The world this week: Marilyn Monroe’s tragic death and the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima

5 August

The first ever traffic light was installed in 1914. It was put in place in Cleveland, Ohio.

Film star Marilyn Monroe was found dead in 1962. She was discovered in her bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills on her bedside table.

Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962 by the government at Rivonia, a suburb of Johannesburg. After a year-long trial, Mandela was imprisoned for the next 18 years.

Three people were killed after two guerillas opened fire on a crowded passenger lounge at Athens airport in 1973. Fifty-five were injured.

Twenty-two IRA members were jailed for a total of 4,000 years in 1983. However, 18 had their convictions quashed in 1986.

Deaths: Friedrich Engels, 1895, German philosopher; Richard Burton, 1984, Welsh actor; Paul Brown, 1991, American football coach.

6 August

The first execution by electric chair took place in 1890 at Auburn Prison in New York. William Kemmler was executed following the murder of his lover Matilda Ziegler.

Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1926, aged 19.

Andy Warhol was born in 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He would become one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century.

An American plane dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. Approximately 80,000 people were killed and another 35,000 were injured.

George RR Martin’s fantasy novel A Game of Thrones was published in 1996. The book was the first in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Deaths: Ben Jonson, 1637, English writer; Bix Beiderbecke, 1931, pianist; Theodor W Adorno, 1969, German philosopher; Fulgencio Batista, 1973, ninth president of Cuba; Pope Paul VI, 1978.

7 August

Seven army ammunition trucks exploded in Cali, Colombia, in 1956. The blasts killed more than 1,000 people with the cause remaining a mystery.

US embassies in east Africa were bombed in 1998. The attacks killed 224 people and injured more than 4,500.

Lynne Cox swam from the United States to the Soviet Union in 1987. The swim took her just two hours and 16 minutes.

Ugandan leader Idi Amin set a deadline of 90 days for the expulsion of most of the country’s Asians in 1972. Some 50,000 Asians were forced to leave Uganda, with 30,000 eventually moving to the UK.

Deaths: Constantin Stanislavski, 1938, Russian actor; Rabindranath Tagore, 1941, Indian Nobel Prize laureate; Oliver Hardy, 1957, American comedian; Peter Jennings, 2005, Canadian-American journalist; Mark Hatfield, 2011, American politician.

8 August

Robbers managed to steal millions from a mail train in 1963. Thieves ambushed the train between Glasgow and Euston and took £2m in untraceable banknotes.

Richard Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974. He was the first US president in history to do so.

Gangsta rap lurched towards the mainstream in 1988 with the release of NWA’s album Straight Outta Compton. The album would eventually be certified triple platinum.

Beirut hostage John McCarthy was eventually freed after more than five years in 1991. McCarthy was abducted in 1986 and was one of 11 westerners to be held captive by jihadi or other militant groups.

Deaths: George Canning, 1827, former British prime minister; Mary Mackillop, 1909, Australian saint; Michael Wittmann, 1944, German SS officer; Dean Corll, 1973, American serial killer; Louise Brooks, 1985, American actor.

9 August

American forces dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. The second atomic bomb in three days resulted in Japan’s unconditional surrender.

Charles Manson’s cult killed five people in movie director Roman Polanski’s Beverly Hills home in 1969. Polanski’s pregnant wife Sharon Tate was among those who died.

Gerald Ford was sworn in as the 38th president of the United States in 1974 following the resignation of his predecessor Richard Nixon.

Brighton became the first major seaside resort in the UK to agree to designate part of its beach for nudists in 1979.

Deaths: Hermann Hesse, 1962, German Nobel Prize laureate; Dmitri Shostakovich, 1975, Russian composer; Jerry Garcia, American singer-songwriter; Frank Whittle, 1996, English engineer; David Rakoff, Canadian-American author.

10 August

The Louvre first opened as a public museum in Paris in 1793 by the French revolutionary government.

The Queen visited Northern Ireland for the first time in 11 years as part of her silver jubilee tour in 1977. In the run-up to her visit, the IRA mounted a spate of violent attacks hoping to have it cancelled.

The Nasa space probe Magellan arrived at Venus after a 15-month journey from Earth in 1990. The spacecraft spent four years mapping Venus.

Temperatures hit 100F (37C) in the UK for the first time during a European heatwave in 2003 that claimed more than 35,000 lives on the continent.

Deaths: Otto Lilienthal, 1896, German pilot; Robert H Goddard, 1945, American physicist; Yahya Khan, 1980, third president of Pakistan; Isaac Hayes, 2008, American singer-songwriter.

11 August

Federal prisoners arrived for the first time at Alcatraz island in 1934. In 1964, US attorney general Robert F Kennedy ordered the prison to close down.

The infamous east London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed to leave prison for their mother’s funeral in 1982. They were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder in 1969.

Around 350 million people in Europe and Asia witnessed the last total solar eclipse of the century in 1999. It was the first over mainland Britain since 1927 and will not be witnessed again until 2090.

Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams took his own life in 2014.

Deaths: John Henry Newman, 1890, English cardinal; Khudiram Bose, 1908, Indian activist; Andrew Carnegie, 1919, Scottish-American businessman; Jackson Pollock, 1956, painter; Alfred A Knopf, 1984, American publisher.