Updated August 8, 2014, 5:33 am
On Aug. 8, 1974, President Richard Nixon announced he would resign following damaging revelations in the Watergate scandal.
On Aug. 8, 1896, Marjorie Rawlings, the American author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning book "The Yearling", was born. Following her death on Dec. 14, 1953, her obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On This Date
| 1815 | Napoleon Bonaparte set sail for St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to spend the remainder of his days in exile. |
|---|---|
| 1844 | Brigham Young was chosen to lead the Mormons following the killing of Joseph Smith. |
| 1876 | Thomas A. Edison received a patent for the mimeograph. |
| 1945 | President Harry S. Truman signed the United Nations Charter. |
| 1945 | The Soviet Union declared war against Japan during World War II. |
| 1963 | Britain's "Great Train Robbery" took place as thieves made off with 2.6 million pounds in banknotes from a train they stopped north of London. |
| 1968 | Richard M. Nixon was nominated for president at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach and chose Maryland Gov. Spiro T. Agnew to be his running mate. |
| 1988 | U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar announced a cease-fire between Iran and Iraq. |
| 2005 | Iran resumed work at a uranium conversion facility after suspending activities for nine months to avoid U.N. sanctions. |
| 2006 | Sen. Joseph Lieberman lost the Connecticut Democratic primary to political newcomer Ned Lamont. (Lieberman won re-election as an independent). |
| 2008 | The Summer Olympic Games opened in Beijing. |
| 2008 | Former Democratic vice-presidential nominee John Edwards admitted having had an extramarital affair. |
Historic Birthdays
Marjorie Rawlings
8/8/1896 - 12/14/1953
American short-story writer and novelist.Go to obituary »
| 52 |
Francis Hutcheson 8/8/1694 - ?/?/1746 Scottish-Irish moral philosopher |
|---|---|
| 80 |
Charles Bulfinch 8/8/1763 - 4/4/1844 American architect |
| 87 |
Esther Morris 8/8/1814 - 4/2/1902 American suffragist and public official |
| 78 |
Charles Dana 8/8/1819 - 10/17/1897 American journalist and editor of the New York Sun |
| 78 |
Henry Fairfield Osborn 8/8/1857 - 11/6/1935 American paleontologist and museum administrator |
| 39 |
Emiliano Zapata 8/8/1879 - 4/10/1919 Mexican guerrilla in the Mexican Revolution of 1911-7 |
| 57 |
Ernest Lawrence 8/8/1901 - 8/27/1958 American Nobel Prize-winning physicist (1939) |
| 81 |
Arthur, Jr. Goldberg 8/8/1908 - 1/19/1990 American lawyer, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1962-5) and United Nations representative (1965-8) |
| 62 |
Rudi Gernreich 8/8/1922 - 4/21/1985 Austrian-born American fashion designer |