This Day in History

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August 4

367 – Gratian, son of Roman Emperor Valentinian I, is named co-Augustus by his father and associated to the throne aged eight.

1693 – Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Perignon's invention of champagne; it is not clear whether he actually invented champagne, however he has been credited as an innovator who developed the techniques used to perfect sparkling wine.

1783 – Mount Asama erupts in Japan, killing about 1,400 people. The eruption causes a famine, which results in an additional 20,000 deaths.

1790 – A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).

1821 – The Saturday Evening Post is published for the first time as a weekly newspaper.

1873 – American Indian Wars: While protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer clashes for the first time with the Cheyenne and Lakota people near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed.

1889 – The Great Fire of Spokane, Washington destroys some 32 blocks of the city, prompting a mass rebuilding project.

1892 – The father and stepmother of Lizzie Borden are found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.

1944 – The Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.

1958 – The Billboard Hot 100 is published for the first time.

1964 – American civil rights movement: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.

1967 - Pink Floyd released their debut album The Piper At the Gates of Dawn on which most songs were penned by Syd Barrett. In subsequent years, the record has been recognized as one of the seminal psychedelic rock albums of the 1960s.

1969 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuân Thuỷ begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.

1975 - Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant and his wife were both badly injured when the hire car he was driving spun off the road and crashed on the Greek island of Rhodes. Plant smashed both his ankle and his elbow, and was not fully fit for the best part of two years.

1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly".

1993 – A federal judge sentences Los Angeles Police Department officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.

2005 - American blues singer and guitarist Little Milton died. Milton had suffered a brain aneurysm on 25th July 2005 and had lapsed into a coma.

Births

1792 – Percy Bysshe Shelley; 1821 – Louis Vuitton; 1834 – John Venn (Venn Diagram); 1898 – Ernesto Maserati; 1900 – Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother; 1901 – Louis Armstrong♪ ♫; 1918 – ; 1920 – Helen Thomas (loooong time White House reporter); 1923 – Reg Grundy; 1928 – Gerard Damiano(porn writer/director); 1939 – Frank Vincent ('Phil Leotardo' on The Sopranos); 1942 – Don S. Davis (Stargate SG-1); 1944 – Richard Belzer; 1949 – John Riggins; 1955 – Billy Bob Thornton; 1956 – Gerry Cooney; 1959 – Robbin Crosby(Ratt); 1961 – Barack Hussein Obama (44th POTUS); 1962 – Roger Clemens; 1969 – Max Cavalera♪ ♫(Sepultura); 1969 – Michael DeLuise; 1971 – Jeff Gordon; 1978 – Kurt Busch; 1985 – Crystal Bowersox♪ ♫

Deaths

1265 - Peter de Montfort, Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, Hugh le Despencer, 1st Baron le Despencer; 1981 – Melvyn Douglas; 1990 – Ettore Maserati; 1999 – Victor Mature; 2001 – Lorenzo Music; 2005 - Little Milton♪ ♫; 2007 – Lee Hazlewood♪ ♫; 2014 – James Brady