On this date...

In 1540, Explorer Hernando de Alarcón travels up the Colorado River

In 1718, Hundreds of French colonists arrived in Louisiana, with some of them settling in present-day New Orleans.

In 1777, The Philadelphia Campaign begins when British General William Howe and his brother, Admiral Richard Howe, land 17,000 troops in an armada of 265 ships at Head of Elk, Maryland (today Elkton). The armada was the largest ever assembled in American waters.

In 1829, President Jackson offers to buy Texas, but the Mexican government refuses

In 1835, New York's The Sun began running a series of news accounts that falsely claimed British astronomer John Herschel had observed all sorts of life on the Moon, including winged human creatures about four feet tall; it became known as the Great Moon Hoax, though The Sun never retracted the stories.

In 1849, 16-year-old Thomas Short confessed to his role in his family's cattle theft operation. The confession was printed in the Texas State Gazette. 

In 1896, The outlaw Bill Doolin is killed by a posse at Lawson, Oklahoma.

In 1916, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed the “Organic Act,” which established the National Park Service.

In 1921, Franklin D. Roosevelt, age 39, is diagnosed with polio, also called infantile paralysis because it typically strikes much younger people. He will never regain the full use of his legs.

In 1921, The United States signed a peace treaty with Germany.

In 1928, an expedition led by Richard E. Byrd set sail from Hoboken, N.J., on its journey to Antarctica.

In 1932, American Amelia Earhart completes a transcontinental non-stop flight, the first by a woman, landing in Newark, New Jersey

In 1939, The Wizard of Oz, which will become one of the best-loved movies in history, opens in theaters around the United States.

In 1945, John Birch, an American Baptist missionary and U.S. Army intelligence officer, was killed by Chinese communists, which later inspired the foundation of the John Birch Society—a private organization that considered Birch to be the first hero of the Cold War.

1948 – In the House Un-American Activities Committee’s first televised congressional hearing, Alger Hiss denied charges by Whittaker Chambers that Hiss was a communist involved in espionage. (Hiss was later charged with perjury and sentenced to five years in prison, but maintained his innocence until his death in 1996.)

In 1950, in anticipation of a crippling strike by railroad workers, President Harry S. Truman issues an executive order putting America’s railroads under the control of the U.S. Army, as of August 27, at 4:00 pm.

In 1981, the U.S. spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn’s cloud cover, sending back pictures of and data about the ringed planet.

In 1982, During the Lebanese Civil War, a multinational force including 800 U.S. Marines lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. It was the beginning of a problem-plagued mission that would stretch into 17 months and leave 262 U.S. servicemen dead.

In 1997, The tobacco industry agreed to an $11.3 billion settlement with the state of Florida.

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey, the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade, made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, with 130 mph sustained winds; the storm would deliver five days of rain totaling close to 52 inches, the heaviest tropical downpour that had ever been recorded in the continental U.S.

In 2022, regulators approved California’s plans to require all new cars, trucks and SUVs to run on electricity or hydrogen by 2035.