A Brief History
This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on August 6th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event.
Digging Deeper
On August 6, 1917, future actor, composer, and singer Robert Mitchum was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
On August 6, 1926, Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English Channel.
On August 6, 1945, near end of World War II, a modified Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber dropped a uranium gun-type (“Little Boy”) bomb on Hiroshima.
On August 6, 1945, the American Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing about 70,000 people right away and perhaps a few tens of thousands later from wounds, burns, and radiation.
On August 6, 1945, US Army Air Force B-29 Superfortress bomber, Enola Gay, dropped the first atomic bomb ever to be used against a real target.
On August 6, 1964, a University of North Carolina graduate student studying climate cut down the oldest known tree in the world, the 5,000-year-old “Prometheus,” a Bristlecone Pine located on Wheeler Peak in Nevada.
On August 6, 1991, Tim Berners-Lee, a professor with ties to the University of Oxford and MIT, announced his invention, plans for what he called the “World Wide Web.”
On August 6, 1996, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration of the United States announced that a piece of a meteorite believed to have originated on Mars known as Allan Hills 84001 contained traces of extraterrestrial life.
On August 6, 2001, a tragedy known as the “Erwadi fire incident” occurred in the state of Tamil Nadu in India.
On August 6, 2005, Creme Puff, the oldest cat to make it into the 2010 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, died at the age of 38!
On August 6, 2015, debate raged about the US brokered multi-country deal with Iran in July of 2015 to limit Iran’s nuclear research and delay Iranian development of a nuclear weapon.
On Friday, August 6, 2021, the popular YouTube channel UsefulCharts published a video counting down the top ten greatest ancient dynasties of all time.
On August 6, 2021, we got to watch our long awaited viewing of the latest film in the DC comic book based movie universe, The Suicide Squad, a sequel to the 2016 blockbuster movie, Suicide Squad, although in a stand alone sort of way, using some of but not all the same characters.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Andrews, John and Matt Baker. Timeline of World History. Thunder Bay Press, 2020.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.