It had taken Congress eight years to agree on how to fulfil James Smithson’s desire to establish and institution ‘for the increase and diffusion of knowledge’.

On the 9th August 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States of America while facing impeachment and the almost certain removal from office due to the Watergate Scandal.

Tens of thousands of Ku Klux Klan members took part in an organised march through Washington D.C.

On the 7th August 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed by the United States Congress.

On the 6th August 1945, the USA dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima from the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay.

The Revenue Act of 1861 was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, imposing U.S. federal income tax for the first time.

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the neutrality of the United States in the First World War.

At 8am on the 3rd August 1492, Christopher Columbus set sail from the Spanish port of Palos de la Frontera on the voyage that would take him to the Americas.

The Clay Street Hill Railroad was successfully tested, becoming San Francisco’s first operational cable car.

Originally broadcast from a studio in New Jersey, MTV launched at 12:01am with the words ‘Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll’.

The first U.S. patent was awarded to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement ‘in making Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process.’

The oldest continuous elected legislative assembly in the New World, the House of Burgesses in Virginia, convened for the first time.

The world’s first transcontinental telephone line was successfully voice tested between New York and San Francisco.

Bonus Marchers in Washington D.C. were forcibly removed by the U.S. Army under General Douglas MacArthur.