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Today in History: August 6
1497
John Cabot returns to England after his first successful journey to the Labrador coast.

1863
The CSS Alabama captures the USS Sea Bride near the Cape of Good Hope.

1888
Martha Turner is murdered by an unknown assailant, believed to be Jack the Ripper, in London, England.

1890
William Kemmler becomes the first man to be executed by the electric chair.

1904
The Japanese army in Korea surrounds a Russian army retreating to Manchuria.


1914
Ellen Louise Wilson, the first wife of the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, dies of Bright's disease.

1927
A Massachusetts high court hears the final plea from Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italians convicted of murder.

1942
The Soviet city of Voronezh falls to the German army.

1945
Paul Tibbets, the commander of Enola Gay, drops the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It was the second atomic bomb, dropped on Nagasaki, that induced the Japanese to surrender.

1962
Jamaica becomes independent, after 300 years of British rule.

1965
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, outlawing the literacy test for voting eligibility in the South.

1972
Atlanta Braves' right fielder Hank Aaron hits his 660th and 661st home runs, setting the Major League record for most home runs by a player for a single franchise.

1973
Singer-songwriter Stevie Wonder is in an automobile accident and goes into a four-day coma.

1979
Twelve-year-old Marcus Hooper becomes the youngest person to swim the English Channel.

1981
Argentina's ex-president Isabel Peron is freed from house arrest.

1988
A melee that became known as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot in New York City leads to NYPD reforms.

1991
Tim Berners-Lee publishes the first-ever website, Info.cern.ch.

1993
Pope John Paul II publishes "Veritatis splendor encyclical," regarding fundamentals of the Catholic Church's role in moral teachings.

1997
Microsoft announces it will invest $150 million in troubled rival Apple Computer, Inc.

2012
New Zealand's Mount Tongariro erupts for the first time since 1897.

Today in History: Born on August 6
1809
Alfred Lord Tennyson, English poet laureate (1850), wrote "The Charge of the Light Brigade."

1881
Alexander Flemming, Scottish bacteriologist who discovered penicillin in 1928.

1889
Major General George Kenney, commander of the U.S. Fifth Air Force in New Guinea and the Solomons during World War II.

1911
Lucille Ball, American actress and comedian.

1916
Richard Hofstadter, historian who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work.


1927
Andy Warhol, American pop artist.

1934
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob, science fiction and fantasy author (Xanth series).

1950
Winston E. Scott, US Navy commander and astronaut.

1970
M. Night Shyamalan, Indian-American screenwriter, director and producer (The Sixth Sense, The Village).

JOTD
If A is for Apple and B is for Banana, what is C for?
Plastic explosives.