August 9: This Day in History

Featured Fact, 1974:
Richard Nixon becomes the first president to voluntarily resign the presidency. Vice President Gerald Ford immediately becomes the nation's 38th president. Ford, who was appointed vice president after Spiro Agnew was forced to resign the office, is the nation's first non-elected vice president to become a non-elected president.

Also Today:
1790: The U.S. Navy vessel "Columbia" enters Boston Harbor after its three-year voyage carrying the flag of the new U.S. around the world.
1842: The U.S.-Canada border, the longest nonprotected border in the world, is defined by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty.
1854: Henry David Thoreau publishes "Walden." Almost completely ignored in its own day, it has since become a world classic and the bible of the environmental movement.
1941: After crossing the wartime Atlantic by ship, Winston Churchill reaches Placentia, Newfoundland, where he and President Roosevelt hold a series of meetings.
1944: Smokey the Bear debuts as a spokesbear for forest fire prevention.
1945: The U.S. drops a second atomic bomb ("Fat Man") on Japan, destroying Nagasaki and killing 40,000.
1969: Charles Manson and his "family" commit the Tate-LaBianca murders.

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