On August 22, 1851, the schooner America triumphed over more than a dozen British ships in a race off the English coast, winning a trophy that would later be known as the America’s Cup.
In 1791, the Haitian Revolution erupted as enslaved people in Saint-Domingue rose up against French colonial rule.
In 1910, Japan formally annexed Korea, a control that lasted until the conclusion of World War II.
In 1922, Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins was fatally shot, reportedly by members of the Irish Republican Army who opposed the Anglo-Irish Treaty that Collins had co-signed.
In 1965, a fierce fourteen-minute brawl broke out between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers after Giants pitcher Juan Marichal hit Dodgers catcher John Roseboro on the head with a baseball bat. Despite the incident, Marichal and Roseboro later reconciled and became lifelong friends.
In 1968, Pope Paul VI made history by becoming the first pope to visit South America, arriving in Bogota, Colombia.
In 1972, John Wojtowicz and Salvatore Naturile took seven employees hostage during a failed robbery at a Chase Manhattan Bank branch in Brooklyn, New York. The standoff ended with Wojtowicz’s arrest and Naturile’s death at the hands of the FBI, an event that inspired the 1975 film “Dog Day Afternoon.”
In 1989, Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, was shot and killed in Oakland, California.
In 1992, on the second day of the Ruby Ridge standoff in Idaho, an FBI sharpshooter killed Vicki Weaver, the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform legislation that ended guaranteed cash assistance for the poor and imposed work requirements on recipients.
In 2003, Alabama’s chief justice, Roy Moore, was suspended for defying a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of his courthouse.