This Day in History: August 2

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This Day In History: August 2

Take a look at all of the important historical events of August 2.

On this day, Aug. 2 …

2019: President Trump decides to withdraw the U.S. from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, the historic arms-control treaty signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Also on this day …

• 1876: "Wild Bill" Hickok is shot and killed while playing poker at a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, by Jack McCall. (McCall would be hanged.)

• 1921: A jury in Chicago acquits several former members of the Chicago White Sox baseball team and two others of conspiring to defraud the public in the notorious "Black Sox" scandal linked to the 1919 World Series.
• 1923: Warren G. Harding, the 29th president of the United States, dies while in office of a heart attack in San Francisco; Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes president.
• 1939: Albert Einstein signs a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt urging creation of an atomic weapons research program.
• 1939: President Roosevelt signs the Hatch Act, which prohibits civil service employees from taking an active part in political campaigns.
• 1974: Former White House counsel John W. Dean III is sentenced to one to four years in prison for obstruction of justice in the Watergate cover-up. (Dean would serve up to four months.)
• 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait, seizing control of the oil-rich emirate. (The Iraqis were later driven out by a U.S.-led coalition in Operation Desert Storm.)
• 2000: Republicans nominate Texas Gov. George W. Bush to lead their 2000 presidential ticket at the party's convention in Philadelphia and ratify former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney as his running mate.
• 2018: Pope Francis changes Roman Catholic Church teaching on capital punishment, decreeing that the death penalty is "inadmissible" under all circumstances.

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• 2018: Apple becomes the world's first publicly traded company to be valued at $1 trillion.

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• 2019: Officer Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City cop charged in the 2014 death of Eric Garner, should be fired, a judge recommended.