August 4

1532 – The Duchy of Brittany is united to the Kingdom of France.
1789 – In France, members of the National Constituent Assembly take an oath to end feudalism and abandon their privileges.
1790 – A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
1791 – The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman-Habsburg wars. The Habsburg Monarchy was a composite state (early modern state consisting of several countries under one ruler) of territories within and outside the Holy Roman Empire.
1914 – World War I: Germany invades Belgium. In response, Belgium and the United Kingdom declare war on Germany. The United States maintains its neutrality.
1944 – A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others.
2007 – NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft is launched. The mission was to search for environments suitable for microbial life on Mars and to research the history of water there. It was declared concluded on November 10 after engineers were unable to re-contact with the spacecraft.

Births
1290 – Leopold I, Duke of Austria (d. 1326)
1719 – Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German mineralogist and geologist
1821 – Louis Vuitton, a French fashion designer, founded Louis Vuitton (d. 1892)
1913 – Robert Hayden, American poet and educator (d. 1980)
1957 – Brooks D. Simpson, American historian, and author
1978 – Victor Marius Beliciu, Romanian sitar (a plucked stringed instrument used in Hindustani music and Indian classical music) player
Deaths
221 – Lady Zhen, Chinese empress (b. 183)
1578 – Sebastian of Portugal (b. 1554)
1875 – Hans Christian Andersen, Danish novelist, short-story writer, and poet (b. 1805)
1940 – Ze’ev Jabotinsky, Ukrainian-American general, journalist, and activist
1982 – Bruce Goff, an American architect, designed the Boston Avenue Methodist Church (b. 1904)