On this day: August 2
POSTED: 01:10 PM PDT Aug 01, 2012
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PDT Aug 01, 2012
America formally declares its independence, the U.S. Census is born, a president dies, JFK becomes a hero and a young Robert Zimmerman changes his name, all on this day.
David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons
1943: Prisoners in the Nazi death camp of Treblinka rebel, seizing small arms, spraying kerosene on all the buildings and setting them on fire. Although a number of guards were killed, many more prisoners died in the uprising. Of 1,500 prisoners, about 600 managed to escape, but only 40 are known to have survived until the end of World War II.
