On this date...

In 1850, First Baptist Church of Bastrop, TX was formed. Congratulations on 175 years of service!

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set out on his first voyage to what came to be known as the New World. With three ships and a crew of ninety, Columbus hoped to find a western route to the Far East. Instead, the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria landed in the Bahama Islands.

In 1807, Former US Vice President Aaron Burr goes on trial for treason.

In 1852, in America’s first intercollegiate sporting event, Harvard rowed past Yale to win the first Harvard-Yale Regatta.

In 1975, On August 3, 1795, the United States and Northwest Indian Federation, a confederacy of tribal nations from the eastern Great Lakes region, sign the Treaty of Greenville, pausing two decades of hostility over territory disputes.

In 1921, A day after being acquitted on insufficient evidence—largely because key evidence had disappeared from the grand jury files, eight Chicago White Sox players were banned from baseball for life, accused of receiving bribes to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series.

In 1923, Calvin Coolidge took the presidential oath of office, after the unexpected death in office of President Warren Harding. The new president inherited an administration plagued and discredited by corruption scandals. In the two remaining years of this term, Coolidge, long recognized for his own frugality and moderation, worked to restore the administration’s image and regain the public’s trust.

In 1936, At the Olympics in Berlin, American track athlete Jesse Owens won the 100-metre event, his first of four Olympic gold medals.

In 1943, Gen. George S. Patton slapped a private at an army hospital in Sicily, accusing him of cowardice

In 1949, The National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed by the merger of the National Basketball League and the Basketball Association of America.

In 1958, The U.S. atomic submarine Nautilus passed beneath the thick ice cap of the North Pole, an unprecedented feat.

In 1972, the U.S. Senate ratified the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union.

In 1977, the Tandy Corporation introduced the TRS-80, one of the first widely-available home computers.

In 1981, U.S. air traffic controllers went on strike, seeking pay and workplace improvements (two days later, President Ronald Reagan fired the 11,345 striking union members and barred them from federal employment).

In 1984, American gymnast Mary Lou Retton won the all-around event at the Los Angeles Games, becoming the first American woman to win an individual Olympic gold medal in gymnastics.

In 1987, The Iran-Contra congressional hearings ended with none of the 29 witnesses tying President Ronald Reagan directly to the diversion of arms-sales profits to Nicaraguan rebels.

In 2004, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty opened to visitors for the first time since the 9/11 attacks.

In 2019, A gunman opened fire at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, resulting in the deaths of 23 people; after surrendering, the gunman told detectives he targeted “Mexicans” and had outlined the plot in a screed published online shortly before the attack.

In 2021, New York’s state attorney general said an investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo found that he had sexually harassed multiple current and former state government employees; the report brought increased pressure on Cuomo to resign, including pressure from President Joe Biden and other Democrats. (Cuomo resigned a week later.)