August 26
55 B.C. - Britain was invaded by Roman forces under Julius Caesar.
1498 - Michelangelo was commissioned to make the "Pieta."
1842 - The first fiscal year was established by the U.S. Congress to start on July 1st.
1847 - Liberia was proclaimed as an independent republic.
1873 - The school board of St. Louis, MO, authorized the first U.S. public kindergarten.
1896 - In the Philippines, and insurrection began against the Spanish government.
1920 - The 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution went into effect. The amendment prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in the voting booth.
1934 - Adolf Hitler demanded that France turn over their Saar region to Germany.
1937 - All Chinese shipping was blockaded by Japan.
1939 - The first televised major league baseball games were shown. The event was a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1939 - The radio program, "Arch Oboler’s Plays", presented the NBC Symphony for the first time.
1945 - The Japanese were given surrender instructions on the U.S. battleship Missouri at the end of World War II.
1947 - Don Bankhead became the first black pitcher in major league baseball.
1957 - It was announced that an intercontinental ballistic missile was successfully tested by the Soviet Union.
1957 - The first Edsel made by the Ford Motor Company rolled of the assembly line.
1961 - The International Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto opened.
1973 - A U.S. Presidential Proclamation was declared that made August 26th Women's Equality Day.
1978 - Sigmund Jahn blasted off aboard the Russian Soyuz 31 and became the first German in space.
1981 - The U.S. claimed that North Korea fired an antiaircraft missile at a U.S. Surveillance plane while it was over South Korea.
1987 - The Fuller Brush Company announced plans to open two retail stores in Dallas, TX. The company that had sold its products door to door for 81 years.
1990 - The 55 Americans at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait left Baghdad by car and headed for the Turkish border.
1991 - Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promised that national elections would be held.
1992 - A "no-fly zone" was imposed on the southern 1/3 of Iraq. The move by the U.S., France and Britain was aimed at protecting Iraqi Shiite Muslims.
1998 - The U.S. government announced that they were investigating Microsoft in an attempt to discover if they "bullied" Intel into delaying new technology.
