Mayor Bill White and the Houston Public Library invite you to join in celebrating the launch of the Houston Oral History Project web site. The   Houston Oral History Project is an effort to record and preserve the dynamic history of Houston through the stories and experiences of its residents. It is a collaboration between the Mayor’s Office, the Houston Public Library, and the University of Houston. On the web site you will find videos of Houston’s movers and shakers talking about their lives and their contributions to the city. Visit www.houstonoralhistory.org for more information.

1837 - August 14: James S. Holman won Houston’s first mayoral election.

1838 - August 18: John K. Allen died of yellow fever at the age of 28.

1842 - August 6: Charles Eliot arrived at Galveston to take up his post as charge d'affaires for the British government to the Republic of Texas.

1844 - July 1: Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels and his retinue arrived in Galveston

1856 - August 13: The Texas legislature passed a railroad bill which would make Houston, rather than Galveston, the center of the state's rail system.

1861 - July 2: The USS Carolina blocked Galveston from exportation of goods (including cotton) during the Civil War.

1861 - July: The city of Houston serves as military headquarters for the confederate district of Texas.

1870 - July 14: Congress declared Houston a port of entry, authorized a customs house, and ordered a survey of the proposed channel from Houston to the Gulf.

1880 - August 30: The rail link between Houston and New Orleans was completed and the first scheduled passenger train between the two cities made its run.

1887 - July: Henry Thompson, a Second Ward resident, drilled an artesian well which yielded almost pure water. He had tapped the third largest artesian reservoir in the United States

Interstate Commerce Act (co-sponsored by Rep. John H. Regan of Texas) enacted by the U.S. Congress.

1888 - August 2: The Jaybird-Woodpecker feud starts in Fort Bend County.

1893 - July: The Magnolia Brewery is opened.

1905 - July 5: H. Baldwin Rice became Houston's mayor.

1908 - August 8: Work was finished on the Turning Basin, which measured 600 feet in diameter at the bottom.

1908 - August 10: The U.S. revenue cutter Windom became the first ship to traverse the 18 1/2 foot deep ship channel constructed between 1902 and 1908.

1910 - July: Ground was broken for Rice Institute's first building.

1910 - August: Union Railroad Station was opened.

1911 - August 29: The first all-steel train in Texas history left Houston for Galveston.

1915 - August: Houston is hit by a hurricane with winds gusting between 80-110 miles per hour. This is the worst storm since the one in 1900.

1917 - July 24: Construction began on Camp Logan, a facility for National Guard Units. 

1918 - July: The Port of Houston was seriously affected by a maritime strike which spread throughout Texas Gulf ports.

1921 - August 21: State legislature was passed permitting the consolidation of the two administrative boards which had jurisdiction over the ship channel; the City Harbor Board and the Commissioners of the Harris County and Houston Ship Channel Navigation District. The two were consolidated, at their own request, into a five-man Board of Navigation and Canal Commissioners.

1925 - July: Hermann Hospital is opened for public inspection.

1925 - August: The Sam Houston Monument is unveiled in Hermann Park.

1929 - August: Sears, Roebuck & Company's new $1,000,000 retail department store on the corner of Buffalo Dr. and Lincoln Street is opened.

1934 - August: Work started on the $184,000 improvement program for Memorial Park. The improvements include a golf course and club house, picnic grounds, and play grounds.

1935 - July: Houston's first exclusive air mail collection box has been installed at Main and Rusk.

1938 - July 30: Howard Hughes, Houston's globe-circling aviator, landed in Houston. On Saturday, around 10,000 people watched his 12:35 p.m. arrival at the Houston Municipal Airport.  His welcome home continued in a 10-mile parade that proceeded along Telephone, Leeland, Main, Congress, Fannin and Texas, and completing at the Rice Hotel. The size of the crowd was estimated at 200,000 on Main Street.

1942 - August: The Houston city-manager form of government was instituted with eight council members, a part-time mayor, and the first city manager, John North Edy.

