August 14:

Events

• 1842 – Indian Wars: Second Seminole War ends, with the Seminoles forced from Florida to Oklahoma.
• 1846 – The Cape Girardeau meteorite, a 2.3 kg chondrite–type meteorite strikes near the town of Cape Girardeau in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri.
• 1848 – Oregon Territory organized by Act of U.S. Congress.
• 1900 – A joint European–Japanese–United States force (Eight-Nation Alliance) occupies Beijing, in a campaign to end the bloody Boxer Rebellion in China.
• 1911 – United States Senate leaders agree to rotate the office of President pro tempore of the Senate among leading candidates to fill the vacancy left by William P. Frye's death.
• 1912 – United States Marines invade Nicaragua to support the U.S.–backed government installed there after José Santos Zelaya resigned three years earlier.
• 1925 – The original Hetch Hetchy Moccasin Powerhouse is completed and goes on line.
• 1933 – Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn. It is extinguished on September 5, after destroying 240,000 acres (970 km²).
• 1935 – United States Social Security Act passes, creating a government pension system for the retired.
• 1936 – Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last public execution in the United States.
• 1941 – World War II – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims.
• 2003 – Widescale power blackout in the northeast United States and Canada.