August 5 in History

The Union was running out of money. By the summer of 1861, the Civil War was consuming resources at a rate the federal government had never faced, and traditional revenue sources — primarily tariffs and land sales — could not cover the cost of raising, equipping, and feeding the largest army in American history. On August 5, 1861, President Lincoln signed the Revenue Act of 1861, which included the first federal income tax in American history: a flat 3 percent levy on all annual incomes exceeding $800. The $800 threshold was not arbitrary. It was roughly equivalent to the average annual income of a middle-class family, meaning the tax fell primarily on the wealthy. Congress was explicit about the reasoning: those who benefited most from the preservation of the Union should bear a proportional share of the cost of saving it. The practical revenue from the 1861 act was minimal, however, and it was replaced by the more aggressive Revenue Act of 1862, which introduced a graduated rate structure and established the Bureau of Internal Revenue to collect it. The income tax was understood from the start as a wartime emergency measure. Federal revenue had traditionally come from customs duties and excise taxes, and the idea of the government directly taxing citizens' earnings was considered a radical departure from American fiscal tradition. Several constitutional questions about the tax's legality simmered beneath the surface but were suppressed by wartime urgency. The tax rates increased as the war continued, reaching 10 percent on incomes over $10,000 by 1864. After the war ended, the income tax was gradually reduced and finally repealed in 1872. But the precedent had been established. When Congress attempted to revive the income tax in 1894, the Supreme Court struck it down as unconstitutional. The Sixteenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, settled the question permanently, establishing the federal government's power to tax income. Every April 15 filing traces its lineage back to the desperate fiscal arithmetic of the Civil War's first summer.

Six thousand people gathered on a small island in New York Harbor to watch the Freemasons lay a cornerstone for a monument that almost did not get built. On August 5, 1884, workers placed the foundation stone of the pedestal that would support the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France that had been stalled for years by American indifference to funding its base. France was providing the statue; America was responsible for the pedestal. And America was dragging its feet. The statue itself was the vision of French political thinker Édouard de Laboulaye and sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, conceived as a celebration of republican ideals and the Franco-American alliance. Bartholdi designed a colossal copper figure of Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, holding a torch and a tablet inscribed with the date of American independence. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who would later build his famous tower, designed the internal iron framework. Fundraising in America was the persistent problem. Congress refused to appropriate money for the pedestal. Several states declined to contribute. Many Americans saw the statue as a Parisian vanity project and questioned why they should pay to display it. The pedestal campaign was rescued largely through the efforts of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, who used his paper, The New York World, to shame wealthy Americans and solicit small donations from ordinary citizens. Pulitzer published the name of every contributor, no matter how small the gift, and eventually raised over $100,000 from more than 120,000 donors. The completed statue was dedicated on October 28, 1886, becoming an instant icon. For millions of immigrants who arrived by ship in the following decades, the statue was their first sight of America. The monument that nearly foundered on a lack of funding became the most recognized symbol of American democracy in the world.

Radioactive fallout from nuclear tests was showing up in children's milk, and three superpowers decided they had finally gone far enough. On August 5, 1963, the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom signed the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in Moscow, prohibiting nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater. Underground testing remained permitted, a compromise that made the agreement possible but limited its scope. The path to the treaty had been agonizing. Negotiations had dragged on since 1955, stalling repeatedly over verification. The Soviets refused to allow on-site inspections on their territory, which the Americans insisted were necessary to distinguish underground nuclear tests from earthquakes. Meanwhile, testing accelerated. The Soviet Union detonated a 50-megaton hydrogen bomb, the largest explosion in human history, in October 1961. Atmospheric testing by all three powers was depositing strontium-90 into the global food chain, a health risk that turned public opinion sharply against continued testing. President Kennedy made the treaty a personal crusade. His commencement address at American University in June 1963, where he urged Americans to reexamine their attitudes toward the Soviet Union and the Cold War, is considered one of the finest speeches of his presidency and helped create the political space for negotiations. When Premier Khrushchev signaled willingness to accept a partial ban excluding underground tests, talks moved remarkably quickly. The negotiations in Moscow took just ten days. The Senate ratified the treaty 80-19, with opposition coming mainly from military hawks who feared it would constrain American nuclear development. More than 100 nations eventually signed. The treaty did not end the nuclear arms race, as both superpowers continued underground testing for decades, but it eliminated the most visible and health-damaging form of nuclear testing and established the principle that nuclear weapons could be subject to international agreement. Kennedy considered it his greatest accomplishment. He was assassinated three months later.

A former minor nobleman who had been reduced to farming declared himself Emperor of China, and against extraordinary odds he made the claim stick. Liu Xiu, known posthumously as Emperor Guangwu, formally restored the Han Dynasty on August 5, 25 AD, after years of civil war following the collapse of Wang Mang's short-lived Xin Dynasty. His accession launched the Eastern Han period, which would endure for nearly two centuries and produce some of China's greatest cultural and scientific achievements. Wang Mang had seized the throne in 9 AD from the declining Western Han, proclaiming a new dynasty built on radical Confucian reforms: land redistribution, abolition of slavery, and currency manipulation. The reforms were idealistic but catastrophic in practice, triggering economic chaos, peasant revolts, and a catastrophic Yellow River flood that displaced millions. By 23 AD, rebel armies had killed Wang Mang and the Xin Dynasty was finished, but China had fragmented into competing warlord territories with no clear successor. Liu Xiu was a ninth-generation descendant of the Han founder, but his branch of the imperial family had been so far removed from power that he had grown up as an ordinary landowner. His military genius changed everything. At the Battle of Kunyang in 23 AD, he commanded a force of roughly 8,000 against an army reportedly ten times that size and won a crushing victory that destroyed the last organized Xin resistance. Over the next twelve years, he methodically defeated rival claimants and reunified China. Guangwu established his capital at Luoyang rather than the old Western Han capital of Chang'an, marking the geographical shift that gives the Eastern Han its name. His dynasty presided over the invention of paper, the spread of Buddhism into China, and the historical writings of Ban Gu. The restoration he achieved remains one of the most remarkable political comebacks in Chinese history.

Dick Clark was 26 years old, clean-cut, and completely unthreatening to parents, which made him the perfect person to bring rock and roll into America's living rooms. American Bandstand premiered on the ABC network on August 5, 1957, broadcasting teenagers dancing to popular records from a studio in Philadelphia. The show had existed as a local Philadelphia program since 1952, but Clark's national debut transformed it into a cultural institution that would run for more than three decades and launch countless musical careers. The format was disarmingly simple. Teenagers from local high schools lined up to enter the studio, danced on camera to records selected by Clark, and occasionally watched live performances by visiting artists. Clark introduced new songs with a segment called "Rate-a-Record," where audience members scored tracks on a scale and delivered the show's most famous recurring line: "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it." The ordinariness of the format was its genius — it made rock and roll look normal, safe, and fun. For the music industry, the show was an unparalleled promotional vehicle. An appearance on Bandstand could turn a regional hit into a national phenomenon overnight. Artists including Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Jackson 5 all performed on the show at critical moments in their careers. The program also helped break the color line in popular entertainment, featuring integrated dancing at a time when much of America remained legally segregated. American Bandstand moved to Los Angeles in 1964 and continued in various formats until 1989, making it one of the longest-running series in television history. Clark, who became known as "America's oldest teenager," understood something profound about postwar culture: the baby boom generation wanted to see itself on television, and music was the language it spoke.