August 9 in History

Jesse Owens was supposed to be proof of Aryan inferiority. He became, instead, the dominant athlete at Adolf Hitler's showcase Olympics, winning his fourth gold medal on August 9, 1936, as part of the American 4x100-meter relay team at the Berlin Games. Owens had already won individual golds in the 100 meters, 200 meters, and long jump, tying the record for most gold medals won at a single Olympic Games. No track and field athlete would match his four golds at one Olympics until Carl Lewis did so in 1984. Owens, the grandson of enslaved people and the son of Alabama sharecroppers, had arrived in Berlin as the world's fastest human. At the Big Ten Championships the previous year, he had broken three world records and tied a fourth in the span of 45 minutes — an afternoon many consider the greatest individual performance in athletic history. But competing in Nazi Germany carried an additional burden. Several organizations had urged an American boycott of the Games to protest the regime's persecution of Jews. The boycott effort failed, and Owens found himself on the largest stage of his life in a country organized around the doctrine that he was racially inferior. His dominance was total. The 100 meters fell in 10.3 seconds. The long jump was won after a dramatic competition with German athlete Luz Long, who befriended Owens and offered him technical advice during the qualifying rounds. The 200 meters was a commanding victory in 20.7 seconds, an Olympic record. The relay was almost an afterthought, with the American team winning by 15 meters. The common myth that Hitler refused to shake Owens's hand is inaccurate. Hitler had stopped congratulating individual athletes after the first day. Owens himself said the greater snub came from his own president: Franklin Roosevelt never sent a telegram of congratulations and never invited Owens to the White House. Owens returned home to a segregated country where he struggled financially and was reduced to racing against horses for money. His Olympic triumph exposed the hypocrisy of two nations simultaneously.

Nagasaki was not even the primary target. The B-29 Bockscar, piloted by Major Charles Sweeney, had orders to drop the plutonium bomb "Fat Man" on the city of Kokura. But when the aircraft arrived over Kokura on the morning of August 9, 1945, clouds and smoke from the previous day's firebombing of nearby Yawata obscured the city completely. After three fruitless bombing runs and with fuel running critically low, Sweeney diverted to the secondary target. A last-second break in the clouds over Nagasaki allowed the bombardier to make visual contact, and Fat Man was released at 11:02 a.m. local time. The bomb detonated approximately 1,800 feet above the Urakami Valley, roughly two miles from the intended aiming point. The explosion was more powerful than Hiroshima's — equivalent to 21,000 tons of TNT compared to Little Boy's 16,000 — but Nagasaki's hilly terrain channeled the blast and limited the radius of destruction. Between 39,000 and 80,000 people were killed. The Urakami district, home to Japan's largest Catholic cathedral and a community that traced its Christian roots to the 16th-century Portuguese missions, was almost entirely destroyed. Nagasaki's population on the day of the bombing was estimated at 263,000, including 10,000 Korean residents, 2,500 conscripted Korean laborers, 600 Chinese workers, and 400 Allied prisoners of war. The Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works, which flanked the blast zone, were devastated. Roughly 68 to 80 percent of the city's industrial capacity was destroyed. Six days later, on August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's surrender in a radio broadcast — the first time most Japanese citizens had ever heard his voice. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only wartime use of nuclear weapons. Nagasaki carries the particular weight of being both the second and, so far, the last city to suffer an atomic attack, a distinction the world has maintained for eight decades.

Lee Kuan Yew wept on national television, and a nation was born from rejection. On August 9, 1965, Singapore was expelled from the Federation of Malaysia, becoming the only country in modern history to gain independence against its will. The separation followed two years of escalating racial tensions, political disputes, and economic disagreements between Singapore's predominantly Chinese leadership and the Malay-dominated federal government in Kuala Lumpur. Lee, Singapore's prime minister, called the day "a moment of anguish." Singapore had merged with Malaya, Sabah, and Sarawak to form Malaysia in 1963, driven partly by security concerns and partly by the belief that a larger common market would benefit everyone. The union was troubled from the start. Lee's People's Action Party advocated a "Malaysian Malaysia" with equal rights regardless of ethnicity, directly challenging the Malay special privileges enshrined in the federal constitution. Race riots broke out in Singapore in 1964, killing dozens and deepening the rift. Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman concluded that Singapore's continued presence in the federation threatened national stability. The expulsion left Singapore in a precarious position. The island had no natural resources, limited fresh water supply, no hinterland, and a population of roughly 1.9 million. Surrounded by larger, potentially hostile neighbors, its survival as an independent state was far from assured. The British military withdrawal announced in 1968 removed another pillar of security. Conventional wisdom held that the city-state was too small to be viable. Lee Kuan Yew and his government proved the skeptics spectacularly wrong. Through aggressive industrialization, strict governance, massive investment in education, and a deliberate policy of multiracial meritocracy, Singapore transformed itself from a developing port city into one of the wealthiest nations on earth per capita within a single generation. The country expelled against its will became one of the most remarkable success stories of the post-colonial era.

Gerald Ford took the oath of office in the East Room of the White House at 12:03 p.m. on August 9, 1974, becoming the 38th President of the United States after Richard Nixon's resignation took effect at noon. Ford's first words as president — "Our long national nightmare is over" — became one of the most quoted lines in American political history. He was the first person to assume the presidency without having been elected either president or vice president, having been appointed vice president under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment after Spiro Agnew's resignation the previous year. Nixon had departed the White House that morning after an emotional farewell to his staff in the East Room, where he spoke without notes about his parents, quoted Theodore Roosevelt, and cried. He and First Lady Pat Nixon boarded Marine One on the South Lawn, and Nixon famously raised both arms in a V-for-victory gesture from the helicopter doorway before flying to Andrews Air Force Base and then to his home in San Clemente, California. Ford inherited a nation exhausted by Watergate and deeply cynical about its government. His administration faced immediate challenges: a recession, rising inflation, the final collapse of South Vietnam, and the lingering question of what to do about Nixon. One month after taking office, on September 8, Ford issued a full and unconditional pardon to Nixon for any crimes he might have committed while president. The decision was enormously unpopular, triggering a drop in Ford's approval ratings from 71 to 49 percent and contributing to his defeat by Jimmy Carter in 1976. Ford maintained for the rest of his life that the pardon was necessary to move the country forward. Many historians have come to agree, though the debate continues. The transition from Nixon to Ford — conducted through constitutional process rather than crisis — demonstrated the resilience of American democratic institutions. Power transferred peacefully from a disgraced president to an unelected successor, and the republic held.