August 22

565 On August 22, 565, Saint Columba encountered an unidentified animal that some have equated with the Loch Ness Monster. The story goes that saint came across a group of Picts burying a man who had been killed by the monster while swimming. One of his followers, Lugne, then dived into the lock to bring back a boat, and was attacked by the beast. Columba immediately made a sign of the cross and in the name of God commanded the monster to go. At this the monster fled as if terrified.

1485 In August 1485, Henry Tudor, the head of the House of Lancaster, landed in southern Wales with a small contingent of French troops. King Richard III hastened to meet him near the village of Market Bosworth Many of Richard's men deserted him, and as the King fell mortally wounded, his crown was picked up and placed on Henry's head. Richard's defeat at Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485 was the last decisive battle of the Wars of the Roses, marking the end of the Middle Ages in England.

King Richard III at Bosworth Field. Wikipedia Commons

1485 During the Battle of Bosworth, King Richard III was abandoned by the Lords William Stanley and Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland, severely depleted his army's strength. His friends urged him to flee but Richard fought on furiously. The king was forced into a swamp unhorsed and was hacked at by Welsh pikemen and killed, the last English King to die on the battlefield. Tudor succeeded Richard to become Henry VII, and cemented the succession by marrying the Yorkist heir, Elizabeth of York.

1639 On August 22, 1639, the East India Company's agent Francis Day signed a deed with the local Nayak rulers of the Chandragiri and Vandavasi regions to acquire a piece of land called Madraspatnam. On this piece of wasteland was founded Fort St. George, which eventually became the nucleus of modern-day Chennai. The establishment of this trading post marked the early presence of the British in the Indian subcontinent. 

1642 After Parliament declared extra parliamentary taxation, King Charles I attempted to arrest the parliamentary leaders, When this failed he withdrew from London and declared war on Parliament from Nottingham on August 22, 1642, starting the English Civil War.

1679 The Franciscan, John Wall, was executed for his faith on August 22, 1679. He was a much respected local figure and the crowd's reaction showed that their sympathies were entirely with him. Three hundred Roman Catholics were martyred by the Church authorities in England in total in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Wall was the last English Roman Catholic to die for his faith.

1777 On August 22, 1777, during the American Revolutionary War, Continental army brigadier general  Benedict Arnold used a ruse to convince the British that a much larger force was arriving, causing them to abandon the Siege of Fort Stanwix. His courageous and imaginative battlefield leadership contributed decisively to an American victory.

1787 The first reliably-working steamboat was a paddle steamer built by John Fitch. A successful trial run of his steamboat. Perseverance, was made on the Delaware River on August 22, 1787. The following year, Fitch began operating a regular commercial service along the Delaware River between Philadelphia and Burlington, New Jersey, carrying as many as 30 passengers. The Perseverance was not a commercial success, as this travel route was adequately covered by relatively good wagon roads.

Plan of Mr. Fitch's Steam Boat", Columbian Magazine (December 1786),

1847 The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was founded on August 22, 1847 just 29 days after Brigham Young and the first Mormon pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. The choir first sang at a conference of the Church that day. The choir has come a long way since its humble beginnings. It is now one of the most famous choirs in the world, known for its beautiful singing and its long-running radio broadcast, Music & the Spoken Word. 

1848 Four years after becoming engaged, Ulysses S. Grant married Julia Dent on August 22, 1848 at White Haven Plantation, the bride's family home. Neither of their fathers approved of the match – hers because Grant's career-soldier prospects seemed bleak and his because the Dents were slaveholders. They had four children: Frederick, Ulysses Jr. ("Buck"), Ellen ("Nellie"), and Jesse.

Ulysses Grant and Julia Dent with their four children

1849 The first air raid in history dates back to August 22, 1849 when Austria launched pilotless balloons carrying bombs with time-delay fuses against the city of Venice. They managed to reach Venice and drop their bombs, but the damage they caused was relatively minor. These unmanned balloons were also the first drones. 

1862 Claude Debussy was born at St Germain-en-Laye on August 22, 1862. His father was a travelling salesman and his mother worked as a seamstress. He had his first piano lesson aged 10 and entered the Paris Conservatoire at the same age. Within three years Debussy was playing Chopin piano concertos. "A pupil with a considerable gift for harmony but desperately careless" (From Debussy's Conservatoire report 1879)

1864 The Red Cross movement led by Henry Dunant officially began when twelve nations signed the First Geneva Convention, establishing the International Committee of the Red Cross on August 22, 1864. Within three years, the Geneva Convention had been ratified by all the major European powers. Today's international Red Cross movement is the result of that 1864 conference.

Original document of the First Geneva Convention, 1864

1865 William Shepphard of New York patented liquid soap on August 22, 1865. The product was made by dissolving one pound of solid soap in water, and then adding 100 pounds of spirits of ammonia or hartshorn until the liquid thickened to the consistency of molasses.

1902 Theodore Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to make a public ride in an automobile when on August 22, 1902 he initiated a tour of New England with a car ride through Hartford, Connecticut. Driven in a Columbia Electric Victoria Phaeton, President Roosevelt greeted men, women, and children who lined the streets to witness what would become a familiar sight: the first presidential motorcade.

1902 Cadillac was founded on August 22, 1902 by Henry Leland, a master mechanic and entrepreneur, who named the company after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, the founder of the city of Detroit. Cadillac's first automobiles, the Runabout and Tonneau were two-seat horseless carriages powered by a 10 hp (7 kW) single-cylinder engine. They were practically identical to the 1903 Ford Model A. In 1906, Cadillac became the first volume manufacturer of a fully enclosed car.

Cadillac Model A, 1902. By Iwao from Tokyo, Japan Wikipedia 

1910 In 1905 Japan began to treat Korea as a protectorate. Five years later, on August 22, 1910 it annexed the peninsular with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.

1914 In the early days of World War 1 on August 22, 1914, a British cavalryman and drummer Edward Thomas fired in anger during combat. It was the first time that had happened on mainland Europe since the Battle of Waterloo 99 years earlier.

1927 At the age of 35 Charlie Chaplin married his second wife, 16-year-old American actress Lita Grey, in November 1924 in Mexico. (She had starred in his film, The Kid). The marriage was troubled from the start; they divorced due to Chaplin's alleged numerous affairs with other women on August 22, 1927. He was ordered to pay over US$600,000 in trust for each child, which was the largest divorce settlement at the time.

1932 The BBC broadcast its first experimental TV program on August 22, 1932 with television inventor John Logie Baird appearing. It began transmitting a regular television service in November 1936 from a converted wing of the Alexandra Palace in London.

1964 Johnny Cash fought for the rights of Native Americans. In 1964, coming off the chart success of his previous album I Walk The Line, he recorded the LP Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. Radio stations refused to play any of the record. In retaliation, Cash bought a full-page advert that appeared in the August 22, 1964 issue of Billboard magazine asking: "Where are your guts?"

1989 When Nolan Ryan struck out Rickey Henderson on August 22, 1989, he became the first Major League Baseball pitcher to record 5,000 strikeouts. His 5,714 career strikeouts rank first in baseball history by a significant margin.

2007 When the The Texas Rangers routed the Baltimore Orioles 30–3 on August 22, 2007, they broke the record for most runs scored by a team in modern Major League Baseball history. Believe it or not, Texas was scoreless through the first three innings of the game.