Gordon Jones

On Aug. 2, 1610, during his fourth voyage to the Western Hemisphere, English explorer Henry Hudson sailed into what is now Hudson Bay.

In 1776, members of the Second Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence.

In 1862, the Ambulance Corps for the Army of the Potomac was created at the order of Maj. Gen. George McClellan during the Civil War.

In 1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco.

In 1921, a jury in Chicago acquitted several former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious “Black Sox” scandal.

On Aug. 1, 1876, Colorado was admitted as the 38th state.

In 1907, the U.S. Army Signal Corps established an aeronautical division, the forerunner of the U.S. Air Force.

In 1936, the Olympics opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.

In 1944, an uprising broke out in Warsaw, Poland, against Nazi occupation; the revolt lasted two months before collapsing.

In 1957, the United States and Canada announced they had agreed to create the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

In 1966 an ex-Marine goes on a killing spree at the University of Texas a-top a 300 foot tower, killing 14 and wounding 32.

In 1971, the Concert For Bangladesh organised by George Harrison to aid victims of famine and war in Bangladesh took place at New York’s Madison Sq Garden. Featuring Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Billy Preston, Eric Clapton, Ravi Shankar and members from Badfinger. Harrison had to shell out his own money to maintain the fund after legal problems froze all proceeds. The triple album release (the second in a row by Harrison), hit No.1 in the UK and No.2 in the US and received the Grammy Award for Album of the Year.

In 1981, the rock music video channel MTV made its debut.

In 1987, MTV Europe was launched, the first video played being ‘Money For Nothing’ by Dire Straits which contained the appropriate line ‘I Want My MTV’.

In 2007, the eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, collapsed into the Mississippi River during evening rush hour.