On This Day for August 5 - Independence declared by Upper Volta, Marilyn Monroe is featured, and more

Created: 2020-08-05 10:03 Updated: 2020-08-05 10:03 Notebook: On this Day in History

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August 05

FEATURED BIOGRAPHY

Marilyn Monroe

FEATURED EVENT

1960

Independence declared by Upper Volta

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MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2019: American writer Toni Morrison, who earned a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 for novels that examine the Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community, died at age 88. [ Test your knowledge of Nobel laureates in literature.]

2019: Continued antigovernment protests and a general strike brought Hong Kong to a near standstill; among the demonstrators' demands were universal suffrage and investigations into allegations of police brutality.

2011: Thai businesswoman and politician Yingluck Shinawatra was elected prime minister of Thailand, becoming the first woman to hold that post. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about Thailand.]

2010: Thirty-three workers became trapped after a mine in the Atacama Desert of Chile collapsed, and the resulting rescue took 69 days, attracting international attention. [ Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about Chile.]

1981: U.S. President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who were on strike. [Take our quiz about U.S. presidents.]

1957: Dick Clark's American Bandstand, a TV show in which performers lip-synched their latest songs and the teenage audience danced, began airing nationally. [Test your knowledge of pop culture.]

SEE ALL EVENTS ON THIS DAY

ALSO BORN ON THIS DAY

1930

Neil Armstrong
American astronaut

1968

Marine Le Pen
French politician

1862

Joseph Merrick
British medical patient

1964

Adam Nathaniel Yauch
American musician and rapper

1906

John Huston
American director, writer, and actor