Today in History: August 15

927: Saracens capture and destroy Taranto in Italy, enslaving all the survivors and transporting them to Africa.

1769: Napoléon Bonaparte, the inspiration if not the author of many of the world’s legal systems, is born, the son of a lawyer and diplomat, at Ajaccio, Corsica.

1843: Tivoli Gardens, the original prototype for Disneyland, opens in Copenhagen.

1877: Thomas Edison makes the first voice recording, reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

1935: Pilot Wiley Post and entertainer Will Rogers are killed when their small plane crashes a few miles from Point Barrow, Alaska.

1942: The Texas Oil Co.’s tanker S.S. Ohio, though torpedoed, bombed repeatedly, and even hit by a crashed German dive bomber, makes it into Malta harbor with 12,000 tons of desperately needed fuel to keep the island’s defenses going.

1947: India becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

1971: The world effectively goes off the gold standard when President Nixon announces that the United States will no longer redeem dollars for gold.

[Frank Snyder]