August 2

Events 338 BC - A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean.216 BC - Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae - The Carthaginian army lead by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army under command of consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro.1610 - Henry Hudson sails into what it is now known as Hudson Bay, thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.1776 - Delegates to the Continental Congress begin signing the United States Declaration of Independence.1790 - The first US Census is conducted.1798 - French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) concludes in an British victory1869 - Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system (Shinōkōshō) is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).1870 - Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.1903 - Fall of the Ottoman Empire: Unsuccessful uprising of the Bulgarians in the region of Macedonia from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising.1916 - World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.1918 - Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.1931 - Einstein urges all scientists to refuse military work.1932 - The positron (antiparticle of the electron) was discovered by Carl D. Anderson. 1934 - Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.1937 - The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, essentially rendering marijuana and all its by-products illegal.1939 - Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon.1943 - Rebellion in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka.1943 -  World War II: PT-109 rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future US President, saves all but two of his crew.1945 - World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.1964 - Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident - North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fires on U.S. destroyers, USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy.1967 - The second Blackwall Tunnel opens in Greenwich, London.1980 - A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.1985 - Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to conflict with coalition forces in the Gulf War.
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