EVENTS:
- 1609 – Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
- 1825 – Uruguay declares its independence from Brazil.
- 1912 – The Kuomintang, the Chinese nationalist party, is founded.
- 1981 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Saturn.
- 1989 – Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the second to last planet in the Solar System at the time.
- 1991 – Belarus gains its independence from the Soviet Union.
- 1991 – Linus Torvalds announces the first version of what will become Linux.
- 2012 – Voyager 1 spacecraft enters interstellar space becoming the first man-made object to do so.
- 2017 – Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in Texas as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the United States since 2004. The storm causes catastrophic flooding throughout much of eastern Texas, killing at least 51 people and causing $70–190 billion in damage.
BIRTHS:
- 1841 – Emil Theodor Kocher, Swiss physician, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1917)
- 1850 – Charles Richet, French physiologist and occultist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1935)
- 1898 – Arthur Wood, English cricketer (d. 1973)
- 1900 – Hans Adolf Krebs, German physician and biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1981)
- 1906 – Jim Smith, English cricketer (d. 1979)
- 1928 – Herbert Kroemer, German-American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1946 – Charlie Sanders, American football player and sportscaster
- 1952 – Vijayakanth, Indian actor and politician
- 1957 – Sikander Bakht, Pakistani cricketer and sportscaster
- 1962 – Shahid Mahboob, Pakistani cricketer
- 1965 – Sanjeev Sharma, Indian cricketer and coach
- 1969 – Vivek Razdan, Indian cricketer, coach, and sportscaster
- 1976 – Javed Qadeer, Pakistani cricketer and coach
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
- Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Uruguay from Brazil in 1825.
- Liberation Day (Paris)
- Soldier’s Day (Brazil)
