Aug. 10
Today in history
Today is Aug. 10. On this date in:
1793: France’s revolutionary government opened the Musée Central des Arts in a former royal residence called the Louvre. Its collection began with 537 paintings.
1821: Missouri became the nation’s 24th state. The territory had petitioned for statehood in 1818, but the process was delayed by lawmakers fighting to balance slaveholding and abolitionist states. In the end, Missouri was admitted as a slave state, with Maine entering the Union as a free state, under the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
1846: Congress established the Smithsonian Institution to administer the $500,000-plus bequest of British scientist James Smithson. Smithson’s motivation was unclear: He had never traveled to the United
States and did not appear to have corresponded with any Americans.
1897: Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist working for Bayer, successfully synthesized a pure, stable form of acetylsalicylic acid, better known as aspirin. People had previously used salicylic acid, which tasted terrible and could cause stomach bleeding.
1929: Dutch physician Aletta Henriette Jacobs died. A suffragist and social reformer, she was the Netherlands’ first female doctor, opened the world’s first family planning clinic, introduced the diaphragm to the Netherlands and undertook the first research study of contraception.
1937: The U.S. Patent Office granted the first patent for an electrical guitar, to G.D. Beauchamp of the Electro String Instrument Corp. The device, called the Rickenbacker Frying Pan – for Beauchamp’s business partner Adolph Rickenbacker – featured an electromagnetic pickup to amplify the strings.
1945: Japan proposed to accept the WWII surrender terms of the Potsdam Declaration on the condition that the emperor be allowed to remain the country’s nominal head of state. The Manhattan Project reported to the U.S. War Department that another plutonium bomb could be ready in a week.
1950: “Sunset Boulevard” had its world premiere at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The New York Times raved, calling the movie a “rare blend of pungent writing, expert acting, masterly direction and unobtrusively artistic photography.”
1960: The U.S. Navy launched the experimental Discoverer 13 satellite in the Pacific north of Hawaii. When the Navy retrieved the reentry capsule, capsule cover and parachute the next day, they were the first human-made objects recovered from space.
1977: A New York City-wide panic ended with the arrest of serial killer “Son of Sam.” David Berkowitz pleaded guilty to murdering six people and was sentenced to 365 years in prison.
1981: The Coca-Cola Bottling Co. agreed to donate $34 million to Black businesses, hire more Black workers and create Black-owned distribution centers. The agreement ended a national boycott called by the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH protesting the Atlanta-based company’s lack of diversity.
1993: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as an associate Supreme Court justice. The pioneering equal rights litigator was the 107th justice and second woman to serve.
2010: The Supreme Court of Mexico ruled that the country’s 31 states must all recognize same-sex marriages registered in Mexico City.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, August 10
