Aug. 9, 1945: US drops atomic bomb on civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. An estimated 70,000 die from the immediate effects of the bombing. Last use (so far) of nuclear bomb in war.

Aug. 10, 1998: Formation of the Minnehaha Free State in suburban Minneapolis to prevent a freeway extension, in the country's first major anti-road blockade.

Aug. 11, 1828: First labor party in US formed in Philadelphia.

Aug. 12, 1982: Twelve arrested in sea blockade of first Trident submarine at Hood Canal, Wash.

Aug. 13, 1521: Cuauhtemoc, last monarch of the Aztec, "fights rooftop to rooftop" before surrendering his starved and besieged city of Tenochtitlan; Cortes received him with honors, then later had him hanged. 1936: Newspaper Guild members begin strike of Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Aug. 14, 1765: Stamp Act riots begin in Boston.

Aug. 15, 1947: After decades of nonviolent activism, India becomes the first major Third World country in the 20th century to win independence from colonial rule. Dozens more countries would follow in the next 20 years.

Aug. 16, 1617: First African slaves delivered to Virginia. 1970: Electoral reform group Common Cause founded with the goal of trying to end the undue influence of money in US politics. Good try.

Aug. 17, 1918: IWW War Trials in Chicago; 95 go to prison for up to 20 years for opposing war. 1985: Hormel meat-packing strike begins in Austin, Minn. The Hormel strike, generally regarded as labor's first major grassroots revolt against corporate downsizing, is suppressed after nearly a year by Hormel in cooperation with both the state and the workers' own national union.

Aug. 18, 1950: Four-month-old kitten, following a climbing party, scales the Matterhorn in three days.

Aug. 20, 1974: From When Congress Mattered: US House of Representatives votes 412-3 to recommend three articles of impeachment against Pres. Richard M. Nixon.

Aug. 21, 1851: New Orleans mob sacks the Spanish consulate when word reaches them that 51 Americans who set out from the city to "liberate" Cuba were captured and executed.

Aug. 23, 410: Visigoths sack Rome.

Aug. 24, 1814: British troops burn the Capitol and the White house after US troops, fleeing so fast that only eight of them were killed, left Washington DC virtually undefended. 1967: Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin throw 300 one-dollar bills from balcony onto floor of New York Stock Exchange, creating instant bedlam.

Aug. 25, 1945: One million Saigonese demonstrate in support of Ho Chi Min'h.

Aug. 26, 1905: George Washington dies in Centralia, Wash. An African-American settler of a vast land claim at the junction of the Shockumchuck and Chehalis rivers in 1851, he endured schemes of white settlers to take his land and the Indian Wars of 1853 to found the town of Centerville (later Centralia) in 1875.

Aug. 27, 1963: W.E.B. DuBois, black American radical sociologist, scholar, author, pan-Africanist, and founder of the NAACP, dies in Accra, Ghana. Charged and tried for being a "foreign agent" in 1950 because he opposed the A-bomb.

Aug. 29, 1758: First Indian reservation established.