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Today in History, August 4th

On August 4, 1944, the Gestapo arrested Anne Frank and her family in their Amsterdam hiding place. Plus Britain entering World War I.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published August 4, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

August 4 is best known for 1944, when the Gestapo found Anne Frank and her family in their hiding place in Amsterdam after 25 months in secret. The date also saw Britain enter World War I in 1914 and a massive explosion devastate Beirut in 2020.

The big story: Anne Frank and her family are arrested (1944)

In 1942, a day after Anne’s sister, Margot, was ordered to report to a Nazi “work camp,” the Frank family disappeared from public view. They moved into a sealed-off “secret annex” in the Amsterdam warehouse of Otto Frank’s spice and jam business on the Prinsengracht canal. Otto’s business partner and his family joined them a week later, and a Jewish dentist arrived that November, making eight people in all. Former employees and Dutch friends, among them Miep Gies, smuggled in food and supplies. Anne, a teenager, filled a diary with what she saw and felt. The hiding lasted about 25 months. On August 4, 1944, acting on a tip from an informer whose identity is still unknown, the Gestapo raided the annex and arrested everyone inside, plus two of their helpers. Anne and Margot died at Bergen-Belsen in February 1945. Otto survived and made his way back to Amsterdam. Gies had rescued Anne’s diary from the annex, and Otto published it in Dutch in 1947. The hiding place on the Prinsengracht opened as a museum in 1960.

More events on August 4

Year	What happened
1578	King Sebastian of Portugal’s invading army was defeated in Morocco by Sultan Abd al-Malik at the Battle of the Three Kings.
1704	Britain took control of Gibraltar after its Spanish defenders surrendered during the War of the Spanish Succession.
1784	Russian fur trader Grigory Shelikhov’s party landed on Kodiak Island and founded the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska.
1790	President George Washington signed the law creating the Revenue Marine, forerunner of the U.S. Coast Guard. Its first job was enforcing tariffs.
1879	Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Aeterni Patris, making the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas central to Roman Catholic teaching.
1914	Britain declared war on Germany after the German invasion of Belgium, while President Woodrow Wilson formally proclaimed U.S. neutrality.
1936	Jesse Owens won the long jump at the Berlin Olympics, the second of his four gold medals there.
1942	The U.S. and Mexico signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement, launching the Bracero Program.
1964	The remains of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were found in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.
2007	NASA launched the Phoenix probe, which landed on Mars the following year.
2012	Oscar Pistorius became the first amputee runner to compete in the Olympics.
2020	A massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, killed more than 200 people and set off political unrest.

Born on August 4

1792: Percy Bysshe Shelley, English Romantic poet, born near Horsham, Sussex.
1961: Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States, born in Honolulu, Hawaii.
1962: Roger Clemens, star baseball pitcher, born in Dayton, Ohio.