Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is Aug. 3. In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was on this date in 1492 that Christopher Columbus, the "Admiral of the Ocean Sea," set sail from Spain for the New World with a convoy of three small ships -- the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria -- and fewer than 100 crewmen. Advertisement A skirmish between Serbia and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire began to spread further on this date on 1914, when Germany declared war on France and invaded Belgium. The following day, Britain declared war on Germany and World War I was under way. The United States initially declared itself neutral, but finally entered the fray in 1917. Proving it could be done, on this date in 1958, the American nuclear submarine "Nautilus" crossed under the North Pole. It was on this date in 1981 that U.S. air traffic controllers walked off the job. While planes didn't fall out of the sky, within a week the strikers had all been fired by President Reagan after a federal judge ruled they were ineligible to strike. And in 1993, a U.S. federal court ruled that John Demjanjuk -- whose conviction on charges he was death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible" was overturned earlier by the Israeli Supreme Court -- should be allowed to return to the United States. Advertisement We now return you to the present, already in progress.
