Today in History: August 9

803: Empress Irene, the former ruler of Byzantium banished and forced to work at a spinning wheel for her bread, dies at Lesbos.

1173: Construction begins on one of the world’s most famous engineering mistakes, the Tower of Pisa.

1842: The Webster-Ashburton Treaty is signed, fixing the northern border of the U.S. east of the Rockies and providing for cooperation in exterminating the slave trade on the high seas.

1899: Author Pamela Lyndon Travers is born at Maryborough, Queensland.  It will take Walt Disney more than 20 years to convince her to sell him the film rights to her Mary Poppins.

1910: Alva A. Fisher of Chicago, Illinois, receives a patent for the first electric washing machine.

1944: The U.S. Forest Service begins a new advertising campaign featuring “Smokey the Bear.”

1974: Richard Nixon, the first U.S. president to lose his law license for misconduct, resigns from office.

1988: The Edmonton Oilers trade the greatest hockey player in history, Wayne Gretzky, to the Los Angeles Kings, for two players, three draft picks, and $15 million.