THURSDAY, Aug. 6, 2026

1497-Italian explorer John Cabot returns to Bristol from North America, likely Newfoundland, becoming the first European known to do so since the Vikings

1661-The Treaty of The Hague is signed, under which the Dutch Republic relinquishes its claims to Dutch Brazil to Portugal in exchange for the equivalent of 63 metric tons of gold

1890 Murderer William Kemmler becomes the first person executed by electric chair at Auburn Prison in New York

1945-An atomic bomb is dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the U.S. B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay"

1965-U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting voting discrimination against minorities

1991-Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web and debuts WWW as a publicly available service on the internet