August 9th

In 480 B.C., after one of history's most famous battles, Persian forces overran the heavily outnumbered Spartan defenders of the narrow pass at Thermopylae in Greece.
In 1936, American Jesse Owens won his fourth Olympic gold medal in Berlin.
In 1945, a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb nicknamed "Fat Man" on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
In 1969, actress Sharon Tate and four other people were slain by the followers of Charles Manson in the first of two nights of bizarre killings.



Finally...in 1783 John Quincy Adams traveled from Holland to Paris with his father, John Adams. The senior Adams was involved in negotiating a peace treaty with Great Britain. On September 3rd, the Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the Revolutionary War. Sixteen-year-old "Johnny," as the family called John Quincy, had been in Europe for five years and would stay for another two. His extraordinary exposure to European culture, history, and politics would be of great value to his country during his long career in public life. Widely considered one of the best Secretaries of State the United States has ever had, John Quincy Adams also served as President, and later as a member of the House of Representatives