Today in History, August 9th
On August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Plus Gerald Ford's swearing-in and the start of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
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August 9 is best known for 1945, when the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki. The date also saw Gerald R. Ford sworn in as president after Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 and the start of construction on the Leaning Tower of Pisa in 1173.
The big story: The atomic bomb falls on Nagasaki (1945)
Three days after Hiroshima, Japan’s war council still had not accepted the Allies’ demand for unconditional surrender. The second U.S. atomic bomb had been penciled in for August 11, but a bad weather forecast moved the mission up. In the early hours of August 9, 1945, a B-29 named Bockscar, piloted by Maj. Charles W. Sweeney, took off from Tinian Island. At 11:02 a.m. it released a bomb nicknamed “Fat Man” over Nagasaki, a shipbuilding center. The blast equaled about 22,000 tons of TNT. Roughly 39,000 people died at once, and another 20,000 to 40,000 are thought to have died by the end of the year from injuries and radiation, though exact numbers can never be known. Emperor Hirohito then told his council that fighting on would destroy the Japanese people and allowed Japan to accept surrender.
More events on August 9
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 378 | The Visigoths crushed a Roman army led by Emperor Valens at Adrianople, killing about two-thirds of it. |
| 1173 | Builders in Pisa, Italy, began work on a bell tower that would become famous for its lean. |
| 1814 | After their defeat by Gen. Andrew Jackson, the Creek signed the Treaty of Fort Jackson, giving up vast lands to the U.S. |
| 1854 | Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was published. It sold only about 300 copies a year at first. |
| 1877 | Nez Perce people who had refused to move to a reservation fought the U.S. Army at the Battle of the Big Hole in Montana. |
| 1936 | Jesse Owens won his fourth gold medal of the Berlin Olympics in the 4×100-meter relay, setting a world record of 39.8 seconds that stood for 20 years. |
| 1969 | Followers of Charles Manson killed actress Sharon Tate and four others at director Roman Polanski’s home in Beverly Hills. |
| 1974 | Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as president after Richard Nixon’s resignation took effect. |
| 1988 | The Edmonton Oilers traded Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings, a deal that shocked the hockey world. |
| 1995 | Jerry Garcia, guitarist and leader of the Grateful Dead, died of a heart attack in Forest Knolls, California. |
| 2010 | JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater quit his job by sliding down an airplane’s emergency chute at New York’s JFK Airport. |
| 2014 | A police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, setting off widespread protests. |
Born on August 9
- 1776: Amedeo Avogadro, Italian scientist behind Avogadro’s law on gases, born in Turin.
- 1899: P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books, born in Maryborough, Queensland, Australia.
- 1963: Whitney Houston, American singer and actress and one of the top-selling artists of the 1980s and 1990s, born in Newark, New Jersey.
Sources
- Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, History.com
- This Day in History: August 9, History.com
- On This Day: August 9, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Amedeo Avogadro, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- P.L. Travers, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Whitney Houston, Encyclopaedia Britannica
