This Day in History

This Day in History: August 6

During WWII, the US drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in approximately 140,000 deaths

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On this day, Aug. 6 …

1945: During World War II, the U.S. B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay drops an atomic bomb code-named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths.

Also on this day:

  • 1806: The Holy Roman Empire goes out of existence as Emperor Francis II abdicates.
  • 1890: Cy Young gains the first of his 511 major league victories as he pitches the Cleveland Spiders to a win over the Chicago Colts.
  • 1911: Legendary actress-comedian Lucille Ball is born in Jamestown, N.Y.
  • 1926: Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim the English Channel, arriving in Kingstown, England, from France in 14 1/2 hours.
  • 1945: During World War II, the U.S. B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay drops an atomic bomb code-named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan, resulting in an estimated 140,000 deaths.
  • 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov becomes the second man to orbit Earth as he flew aboard Vostok 2; his call sign, "Eagle," prompted his famous declaration: "I am Eagle!"
  • 1965: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act.
  • 1991: The World Wide Web makes its public debut as a means of accessing webpages over the Internet. 
  • 2009: Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice by a Senate vote of 68-31.
  • 2013: U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan goes on trial at Fort Hood, Texas, charged with killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in a 2009 attack.  
  • 2018: Twin Northern California wildfires grow to become the largest wildfire in state history, burning more than 440 square miles north of San Francisco.
  • 2018: A set of U.S. sanctions against Iran that were eased by the Obama administration under the terms of the 2015 nuclear deal go back into effect.
  • 2019: Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who wrote unflattering text messages about President Trump while investigating the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, files a lawsuit against the bureau and the Justice Department, arguing that the FBI caved to the “unrelenting pressure” from when it fired him.
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