Today in History.....August 2

On this day in …

1776, members of the Continental Congress began attaching their signatures to the Declaration of Independence

1861, the United States Congress passes the first income tax to raise revenues for the war effort. Although never enacted, it was an important fiscal innovation that paved the way for growth of the government in the 20th century

1873, inventor Andrew S. Hallidie successfully tested a cable car he had designed for the city of San Francisco. (Various references give the date of this event as Aug. 1, but more recent research points to Aug. 2.)

1876, frontiersman "Wild Bill" Hickok was shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory

1934, German President Paul von Hindenburg died, paving the way for Adolf Hitler's, ym"sh, complete takeover

1939, Albert Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program

1945, The last wartime conference of the "Big Three"-- the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain -- concludes after two weeks of intense and sometimes acrimonious debate. The conference failed to settle most of the important issues at hand and thus helped set the stage for the Cold War that would begin shortly after World War II came to an end
1964, the Pentagon reported the first of two attacks on U.S. destroyers by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin

1971, the Nixon administration officially acknowledges that the CIA is maintaining a force of 30,000 "irregulars" fighting the Communist Pathet Lao in Laos.

1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out in Operation Desert Storm.)

2001, he Yugoslav war crimes tribunal handed down its first conviction for genocide, finding a Bosnian Serb general (Radislav Krstic) guilty of the deaths of up to 8,000 Muslims