Today, Aug. 8 in history
In 1974, President Richard Nixon, facing damaging new revelations in the Watergate scandal, announced he would resign the following day.
In 1814, during the War of 1812, peace talks between the United States and Britain began in Ghent, Belgium.
In 1911, President William Howard Taft signed a measure raising the number of U.S. representatives from 391 to 433, with a proviso to add two more when New Mexico and Arizona became states.
In 1942, during WWII, six Nazi saboteurs who were captured after landing in the U.S. were executed in Washington, D.C.; two others who cooperated with authorities were spared.
In 1945, President Harry S. Truman signed the U.S. instrument of ratification for the United Nations Charter. The Soviet Union declared war against Japan during WWII.
In 1963, Britain’s “Great Train Robbery” took place as thieves made off with 2.6 million pounds in banknotes.
In 1973, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew branded as “damned lies” reports he had taken kickbacks from government contracts in Maryland and vowed not to resign — which he ended up doing.
In 1988, Lights go on at Wrigley
In 2000, the wreckage of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, which sank in 1864 after attacking the Union ship Housatonic, was recovered off the South Carolina coast and returned to port. (CSS Hunley was built in Mobile, Ala.)
In 2009, Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in as the U.S. Supreme Court’s first Hispanic and third female justice.
In 2021, Hall of Fame football coach Bobby Bowden, who built one of the most prolific college football programs in history at Florida State, died at his home in Tallahassee, Florida, at 91.
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