Historical Events on this Day in History - per Wikipedia

August 2

• 338 BC – A Macedonian army led by Philip II defeated the combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean.
• 216 BC – Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae – The Carthaginian army led by Hannibal defeats a numerically superior Roman army under command of consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro.
• 1377 – Russian troops are defeated in the Battle on Pyana River because of drunkenness.
• 1610 – Henry Hudson sails into what is now known as Hudson Bay thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.
• 1776 – The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence took place.
• 1790 – The first US Census is conducted.
• 1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: the Battle of the Nile concludes in a British victory.
• 1830 – Charles X of France abdicates the throne in favor of his grandson Henri.
• 1869 – Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system (Shinōkōshō) is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).
• 1870 – Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.
• 1897 – Anglo-Afghan wars: The Siege of Malakand ends when a relief column is able to reach the British garrison in the Malakand region of colonial India's North West Frontier Province.
• 1903 – Fall of the Ottoman Empire: an unsuccessful uprising led by the Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organization against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, takes place.
• 1916 – World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.
• 1918 – Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.
• 1918 – The first general strike in Canadian history takes place in Vancouver.
• 1922 – A typhoon hits Shantou, Republic of China killing more than 50,000 people.
• 1932 – The positron (antiparticle of the electron) is discovered by Carl D. Anderson.
• 1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
• 1937 – The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 is passed in America, the effect of which is to render marijuana and all its by-products illegal.
• 1939 – Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd write a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt, urging him to begin the Manhattan project to develop a nuclear weapon.
• 1943 – Rebellion in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka.
• 1943 – World War II: the Motor Torpedo Boat PT-109 is rammed by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri and sinks. Lt. John F. Kennedy, future U.S. President, saves all but two of his crew.
• 1944 – ASNOM: birth of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, celebrated as Day of the Republic in the Republic of Macedonia.
• 1945 – World War II: the Potsdam Conference, at which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, is concluded.
• 1964 – Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin incident – North Vietnamese gunboats allegedly fire on the U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy.
• 1968 – An earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines killing more than 270 people and wounding 261.
• 1973 – A flash fire kills 51 at the Summerland amusement centre at Douglas, Isle of Man.
• 1980 – A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.
• 1985 – Delta Air Lines Flight 191, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport killing 137.
• 1989 – Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations after having restoring democracy for the first time since 1972.
• 1989 – A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians.
• 1990 – Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.
• 2005 – Air France Flight 358, landed at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and ran off the runway causing the plane to burst into flames. There are 12 serious injuries and no fatalities.