Today in 1885  Over 1.5 million people attend the funeral of Ulysses S. Grant in New York City.

August 8 is the 220th day of the year (221st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 145 days remaining until the end of the year.

Our on this day in history archives contain over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

EVENTS

117 – Roman Emperor Trajan dies, and is succeeded by Hadrian.

1220 - Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula.

1503 – King James IV of Scotland marries Margaret Tudor.

1576 - The cornerstone for Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg Observatory is laid in Ven, Sweden.

1585 - John Davis enters Cumberland Sound in search for the Northwest Passage.

1588 – The Spanish Armada is beaten by the English at the Battle of Gravelines.

1605 – The city of Oulu in Finland, is founded by Charles IX of Sweden.

1647 - Battle of Dungan's Hill, Ireland - English Parliamentary forces defeat Irish forces during the Irish Confederate Wars and Wars of the Three Kingdoms.

1709 - Bartolomeu de Gusmao demonstrates the lifting power of hot air in front of an audience and the King of Portugal in Lisbon.

1786 – Mont Blanc is climbed for the first time, by an expedition led by Jacques Bilmat and Michel-Gabriel Paccard.

1789 – Australia's first police force begins in Sydney, called Nightwatch.

1794 - Joseph Whidbey leads an expedition to find the Northwest Passage near Juneau, Alaska.

1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte sails to St. Helena to spend the rest of his life in exile.

1844 – The Twelve Apostles, led by Brigham Young become the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

1863 - American Civil War: General Robert E. Lee sends a letter of resignation to Jefferson Davis, which is rejected.

1876 - Thomas Edison receives a patent for the mimeograph.

1885 - Over 1.5 million people attend the funeral of Ulysses S. Grant in New York City.

1900 – The first Davis Cup tennis match begins in Brookline, Massachusetts.

1901 – 2000

1908 - Wilbur Wright makes his first flight at a racecourse in Le Mans, France.

1918 - World War I: Battle of Amiens.

1927 - The predecessor of the Philippine Stock Exchange is founded.

1929 - German airship Graf Zeppelin starts on its round-the-world flight.

1942 - The Walt Disney movie Bambi has its world premiere in London.

1942 - The Quit India movement in India begins against British rule in response to Mahatma Gandhi's call for total independence.

1945 - The London Charter is signed by the United Kingdom, France, United States and the Soviet Union, creating the laws and procedures for the Nuremberg Trials.

1960 - South Kasai secedes from the Congo.

1963 – The Great Train Robbery occurs in England. Thieves steal 2.6 million pounds.

1963 - Zimbabwe's main political party, ZANU, is founded.

1967 – ASEAN is founded by Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.

1969 - At a zebra crossing in London, Iain Macmillan takes the photograph that becomes the cover of The Beatles' Abbey Road album.

1973 - Kim Dae Jung, future South Korean President, is kidnapped.

1974 – Richard Nixon announces his resignation as President of the United States, due to the Watergate scandal. Gerald Ford becomes President the next day.

1975 - 62 dams break in China, killing a total of over 231,000 people, in the worst-ever reservoir disaster.

1983 - President Efrain Rios Montt is removed from power in Guatemala.

1988 – The 8888 Uprising against Burma's military regime occurs.

1989 - Space Shuttle Columbia takes on a secret five-day military mission.

1990 - Iraq occupies Kuwait, as Iraq declares it to be part of its territory.

1991 – In Poland, the world-famous Warsaw Radio Mast collapses.

1994 - Yitzhak Rabin visits Jordan for the first time.

1997 - Ibrahim-al-Ibrahim Mosque in Gibraltar opens. It is Europe's southernmost Mosque, and was a gift from King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

2000 - Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley is raised to the surface, 136 years after it sank.

From 2001

2001 - Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman divorce.

2007 - An EFF 2 tornado touches down in Kings County and Richmond County, New York, as the most powerful tornado to hit the state.

2008 – The Summer Olympics begin in Beijing, China, at exactly 8:08:08pm local time.

2008 - A EuroCity express train strikes part of a motorway bridge that had fallen on the railway track near Studenka Railway Station in the Czech Republic, killing 8 people and injuring 64.

2009 - Nine people are killed when a tour helicopter and a small private airplane collide over the Hudson River at Hoboken, New Jersey.

2010 - A mudslide in Zhungqu County, Gansu Province, China, kills over 1,400 people.

2013 - A suicide bombing at a funeral in Quetta, Pakistan, kills at least 31 people.

2016 - Japanese Emperor Akihito indicates that he might want to abdicate.

2016 - A bomb attack in Quetta, Pakistan, kills over 70 people.

2017 - US President Donald Trump threatens North Korea with "fire and fury" over its nuclear tests in the continuing stand-off between the two countries.

2022 - June Spencer, English actress, retires at the age of 103, after 79 years in the industry.