Today in 1923 After the death of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge becomes President of the United States.

August 2 is the 214th day of the year (215th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 151 days remaining until the end of the year.

Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

EVENTS

338 BC – Rise of Macedon: Philip II of Macedon crushes Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea.

216 BC – Punic Wars: In the Battle of Cannae, Hannibal destroys the Roman army of Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro in what is considered one of the great masterpieces of the tactical art.

AD 461 – Majorian resigns as Western Roman Emperor; shortly afterwards Libius Severus is declared western Roman emperor by Ricimer.

1274 – Edward I of England returns from the Ninth Crusade and is crowned King 17 days later.

1377 – Russian troops are defeated at the Battle of Pyana River because of drunkenness.

1610 – Henry Hudson sails into what is now Hudson Bay, thinking he had reached the Pacific Ocean through the Northwest Passage.

1776 – Delegates to the Continental Congress begin to sign the United States Declaration of Independence.

1790 – First US Census; records are missing for five states: Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey and Virginia. Destroyed somewhere between that date and 1830.

1798 – Second Coalition: End of the Battle of the Nile between French and British navies; France defeated.

1830 – Charles X of France leaves the throne to his grandson Henri, Count of Chambord, who is, disputedly, King of France until August 9.

1832 – Battle of Bad Axe: US troops defeat Native American Chief Black Hawk.

1858 – British Columbia becomes a British colony.

1869 – Japan's samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant class system is abolished as part of the Meiji Restoration reforms. (Traditional Japanese date: June 25, 1869).

1870 – Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.

1873 – The Clay Street Railroad begins operating the first cable car in San Francisco's famous cable car system.

1874 – Iceland celebrates 1,000 years of settlement.

1876 – In Deadwood, South Dakota, Jack McCall shoots and kills American Western figure Wild Bill Hickok, who was playing a game of cards at the time. The combination of cards he held at the time is now referred to as Dead Man's Hand.

1897 – Anglo-Afghan War: The Siege of Malakand ends.

1903 – Fall of the Ottoman Empire: Unsuccessful uprising of the Macedonians and Aromanians against Ottoman, also known as the Ilinden uprising.

1909 – The 'Tragic Week' uprising in Barcelona against Spain's colonial politics in Morocco is violently crushed by police. Over 100 people are killed.

1916 – World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto.

1918 – Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I.

1918 – The first General Strike in Canadian history takes place in Vancouver.

1922 – A typhoon hits Shantou, Republic of China, killing over 50,000 people.

1923 – After the death of Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge becomes President of the United States.

1934 – Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler becomes Führer of Germany.

1937 – Marijuana is made illegal in the United States.

1939 – Leó Szilárd and Albert Einstein sign a letter to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning of the dangers posed by Nazi Germany and calling for the development of a nuclear weapon.

From 1941

1943 – PT-109, with future president of the United States Lieutenant John F. Kennedy aboard, sinks. He manages to save most of the crew.

1944 – The Socialist Republic of Macedonia is created.

1944 – Beginning of the Treblinka uprising.

1945 – World War II: Potsdam Conference, in which the Allied Powers discuss the future of defeated Germany, concludes.

1947 – A British South American Airways Avro Lancastrian airliner crashes into a mountain on a flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago de Chile. The wreckage disappears under a glacier and only reappears over 50 years later. The meaning of its last message, "STENDEC", remains a mystery.

1950 – The New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures was published on Yankee Stadium, New York.

1955 – Velcro is patented.

1964 – North Vietnam fires on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

1967 – The second Blackwall Tunnel opened in Greenwich, London.

1967 – Turkish sports club Trabzonspor is founded in Trabzon.

1968 – An earthquake hits Casiguran, Aurora, Philippines, killing over 270 people.

1970 – Powder Ridge Rock Festival

1973 – A flash fire kills 51 people at the Summerland amusement centre in Douglas, Isle of Man.

1975 – In New Orleans, Louisiana, the Superdome officially opens with an American football game between the New Orleans Saints and Houston Oilers.

1976 – An intruder breaks into Priscilla Davis's Mockingbird Lane mansion in Fort Worth, Texas. Priscilla Davis and a friend are injured while Andrea Wilborn and Stan Farr are killed. T. Cullen Davis is tried and found innocent of the crime.

1980 – A terrorist bombing at the railway station in Bologna, Italy kills 85 people and wounds more than 200.

1980 – Hard rock band AC/DC release Back in Black, their first album with lead singer Brian Johnson and their best-selling

1985 – A Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar crashes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas, killing 137.

1989 – Pakistan is re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations.

1989 – A massacre is carried out by an Indian Peacekeeping Force in Sri Lanka, killing 64 ethnic Tamil civilians.

1990 – On the orders of Saddam Hussein, Iraq invades Kuwait, eventually leading to the Gulf War.

1994 – Popular Japanese television and movie actor Beat Takeshi is seriously injured in a motorcycle accident.

1997 – Australian ski instructor Stuart Diver is rescued as the sole survivor from the Thredbo landslide in New South Wales, Australia, in which 18 people died.

1998 – The Second Congo War begins.

2003 – A 65th anniversary edition of The Beano is released.

2005 – Air France Flight 358 lands at Toronto Pearson International Airport, and runs off the runway, causing the plane to burst into flames. All on board survive, with 12 injured.

2007 – Crews from the Russian submarines Mir 1 and Mir 2 plant the Flag of Russia in the seabed beneath the North Pole.

2014 – A factory explosion near Shanghai kills 146 people.

2018 – Apple Inc. becomes the first company to reach a worth of a trillion United States dollars.

2018 – The first multi-sport European Championships, co-hosted by Glasgow (Scotland) and Berlin (Germany), begin.