Construction of the Eiffel Tower. Paris, July, 188

1951

Paris celebrates 2,000th birthday

Born on This Day

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon - Season 10

Kevin Bacon

1958 -

Actor whose ubiquitous screen credits, including "Footloose;" inspired the parlor game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon."

USOC Portraits for Rio2016

Jordan Burroughs

1988 -

Freestyle wrestler with six world championships, who won Olympic gold in 2012.

Los Angeles Premiere Of "The Uninvited"

Anjelica Huston

1951 -

Actress and daughter of director John Huston. Starred in the "Addams Family" films and won an Oscar for "Prizzi's Honor."

1905

JUL

8

The shockingly well-preserved body of Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones, discovered after 113 years in a French graveyard, begins its final transatlantic journey. It is interred at the US Naval Academy in Maryland.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on July 8th

1853

Commodore Perry sails into Tokyo Bay

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, representing the U.S. government, sails into Tokyo Bay, Japan, with a squadron of four vessels. For a time, Japanese officials refused to speak with Perry, but under threat of attack by the superior American ships they accepted letters from President Millard Fillmore, making the United States the first Western nation to establish relations with Japan since it had been declared closed to foreigners two centuries before. Only the Dutch and the Chinese were allowed to continue trade with Japan after 1639, but this trade was restricted and confined to the island of Dejima at Nagasaki.

1898

Con man “Soapy” Smith killed in Skagway, Alaska

A disgruntled city engineer in Skagway, Alaska, murders “Soapy” Smith, one of the most notorious con men in the history of the West.

1914

Labor activist and singer Joe Hill sentenced to death

Convicted of murder on meager evidence, the singing Wobbly Joe Hill is sentenced on July 8, 1914 to be executed in Utah.

1918

Ernest Hemingway wounded on the Italian front

On July 8, 1918, Ernest Hemingway, an 18-year-old ambulance driver for the American Red Cross, is struck by a mortar shell while serving on the Italian front, along the Piave delta, in World War I.

1941

German general’s diary reveals Hitler’s plans for Russia

On July 8, 1941, upon the German army’s invasion of Pskov, 180 miles from Leningrad, Russia, the chief of the German army general staff, General Franz Halder, records in his diary Hitler’s plans for Moscow and Leningrad: “To dispose fully of their population, which otherwise we shall have to feed during the winter.”

1950

MacArthur named Korean commander

The day after the U.N. Security Council recommended that all U.N. forces in Korea be placed under the command of the U.S. military, General Douglas MacArthur is appointed head of the United Nations Command by President Harry S. Truman.

1954

Colonel Castillo Armas takes power in Guatemala

Col. Carlos Castillo Armas is elected president of the junta that overthrew the administration of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman in late June 1954. The election of Castillo Armas was the culmination of U.S. efforts to remove Arbenz and save Guatemala from what American officials believed to be an attempt by international communism to gain a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.

1959

First Americans killed in South Vietnam

Maj. Dale R. Buis and Master Sgt. Chester M. Ovnand become the first Americans killed in the American phase of the Vietnam War when guerrillas strike a Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) compound in Bien Hoa, 20 miles northeast of Saigon. The group had arrived in South Vietnam on November 1, 1955, to provide military assistance. The organization consisted of U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps personnel who provided advice and assistance to the Ministry of Defense, Joint General Staff, corps and division commanders, training centers, and province and district headquarters.

1969

First U.S. troops withdrawn from South Vietnam

A battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division leaves Saigon in the initial withdrawal of U.S. troops. The 814 soldiers were the first of 25,000 troops that were withdrawn in the first stage of the U.S. disengagement from the Vietnam War. There would be 14 more increments in the withdrawal, but the last U.S. troops did not leave until after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973.

1994

North Korea’s “Great Leader” dies

Kim Il-Sung, the communist dictator of North Korea since 1948, dies of a heart attack at the age of 82.

2000

Venus Williams wins Wimbledon for the first time

On July 8, 2000, Venus Williams wins at Wimbledon for the first time. Her victory over defending champion, Lindsay Davenport, made Williams the first Black female Wimbledon champion since Althea Gibson won back-to-back titles in 1957 and 1958.

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