On this day: August 6
POSTED: 03:21 PM PDT Aug 03, 2012
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PDT Aug 05, 2012
The electric chair is used for the first time, a TV great and pop art legend share a birthday, America drops the A-bomb on Hiroshima and the country's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice is confirmed, all on this day.
German Federal Archive/Wikimedia Commons
1926: Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel. The 19-year-old completed the swim from Cape Gris-Nez in France to Kingsdown, Kent, England, in 14 hours and 39 minutes, beating the best time of the five men who had swum the channel before her by two hours. Her record for a female swimmer would stand until Florence Chadwick swam it in 13 hours and 20 minutes in 1950.
