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Today in History, August 2nd

On August 2, 1776, members of Congress signed the formal copy of the Declaration of Independence. Plus Harding's death and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

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

Published August 2, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

August 2 is best known for 1776, when members of the Continental Congress signed the formal handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence. The date also saw President Warren G. Harding die in office in 1923 and Iraq invade Kuwait in 1990.

The big story: Congress signs the Declaration of Independence (1776)

Fourth of July fireworks aside, most of the famous signatures went on the Declaration nearly a month later. Congress voted for independence on July 2, 1776, when it accepted Richard Henry Lee’s resolution, and it adopted Thomas Jefferson’s text on July 4. John Hancock, the president of Congress, signed that draft right away, and it went off to the printers. On July 19, Congress ordered a fine handwritten copy made for every delegate to sign. Timothy Matlack, a Philadelphia Quaker merchant, did the penmanship. On August 2, members signed that enlarged copy, their names grouped by state from north to south, starting with Josiah Bartlett of New Hampshire and ending with George Walton of Georgia. In the end, 56 men signed, including some who had not been around for the vote. A few holdouts, among them John Dickinson and John Jay, never signed at all. The public did not see a printed version listing the signers until January 18, 1777, when Baltimore printer Mary Katharine Goddard produced one.

More events on August 2

Year	What happened
1865	The Confederate raider CSS Shenandoah learned from a British ship that the Confederacy had lost the Civil War.
1876	Frontiersman and marksman “Wild Bill” Hickok was murdered in Deadwood, in present-day South Dakota.
1917	A mutiny broke out aboard the German battleship Prinzregent Luitpold at Wilhelmshaven.
1918	U.S. troops landed at Archangel in northern Russia as part of an Allied intervention.
1923	President Warren G. Harding died in San Francisco of a stroke.
1934	After the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor Adolf Hitler made himself absolute dictator of Germany.
1939	Albert Einstein wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about the possibility of using uranium to build powerful new bombs.
1943	A Japanese destroyer rammed and sank the U.S. Navy torpedo boat PT-109. Its commander, Lt. John F. Kennedy, helped save his crew.
1945	The Potsdam Conference of the Big Three Allied powers ended after two weeks of talks.
1990	Iraq invaded Kuwait.
1992	Jackie Joyner-Kersee won the heptathlon at the Barcelona Olympics, the first person to take the event at back-to-back Games.
2016	Ahmed Zewail, the first Egyptian and first Arab to win a Nobel Prize in a science (chemistry), died in Pasadena, California.

Born on August 2

1924: James Baldwin, essayist, novelist and playwright who wrote powerfully about race in America, born in New York City.
1932: Peter O’Toole, stage and screen actor, born in Leeds, England.
1942: Isabel Allende, Chilean novelist, born in Lima, Peru.