Portal:United States/Anniversaries/August/August 4
- 1790 – At the behest of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Congress creates the Revenue Cutter Service, a forerunner of the United States Coast Guard, to combat smuggling in American waters.
- 1901 – Louis Armstrong (pictured), an influential pioneer of both jazz and scat singing, is born.
- 1964 – The United States Navy destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. The so-called Gulf of Tonkin incident would lead to an escalation of the Vietnam War.
- 1969 – At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiator Xuân Thủy begin secret peace negotiations in an attempt to end the Vietnam War. The negotiations will eventually fail.
- 1977 – President Jimmy Carter signs legislation establishing the United States Department of Energy.
- 2010 – California's Proposition 8, a ballot initiative prohibiting same-sex marriage that was passed by the state's voters in 2008, is overturned by Judge Vaughn Walker in the case Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
On this day for the United States
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Events
- 1790 – A newly passed tariff act creates the Revenue Cutter Service (the forerunner of the United States Coast Guard).
- 1821 – Atkinson & Alexander publish The Saturday Evening Post for the first time as a weekly newspaper.
- 1873 – Indian Wars: Whilst protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, the United States 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, clash for the first time with the Sioux (near the Tongue River; only one man on each side is killed).
- 1892 – The family of Lizzie Borden is found murdered in their Fall River, Massachusetts home.
- 1906 – Central railway station, Sydney opens.
- 1964 – Civil rights movement: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21.
- 1964 – Vietnam War: United States destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. The destroyers open fire at what they believed were Vietnam People's Army torpedo boats, although subsequent work has raised doubts the targets were real. This engagement became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
- 1969 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, U.S. representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuân Thủy begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail.
- 1975 – The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages included the U.S. consul and the Swedish chargé d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrades and fly with them to Libya.
- 1977 – US President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy.
- 1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to "fairly" present controversial issues.
- 1993 – A federal judge sentences LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights.
- 1997 – 185,000 Teamsters union United Parcel Service drivers walk off the job.
- 2007 – NASA's Phoenix spaceship is launched.