1404: Owain Glyndwr established a Welsh Parliament at Machynlleth and was crowned Prince of Wales.
1788: The U.S. Constitution went into effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify it.
1834: Cyrus McCormick patented the first practical mechanical reaper for farming. His invention allowed farmers to more than double their crop size.
1859: Andrew Lanergan received the first rocket patent.
1913: Georgia Broadwick became the first woman to jump from an airplane.
1937: In Paris, Leon Blum's Popular Front Cabinet resigned.
1938: In Washington, U.S. President Roosevelt signed the $3.75 billion Emergency Relief Appropriation Act.
1939: Lou Gehrig quit baseball due to illness.
1940: Richard M. Nixon and Thelma Catherine ‘Pat’ Ryan were married.
1941: German troops entered Russia on a front from the Arctic to Black Sea.
1942: Ben Hogan recorded the lowest score (to that time) in a major golf tournament. Hogan shot a 271 for 72 holes in Chicago, IL.
1945: Pan Am announced an 88-hour round-the-world flight at a cost of $700.
1954: The American Cancer Society reported significantly higher death rates among cigarette smokers than among non-smokers.
1954: NBC radio presented the final broadcast of "The Railroad Hour."
1954: Australian John Landy ran the mile in 3:58. He was the second person to achieve the feat.
1958: In Arkansas, a federal judge let Little Rock delay school integration.
1958: Linus Pauling and Detlev Bronke, both Americans, were elected to the Soviet Academy of Science.
1960: In Zurich, German, Armin Hary ran 100-meters in a record 10.0 seconds.
1963: In St. Louis, Bob Hayes set a record when he ran the 100-yard dash in 0:09.1.
1963: France announced that they were withdrawing from the North Atlantic NATO fleet.
1964: Three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, MS. Their bodies were found on August 4, 1964 in an earthen dam. Eight Ku Klux Klan members later went to federal prison on conspiracy charges.
1969: In South Carolina, civil rights leader Rev. Ralph Abernathy was jailed on riot charges.
1970: Tony Jacklin became the second British golfer in 50 years to win the U.S. Open golf tournament.
1973: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.
1974: The U.S. Supreme Court decided that pregnant teachers could no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence.
1981: "Raiders of the Lost Ark" opened.
1982: A jury in Washington, DC, found John Hinckley Jr. innocent by reason of insanity in the shootings of U.S. President Reagan and three other men.
1985: Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele.
1989: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment.
1993: In Madrid, five senior military officers and two civilians were killed by a car bomb. 24 people were injured. The Basque terror group claimed responsibility.
2001: Former Haitian Army colonel Carl Dorelien taken into custody in Port St. Lucie. Dorelien had been in exile since 1994 when he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a 1994 massacre.
2001: In Alexandria, VA, a U.S. federal grand jury indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen.
2003: The fifth Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," was published by J.K. Rowling. Amazon.com shipped out more than one million copies on this day making the day the largest distribution day of a single item in e-commerce history. The book set sales records around the world with an estimated 5 million copies were sold on the first day.
2004: SpaceShipOne, designed by Burt Rutan and piloted by Mike Melvill, reached 328,491 feet above Earth in a 90 minute flight. The height is about 400 feet above the distance scientists consider to be the boundary of space.
