August 29, 708 – Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time
August 29, 1756 – Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years’ War.
August 29, 1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
August 30, 1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen.
August 30, 1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African-American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
August 31, 1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798: Irish rebels, with French assistance, establish the short-lived Republic of Connacht.
August 31, 1907 – Count Alexander Izvolsky (Russia) and Sir Arthur Nicolson (Great Britain) sign the St. Petersburg Convention, which results in the Triple Entente alliance.
September 1, 1920 – The Fountain of Time opens as a tribute to the 100 years of peace between the United States and Great Britain following the Treaty of Ghent (bilateral peace treaty that ended the War of 1812, signed in 1814 in the English city of Ghent) It was inspired by Henry Austin Dobson’s poem, “Paradox of Time”, and its 100 figures passing before Father Time. It is said to be the first sculpture made of steel-reinforced concrete.
September 1, 1951 – United Nations Security Council Resolution 95 relating to Arab-Israeli conflict is adopted. Passed by eight votes to none, Resolution 95 called for the Egyptian government to cease all interference with Israeli shipping, particularly that which was essential for safety.
September 2, 1792 – During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic Church bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathizers.
September 2, 1901 – Vice President Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.
September 3, 1260 – The Mamluks defeat the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Palestine, marking their first decisive defeat and the point of maximum expansion of the Mongol Empire.
September 4, 1882 – Thomas Edison flips the switch to the first commercial electrical power plant in history, lighting one square mile of lower Manhattan. This is considered by many as the day that began the electrical age.
September 4, 1998 – Google is founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two students at Stanford University. In 1995 Larry Page, a U Michigan graduate is considering Standford and Sergey is assigned to show him around. The rest is history. Google is a wordplay on googol, a math term for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and reflected their mission to organize the seemingly infinite amount of web information.
Births
August 29, 1777 – Nikita Yakovlevich Bichurin Russian religious leader, founded Sinology ( the study of Chinese literature, language, and history
August 29, 1843 – David B. Hill, American lawyer and politician, 29th Governor of New York (d. 1910)
August 30, 1907 – John Mauchly, American physicist and co-founder of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (d. 1980)
August 30, 1947 – Allan Rock, Canadian lawyer, politician, and diplomat, Canadian Ambassador to the United Nations
August 30, 1954 – Alexander Lukashenko, Belarusian marshal, and politician, first President of Belarus
August 31, 1822 – Galusha A. Grow, American lawyer and politician, 28th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (d. 1907)
August 31, 1949 – Hugh David Politzer, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate for his work in theoretical physics
September 1, 1795 – James Gordon Bennett, Sr., American publisher, founded the New York Herald (d. 1872)
September 2, 1932 – Arnold Greenberg, American businessman, co-founded Snapple (d. 2012)
September 3, 1849 – Sarah Orne Jewett, American author, and poet (d. 1909)
Deaths
August 29, 1780 – Jacques-Germain Soufflot, French architect, co-designed The Panthéon (b. 1713)
August 30, 1995 – Sterling Morrison, American guitarist and singer (The Velvet Underground) (b. 1942)
August 31, 1888 – Mary Ann Nichols, English victim of Jack the Ripper (b. 1845)
August 31, 2015 – Edward Douglas-Scott-Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu, English politician, founded the National Motor Museum of England (b. 1926)
September 1, 1581 – Guru Ram Das, Sikh (religious practitioner of Sikhism, a monotheistic religion founded in Punjab in the 15th century by Guru Nanak) 4th of the Ten Gurus of Sikhism (b. 1534)
September 2, 1937 – Pierre de Coubertin, French historian and educator, founded the International Olympic Committee (b. 1863)
September 3, 1962 – Edward Estlin Cummings AKA e.e.cummings, American author, poet, and playwright (b. 1894)