On August 6

A gas leak caused an explosion that collapsed a building and led to the deaths of 22 people in Rosario, Argentina.

A series of riots broke out in several London boroughs and in cities and towns across England in response to the shooting of Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police officers.

Flash floods, mudslides, and debris flows across the Ladakh region of Indian-administered Kashmir left at least 255 people dead.

Mauritanian president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was ousted from power by a group of high-ranking generals that he had dismissed from office several hours earlier.

Korean Air Flight 801 crashed into a hill on approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport in Guam, killing 228 of the 254 people aboard.

Researchers announced that the meteorite ALH84001 (pictured), discovered in the Allan Hills of Antarctica, may contain evidence of life on Mars, but further tests were inconclusive.

British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee posted a public invitation to collaborate on a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessible via the Internet, known as the World Wide Web.

An earthquake struck along the Calaveras Fault near Coyote Lake, California, injuring sixteen people.

U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, outlawing literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disfranchisement of African Americans.

World War II: The U.S. Army Air Force bomber Enola Gay dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (mushroom cloud pictured), killing about 70,000 people instantly.

World War II: Allied forces attacked German fortifications at Saint-Malo, France, beginning the Battle of Saint-Malo (pictured).

New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater disappeared in Manhattan, in a case that was never solved.

The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company was founded in Antwerp to exploit natural rubber in the Congo Free State.

The Battle of Oriskany, one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolutionary War, was fought about 6 mi (10 km) east of Fort Stanwix, New York.

After the death of Gregory XV, a papal conclave in Rome elected Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII.

Second Fitna: Pro-Alid forces defeated the Umayyad Caliphate in the Battle of Khazir, allowing them to take control of Mosul in present-day Iraq.