What Happened Today in History on August 6

Louis VIII of France is crowned King of France at the traditional site for French royal coronations, the Reims Cathedral. He had succeeded his father, Philip II, who died on July 14, 1223 but his coronation did not take place until August 6.

on The Congress of Arras opens during the 199 Year war between representatives of England, France and Burgundy. The Congress concluded on September 21,1435[

The Dutch Republic officially cedes Dutch Brazil, also known as New Holland, to Portugal through the Treaty of The Hague in exchange for an indemnity payment from Portugal. The Dutch had initially gained control of this region in northeastern Brazil during the 17th century, but faced increasing Portuguese resistance and ultimately lost control of the major cities in 1654.

Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, declares its Independence from Spain. Located in central South America, Bolivia has diverse geography, and climates, including large Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, warm valleys and high-altitude Andean plateaus. The constitutional capital and the seat of the judiciary is Sucre and the seat of the executive and legislative  government is La Paz. Bolivia is bordered by Brazil to the north and east, Paraguay to the southeast, Argentina to the south, Chile to the southwest, and Peru to the west. The largest city and principal industrial center is Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Its 2024 census reported a population of over 11 Million.

William Kemmler becomes the first person to be executed in an Electric chair. The execution took place in New York. It was the first time ever a state used the electric chair to carry out an execution. States have carried out 158 executions by electric chair since 1973. Tennessee was the most recent state to use the electric chair, taking place in 2020. More

Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel. She swam across the Channel in 14 hours and 34 minutes, beating the men's record by two hours. More

The United States drops an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb dropped by the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay, detonated about 1,800 ft. above ground, killing over 105,000 persons and destroying the city. It is estimated that another 100,000 persons died later as a result of radiation effects. More

Jamaica achieves independence after centuries of British and Spanish rule. Jamaica is the third-largest island in the Caribbean, after Cuba and the island of Hispaniola (Home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Jamaica is located about 145 km (78 mi) south of Cuba, 191 km (103 mi) west of Hispaniola and 215 km (116 mi) southeast of the Cayman Islands. Jamaica 2024 population was reported to be over 2.8 million people; Its capital and largest city is Kingston. 

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Act suspended literacy, knowledge and character tests which were designed to keep African Americans from voting in the South. It also authorized the appointment of Federal voting examiners and barred discriminatory poll taxes. Congress renewed the in 1975, 1984 and 1991.

English computer scientist Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee also known as TimBL, makes public the files describing his concept and ideas for the World Wide Web (WWW) including the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) system and announces WWW as a publicly available service on the internet. He created a page titled "World Wide Web", featuring links to additional pages with information on himself, his team of scientists and the history of the project. It is these links which represented the web's real breakthrough. The website’s landing page described the World Wide Web (WWW) as "a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative with the aim of giving universal access to a large universe of documents." Today, we know it as just the web. More