Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games

Today in History

• The first known letter from North America is sent (1527)
• In the first-ever American intercollegiate athletic event, Harvard beats Yale in a boat race (1852)
• Firestone Tire and Rubber Company is founded (1900)
• Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis fines Standard Oil a record $29.4 million ($768 million in 2017 dollars) for illegal rebating to freight carriers; the decision is overturned on appeal (1907)
• Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis confirms the ban of the “Black Sox” players (1921)
• Jesse Owens wins the 100 meter dash at the Berlin Olympics, to the dismay of Adolf Hitler (1936)
• The world’s first themed amusement park, Santa Claus Land, opens in Indiana (1946)
• Whittaker Chambers accuses Alger Hiss of being a communist spy (1948)
• The NBA is formed from a merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League (1949)
• The USS Nautilus becomes the first submarine to perform an undersea transit of the North Pole (1958)
• The US Senate ratifies the ABM Treaty (1972)
• Tandy Corporation announces the TRS-80, one of the first mass-produced computers (1977)

Birthdays

• Elisha Otis, founded Otis Elevator Company (1811)
• Rupert Brooke, poet (1887)
• Ernie Pyle, war correspondent (1900)
• John T. Scopes, convicted for teaching the Theory of Evolution in Tennessee (1900)
• Dolores del Rio, actress (1904)
• Clifford D. Simak, science fiction writer (1904)
• P. D. James, author (1920)
• Marilyn Maxwell, actress (1921)
• Jean Hagen, actress (1923)
• Leon Uris, author (1924)
• Tony Bennett, singer (1926)
• Haystacks Calhoun, wrestler (1934)
• Martin Sheen, actor (1940)
• Martha Stewart, lifestyle expert (1941)
• John Landis, filmmaker (1950)
• Jay North, actor (1951)
• Isaiah Washington, actor (1963)
• DJ Spinderella, rapper, member of Salt-n-Peppa (1971)
• Evangeline Lilly, actress (1979)

Deaths

• Joseph Conrad, novelist (1924)
• Emile Berliner, invented the phonograph (1929)
• Thorstein Veblen, economist and sociologist (1929)
• Colette, author (1954)
• Flannery O’Connor, author (1964)
• Lenny Bruce, comedian (1966)
• Alfred Lunt, stage actor (1977)
• Carolyn Jones, actress, played Morticia on The Addams Family (1983)
• Ida Lupino, actores (1995)
• John Gardner, author (2007)
• Bubba Smith, football player and actor (2011)

Holidays and Celebrations

• Anniversary of the Killing of Pidjiguiti (Guinea-Bissau)
• Arbor Day (Niger)
• Armed Forces Day (Equatorial Guinea)
• Flag Day (Venezuela)
• Independence Day (Niger)
• National Guard Day (Venezuela)
• National Watermelon Day (US)

August 3 is the 215th day of the year (216th in leap years). There are 150 days remaining until the end of the year.)