Inventions, firsts, and turning points tied to today’s date — each one sourced and dated.
For decades the dollar was redeemable for gold at a fixed price. One August evening, President Nixon ended that - and the modern money system was born.
On a muddy dairy farm in upstate New York, half a million people turned three days of music into a generation's defining gathering.
At midnight on 15 August 1947 India woke to freedom, ending nearly two centuries of British rule and splitting the subcontinent in two.
After nearly two centuries of British rule, India awoke to independence the instant the clock struck midnight on August 15, 1947.
A 48-mile cut through the isthmus joined two oceans, and the world's shipping routes were never the same.
