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August 6
Events - 1538 - Bogotá, Colombia, is founded by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada.
- 1787 - Sixty proof sheets of the Constitution of the United States are delivered to the Constitutional Convention.
- 1806 - Francis II, the last Holy Roman Emperor, abdicates, thus ending the Holy Roman Empire.
- 1819 - Norwich University founded in Vermont as the first private military school in the United States.
- 1825 - Bolivia gains independence from Spain.
- 1845 - Russian Geographical Society is founded in Saint Petersburg.
- 1861 - British annexation of Lagos, Nigeria.
- 1862 - American Civil War: The Confederate ironclad CSS Arkansas is scuttled on the Mississippi River after suffering damage in a battle with USS Essex near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
- 1870 - Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Wœrth is fought, resulting in a decisive Prussian victory.
- 1890 - At Auburn Prison in New York, murderer William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed by electric chair.
- 1901 - Kiowa land in Oklahoma is opened for white settlement, effectively dissolving the contiguous reservation.
- 1909 - Alice Ramsey and three friends become the first women to complete a transcontinental auto trip.
- 1912 - The Bull Moose Party meets at the Chicago Coliseum.
- 1914 - World War I: First Battle of the Atlantic - Two days after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany over the German invasion of Belgium, ten German U-boats leave their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea.
- 1914 - World War I: Serbia declares war on Germany; Austria declares war on Russia.
- 1914 - Denis Patrick Dowd Jr. enlists in the French Foreign Legion, becoming the first American to fight in World War I.
- 1915 - World War I: Battle of Sari Bair - The Allies mount a diversionary attack timed to coincide with a major Allied landing of reinforcements at Suvla Bay.
- 1917 - World War I: The Battle of Mărăşeşti between the Romanian and German armies begins.
- 1923 - Henry Sullivan swims the English Channel.
- 1926 - Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim across the English Channel.
- 1926 - In New York, the Warner Brothers' Vitaphone system premieres with the movie Don Juan starring John Barrymore.
- 1926 - Harry Houdini performs his greatest feat, spending 91 minutes underwater in a sealed tank before escaping.
- 1941 - A curfew is imposed on US gas stations in preparation for the upcoming war.
- 1942 - Queen Wilhelmina is the first reigning queen to address a joint session of the United States Congress.
- 1945 - World War II: Hiroshima is devastated when an atomic bomb, "Little Boy", is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay. Around 70,000 people were killed instantly.
- 1956 - After going bankrupt in 1955, the American broadcaster DuMont Television Network has its final broadcast, a boxing match from St. Nicholas Arena.
- 1958 - Sports: Australian runner Herb Elliot broke the world record for the mile at the Morton Stadium in Dublin, in a time of 3:54.5.
- 1960 - Cuban Revolution: In response to a United States embargo, Cuba nationalizes American and foreign-owned property in the nation.
- 1961 - Second successful manned orbital flight (USSR, Gherman Titov)
- 1962 - Jamaica becomes independent.
- 1964 - Prometheus, the world's oldest tree, is cut down.
- 1965 - US President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into United States law.
- 1966 - Braniff Airlines Flight 250 crashes in Falls City, NE killing all 42 on board.
- 1976 - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto lays foundation-stone of Port Qasim, Karachi.
- 1984 - Pop star Prince releases Purple Rain, the album which would launch him to superstardom.
- 1986 - A low-pressure system that redeveloped off the New South Wales coast dumps a record 328 millimetres (13 inches) of rain in a day on Sydney.
- 1988 - "Tompkins Square Park Police Riot" in New York City. A riot erupted in Tompkins Square Park when police attempted to enforce a newly-passed curfew for the park. Bystanders, artists, residents, homeless people and political activists were caught up in the police action that took place on the night of August 6 and the early morning of August 7.
- 1990 - Gulf War: The United Nations Security Council orders a global trade embargo against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
- 1991 - Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web. WWW debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.
- 1991 - Doi Takako, chair of the Social Democratic Party (Japan), becomes Japan's first female speaker of the House of Representatives.
- 1993 - Louis Freeh is confirmed by the United States Senate to be the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- 1996 - Legendary punk rock band, Ramones play their 2,263rd and final concert, in The Palace, Los Angeles.
- 1996 - NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
- 1997 - Microsoft buys $150 million worth of shares of financially troubled Apple Computer.
- 1997 - Korean Air Flight 801, a Boeing 747-300, crashes into the jungle on Guam on approach to airport, killing 228.
- 1999 - Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres gets his 3,000th career hit.
- 2000 - The Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, under Prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, publishes Dominus Iesus, notable for its lack of the filioque clause in the Latin text of the Nicene Creed.
- 2001 - White House briefing entitled Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. delivered to George W. Bush. This document foreshadowed the September 11, 2001 attacks.
- 2002 - Marquis de la Fayette is made Honorary Citizen of the United States
- 2002 - Manindra Agrawal et al prove the long standing number theory conjecture in the article entitled Primes in P.
- 2002 - A coal mine cave collapes in Colorado trapping 6 men.
- 2007 - The Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah collapses trapping 6 men.
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