Witmark Music on 12th July of this year.
1964 - The Beatles appeared at the Gaumont Cinema in Bournemouth. One of the supporting acts, billed as a 'new and unknown London group', was
The Kinks.
After an intense search the bodies of
Jim Reeves and Dean Manuel were found in the wreckage of an aircraft and, at 1:00 p.m. local time, radio stations across the United States announced Reeves' death formally. The single-engine
Beechcraft Debonair aircraft, with Reeves at the controls had crashed 42 hours earlier during a thunderstorm. Thousands of people traveled to pay their last respects at his funeral two days later. The coffin, draped in flowers from fans, was driven through the streets of Nashville and then to Reeves' final resting place near Carthage, Texas.
1973 - The
Mamas and the Papas filed a lawsuit against their record label, Dunhill, for over a million dollars in unpaid royalties.
1976 -
Peter "Puddy" Watts, road manager with Pink Floyd, and father to
Naomi Watts, died of a heroin overdose. Watts supplied the crazed laughter on the groups
The Dark Side of The Moon album.
1983 -
James Jamerson died of complications stemming from cirrhosis of the liver, heart failure and pneumonia in Los Angeles, he was 47 years old. As one of
The Funk Brothers he was the uncredited bassist on most of Motown Records' hits in the 1960s and early 1970s. He eventually performed on nearly 30 No.1 pop hits.
1991 -
Rick James and his girlfriend Tanya Hijazi were arrested in Hollywood charged with assault with a deadly weapon aggravated mayhem torture, false imprisonment and forcible oral copulation. James was released on $1 million bail.
2000 -
Jerome Smith from
KC and the Sunshine Band died after being crushed by a bulldozer he was operating.
Births
1754 Pierre Charles L'Enfant (designed Washington, D.C.); 1834 Frιdιric Auguste Bartholdi

(designed the Statue of Liberty); 1835 Elisha Gray (co-founded Western Electric); 1892 Jack L. Warner (co-founded Warner Bros.); 1900 Holling C. Holling; 1905 Myrna Loy; 1911 Ann Dvorak; 1919
Nehemiah Persoff; 1923 Shimon Peres; 1924 Carroll O'Connor; 1932 Lamar Hunt (co-founded the American Football League), Peter O'Toole; 1935 Hank Cochran♪ ♫; 1937 Garth Hudson

(The Band); 1939 Wes Craven

; 1944 Jim Capaldi

; 1945 Joanna Cassidy; 1948 Andy Fairweather Low♪ ♫; 1950 Lance Ito; 1951 Joe Lynn Turner♪ ♫(Rainbow), Andrew Gold; 1957 Mojo Nixon♪ ♫; 1959 Victoria Jackson (SNL); 1959 Apollonia Kotero♪ ♫; 1964 Mary-Louise Parker (
Weeds); 1970 Kevin Smith; 1976 Sam Worthington; 1992 Hallie Eisenberg
Deaths
1788 Thomas Gainsborough

; 1859 Horace Mann; 1876 "Wild Bill" Hickok; 1921 Enrico Caruso♪ ♫; 1922 Alexander Graham Bell; 1923 Warren G. Harding (29th POTUS); 1934 Paul von Hindenburg; 1976 Fritz Lang; 1979 Thurman Munson; 1983 James Jamerson

; 1986 Roy Cohn; 1997 William S. Burroughs; 1998 Shari Lewis