5 augustus

Riding through a forest outside Le Mans, the king turned his sword on his own escort and killed several men. For the rest of his life he had bouts of insanity, and the princes of the blood fought over the government in his name, which opened the way to civil war.

A pen sketch of the Arno valley seen from a height, inscribed in his mirror writing “the day of Santa Maria della Neve, 5 August 1473”. It is his earliest dated work and one of the first pure landscapes in Western art. It is in the Uffizi.

After three months of eruptions the volcano sent a debris avalanche down its north side that buried the village of Kambara and dammed the Agatsuma River. Its ash fell on fields across the Kantō in the middle of the famine. Japanese calendar: Tenmei 3, 7th month, 8th day

HMS Agamemnon and USS Niagara spliced the cable in mid-ocean and steamed apart, landing its ends in Ireland and Newfoundland on 5 August. It worked for about three weeks, at a crawl. The company’s electrician, Wildman Whitehouse, drove it with ever higher voltages until the insulation gave way.

The monitor Tecumseh struck a mine and sank in minutes with most of her crew. Farragut, lashed in his flagship’s rigging, led the fleet on through the minefield. His famous words were reported later, in several versions.

At 08:15 on 6 August, local time, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped Little Boy, a uranium gun bomb never tested, which exploded about 600 metres above the city centre with a yield of about 15 kilotons. The 1946 US Strategic Bombing Survey counted 70,000 to 80,000 killed. The city’s later estimate is…

At 08:15 on 6 August, local time, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb that exploded above the city centre. The Radiation Effects Research Foundation estimates that 90,000 to 166,000 people died within two to four months.

He was driving back from Durban, posing as the chauffeur of the white theatre director Cecil Williams, when police flagged the car down. Who tipped them off has never been settled. Fifty steel columns now stand beside the road there; from one point they line up into his face.

He moved between safe houses disguised as a chauffeur, a cook or a gardener, and phoned newspapers from call boxes; the press named him the Black Pimpernel. The strike of 29–31 May 1961 met the largest call-up of police and troops in peacetime, and he told a reporter that the time for non-violence…

The Limited Test Ban TreatyPartial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Dean Rusk, Andrei Gromyko and Britain’s Lord Home signed a treaty in Moscow banning nuclear tests in the atmosphere, in space and under water. Underground tests went on.

The Partial Test Ban TreatyPartial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty

Chastened by Cuba, Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in Moscow to stop testing in the atmosphere, in space and under water. Testing went on underground. A hotline between the Kremlin and the White House had opened that summer.

Leading an open-housing march through a white neighbourhood on Chicago’s Southwest Side, King was hit on the head by a rock. He said he had never seen a crowd so hostile, even in the South.

Tape loops, backwards guitar, a string octet and a song about a tax man. Engineer Ken Townsend invented automatic double tracking for Lennon’s voice. Not one of its songs was played on the tour that began a week later.

Officials had long claimed women could not run that far. Benoit, who had knee surgery 17 days before the trials, broke away after three miles and won in 2:24:52.

The first solar-powered craft at Jupiter, on a looping polar orbit that dodges the worst of the radiation. It carries three Lego figures: Galileo, Jupiter and Juno.

The first Games in South America. A Refugee Olympic Team of ten athletes marched under the Olympic flag, and the ceremonies filled the Maracanã.

The Marine Board of Investigation found the primary causes in OceanGate’s own design, certification, maintenance and inspection of the hull, and made 17 safety recommendations.