What happened on August 2 ?
Events
216 B.C. - The Romans are defeated at the Battle of Cannae by Hannibal.
1610 - Henry Hudson sails into what it is now known as Hudson Bay, thinking he had made it through the Northwest Passage and reached the Pacific Ocean.
1776 - Delegates to the Continental Congress begin signing the United States Declaration of Independence.
1790 - The first US Census is conducted.
1798 - Second Coalition: The Battle of the Nile between French and British navies ends with a British victory.
1869 - Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system 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.
1903 - Fall of the Ottoman Empire: Unsuccessful uprising of the Bulgarians against Ottoman Turkey, also known as the Ilinden uprising.
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.
1934 - Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.
1943 - PT-109, with future president of the United States Lieutenant John F. Kennedy commanding, sinks.
1945 - World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.
1964 - North Vietnam allegedly fires on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.
1967 - The second Blackwall Tunnel opens in Greenwich, London.
1980 - A bomb explodes at the railway station in Bologna, Italy, killing 85 people and wounding more than 200.
1985 - A Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, killing 137.
1990 - Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.
2004 - Monday demonstrations against social cutbacks began in Germany
2005 - Air France Flight 358 skids off the runway at Toronto Pearson International Airport outside Toronto, Canada, destroying the plane but resulting in no loss of life.
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