1990Iraq invades Kuwait
Iraq came out of its eight-year war with Iran in 1988 deep in debt, much of it owed to its small, oil-rich neighbour Kuwait. In the summer of 1990 Saddam Hussein accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of pumping more oil than their OPEC quotas allowed, driving down the price Iraq depended on, and charged Kuwait with taking oil from the Rumaila field that runs under the border. Iraqi troops massed in the south while Arab leaders tried to calm the dispute.
In the early hours of 2 August 1990 about 100,000 Iraqi soldiers crossed the border, and within hours they had overrun the country; the emir escaped to Saudi Arabia. The same day the UN Security Council condemned the invasion in Resolution 660 and demanded a withdrawal. Iraq instead declared Kuwait its 19th province. An international coalition led by the United States drove the Iraqi army out in the Gulf War of early 1991.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US Department of State, Office of the Historian: The Gulf War, 1991 ↗
-216Hannibal destroys a Roman army at Cannae
In 218 BC the Carthaginian general Hannibal led his army over the Alps into Italy and beat the Romans twice, at the Trebia and at Lake Trasimene. Rome answered by raising the largest army it had ever put into the field, perhaps 80,000 men, many of them raw recruits, under the two consuls of the year, Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. They found Hannibal, with about 50,000 men, beside the river Aufidus near the village of Cannae in Apulia.
The battle was fought on 2 August 216 BC by the Roman calendar. Hannibal let his thin centre give way before the Roman legions while his African infantry on either side turned inwards and his cavalry, having routed the Roman horsemen, closed in from behind. Surrounded and packed together, the Romans were cut down; ancient writers put their dead at 55,000 (Livy) or 70,000 (Polybius), and Paullus was among them. Cannae became the textbook example of encirclement, yet Rome refused to make peace and won the war in the end.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Battle of Cannae ↗
1934Hitler makes himself head of state on Hindenburg’s death
Adolf Hitler had been Chancellor of Germany since January 1933, but one office still stood above him: the presidency, held by the 86-year-old First World War field marshal Paul von Hindenburg, who could in theory dismiss him and who commanded the loyalty of the army. In the summer of 1934, weeks after Hitler had his rivals in the SA murdered in the Night of the Long Knives, the old president lay dying. On 1 August the cabinet passed a law merging the offices of president and chancellor, to take effect on his death.
Hindenburg died at 9 a.m. on 2 August 1934, and the law came into force at once. Hitler decreed that he would be known as Führer and Reich Chancellor, and the same day officers and soldiers swore an oath of unconditional obedience, not to the constitution but to Hitler personally. A referendum on 19 August approved the change with about 90 per cent of the vote. It removed the last legal check on his power.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Death of German President von Hindenburg ↗
1858The British Crown takes over India from the East India Company
For a century the East India Company, a trading business with its own armies, had ruled a growing share of India on Britain’s behalf. In 1857 Indian soldiers in the company’s service rose against their British officers, and the rebellion spread across much of northern India before it was put down with great brutality. In Britain the uprising was blamed on the company’s misrule, and Parliament decided that it could no longer be left in charge.
The Government of India Act received royal assent on 2 August 1858. It transferred the company’s territories, armies and powers to the Crown. A new Secretary of State for India, a member of the British cabinet advised by a Council of India, took charge in London, and the governor-general in India also became the queen’s viceroy. In November Queen Victoria’s proclamation promised Indians religious tolerance. Crown rule, the British Raj, lasted until independence in 1947.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: India, Government of India Act of 1858 ↗
