In Philadelphia, delegates to the Constitutional Convention begin debating the first complete draft of the proposed Constitution of the United States. The Articles of Confederation, ratified several months before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, provided for a loose confederation of U.S. states, which were sovereign in most of their affairs. On paper, Congress—the […]

The C.S.S. Arkansas, the most feared Confederate ironclad on the Mississippi River, is blown up by her crew after suffering mechanical problems during a battle with the U.S.S. Essex near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Arkansas‘s career lasted just 23 days. In August 1861, the Confederate Congress appropriated $160,000 to construct two ironclad ships for use […]

At Auburn Prison in New York, the first execution by electrocution in history is carried out against William Kemmler, who had been convicted of murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe. Electrocution as a humane means of execution was first suggested in 1881 by Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist. Southwick had witnessed an elderly […]

Arthur Flegenheimer, who will go on to become one of New York’s most feared criminals under the name “Dutch Schultz,” is born in the Bronx. Thirty-three years later, his life came to a violent and bloody conclusion when he was shot down in the men’s room of the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey. After […]

On August 6, 1926, on her second attempt, 20-year-old Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the 21 miles from Dover, England, to Cape Griz-Nez across the English Channel, which separates Great Britain from the northwestern tip of France. Ederle was born to German immigrants on October 23, 1905, in New York City. She […]

On August 6, 1930, New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater vanished on the streets of Manhattan near Times Square. The dapper 41-year-old’s disappearance launched a massive investigation that captivated the nation, earning Crater the title of “the missingest man in New York.” Born to Irish immigrants in 1889, Crater grew up in Pennsylvania and […]

On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote. The bill made it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections that were designed to deny the vote to Black people. Johnson assumed the presidency in November 1963 upon the assassination of […]

On August 6, 1996, NASA and Stanford researchers announce they have found signs of Martian life in a meteorite discovered 12 years earlier in Allan Hills, Antarctica, causing a worldwide sensation. But some viewed the announcement skeptically, and the Martian life connection was later debunked. A NASA spokesman initially called the evidence of fossilized, one-celled […]