August 4
1735 - Printer John Peter Zenger, defended by Andrew Hamilton, was acquitted of libel in a case that helped foster "freedom of the press."
1790 - The U.S. Coast Guard had its beginnings as President George Washington signed a measure authorizing a group of revenue cutters to enforce tariff and trade laws and prevent smuggling.
1830 - Plans for the city of Chicago were laid out.
1884 - Thomas Stevens became the first person to bicycle across the United States. He later would cycle around the world.
1892 - Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother were killed with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts.
1914 - Germany invaded Belgium and, in response, Britain declared war on Germany.
1916 - Denmark ceded the Danish West Indies, including the Danish Virgin Islands, to the United States for $25 million.
1944 - Fifteen-year-old diarist Anne Frank was arrested with her sister, parents and four others by the Gestapo after hiding for two years inside a building in Amsterdam. (Anne and her sister, Margot, died at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.)
1964 - The bodies of three civil rights workers were found in an earthen dam, six weeks into a federal investigation backed by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
1972 - Arthur Bremer was convicted and sentenced in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, to 63 years in prison for his attempt on the life of Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace (the sentence was later reduced to 53 years; Bremer was released from prison in 2007).
1977 - President Jimmy Carter signed a congressional act which created the Department of Energy.
1987 - The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-0 to abolish the Fairness Doctrine, which required radio and television stations to present balanced coverage of controversial issues.
1993 - A federal judge sentenced Los Angeles police officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 2 1/2 years in prison for violating Rodney King's civil rights.
2009 - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pardoned American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee for entering the country illegally and ordered their release during a surprise visit by former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
2019 - A masked gunman fired on revelers enjoying summer nightlife in a popular entertainment district of Dayton, Ohio, leaving nine people dead and 27 wounded; police said officers shot and killed the shooter within 30 seconds of the start of his rampage.
2020 - Nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been improperly stored for years in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, exploded, killing more than 200 people, injuring more than 6,000 and devastating nearby neighborhoods; it was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded.
2022 - A Texas jury ordered conspiracy theorist Alex Jones to pay more than $4 million in compensatory damages to the parents of a 6-year-old boy who was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre over the Jones' repeated public claims that the attack was a hoax. The jury's decision marked the first time the Infowars host had been held financially liable for falsely claiming that the attack that killed 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, was staged.
Birthdays
21 - Anushka Sen (actress)
26 - Amber Rose Gill (reality star)
28 - Jessica Sanchez (singer)
28 - Bruna Marquezine (actress)
30 - Meghan Rienks (actress)
31 - Dylan Sprouse (singer)
31 - Cole Sprouse (singer)
34 - Jessica Mauboy (singer)
38 - Crystal Bowersox (singer)
40 - Greta Gerwig (actress)
42 - Abigail Spencer (actress)
42 - Kira Girard (reality star)
42 - Meghan Markle (actress/wife of Britain's Prince Harry)
52 - Yo-Yo (rapper)
52 - Jeff Gordon (race car driver)
54 - Michael DeLuise (actor)
55 - Daniel Dae Kim (actor)
58 - Crystal Chappell (actress)
61 - Roger Clemens (baseball player)
62 - Barack Obama (44th president of the United States)
64 - Lauren Tom (actress)
65 - Mary Decker Slaney (track & field athlete)
65 - Kym Karath (actress)
68 - Billy Bob Thornton (actor)
74 - John Riggins (football player)
80 - Tina Cole (actress/singer)
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Today in Sports History - August 4
1934 - Mel Ott (New York Giants) became the first major league baseball player to score six runs in a single game.
1936 - Jesse Owens of the United States won the second of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics as he prevailed in the long jump over German Luz Long, who was the first to congratulate him.
1983 - New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield threw a baseball during warm-ups and accidentally killed a seagull. After the game, Toronto police arrested him for "causing unnecessary suffering to an animal."
1985 - Tom Seaver (Chicago White Sox) achieved his 300th victory.
1985 - Rod Carew (California Angels) got his 3,000th major league hit.
1985 - The New York Yankees retire Phil Rizzuto's #10.
1986 - The United States Football League called off its 1986 season. This was after winning only token damages in its antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League.
1996 - Jim Bunning, Bill Foter and Ned Hanlon are inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
2007 - Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees becomes the youngest player in MLB history to reach 500 career home runs.
2007 - Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants hits his 755th career home run, tying Hank Aaron's 33-year-old MLB record.
2010 - Three years to the date of hitting his 500th home run, Alex Rodriguez hits his 600th career home run, and is the youngest to reach that milestone.
2022 - U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was convicted in Russia of drug possession and smuggling, and was sentenced to nine years in prison in a politically charged case. (Griner would be released in a prisoner exchange four months later.)