1946 - July: Houstonian Howard Hughes is seriously injured in the test flight of a plane he had built.

1947 - July 31: Army engineers recommended that the Houston Ship Channel be deepened to 36 feet along its entire length.

1951 - July: A gang riot erupts near Playland Park and 36 youths are jailed.

1952 - August 1: The Gulf Freeway between Houston and Galveston was completed. State and federal governments funded 86 percent of it.

1954 - July: The Chamber of Commerce held "M Day" to celebrate the addition of the metropolitan area's (Harris County) millionth citizen.

1955 - August 17: Voters approved a charter amendment to shorten city council terms by a year, and they approved new municipal elections for November. They defeated eighteen proposed amendments, backed by councilmen, which would have curbed the mayor's power and strengthened their own.

1955 - July 25: Mayor Hofheinz offered to stand trial in the face of an impeachment move by the council. The mayor and council were embroiled in a dispute over proposed charter amendments that would have affected the power balance in city government.

1955 - August 27: City councilmen dropped their impeachment move against Mayor Hofheinz.

1956 - August 11: The city council designed a twenty-acre Sam Houston Park as a repository for the city's historic buildings.

1960 - August 4: District Court Judge Connally labeled the school board's desegregation plan a "palable sham and subterfuge." He ordered desegregation to commence in all first grades in September 1960 and to proceed at one grade per year thereafter.

1963 - July: The fifty-three year old City Auditorium is demolished to make way for the new Jesse H. Jones Hall. Demolition was slow, because the building had been so well constructed.

1963 - August 7: A 353-day strike against the Shell Oil Company refinery and chemical plant ended.

1965 - July: The Bureau of Census redefined Houston's metropolitan area to include Brazoria, Fort Bend, Liberty, and Montgomery counties along with Harris County. An area of 359.7 square miles, with a population of 1,695,000 was added to the metropolitan district.

1969 - July 23: The Federal District Court ruled that Houston could keep its freedom-of-choice desegregation program for the 1969-1970 school year, but that it would have to develop either a zoning or pairing program for the 1970-1971 year.

1970 - July 19: The Justice Department asked the U.S. Appeals Court to order Houston to pair and group 101 schools to achieve greater desegregation.

1973 - August: Twenty-seven young boys are found to have been murdered by three Houston men in what will become know as the "Houston Mass Murders."

1973 - August 2: The Famed Chicken Ranch at La Grange ceases operations, thanks to Channel 13 reporter Marvin Zindler's Investigative Report.

1974 - July: Elmer Wayne Henley is convicted of slaying six of the Mass Murder victims.

1974 - July 25: Congresswoman Barbara Jordan of Houston delivers her famous " We the People" speech on the U.S. Constitution and impeachment.

1975 - August 19: Miss Ima Hogg, premier patronness of the Arts and daughter of the late Governor James Stephen Hogg, dies at the age of 93 while on a trip to London.

1979 - July 11: Dallas and Houston city elections suspended by federal court order pending investigation of compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

1983 - August 18: Hurricane Alicia, the most expensive hurricane in U.S. history, hits Galveston and Houston.
1989 - August 7: Congressman Mickey Leland was killed in a plane crash over Ethiopia. State Senator Craig Washington won the special election to succeed Leland in the district originally represented by Barbara Jordan.

2005 - July 16: Joel Osteen and his Lakewood Church congregation moved into the newly renovated Compaq Center. Osteen spent $95 million on converting the arena to a church.

1543 - July 25: Survivors of the Hernando de Soto Expedition blown ashore in the vicinity of Lake Sabine.
1716 - July 2: The Spanish build a presidio west of the Neches River. It marks the beginning of continuous settlement in the province of Texas.
1716 - July 7: Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion founded near present day Douglas, Nacogdoches County.
1716 - July 9: Mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe located at the principal town of Nacogdoches County; established by Domingo Ramos.
1812 - August 8: About 130-men strong, the Gutierrez-Magee Expedition crossed the Sabine from Louisiana in a rebel movement against Spanish rule in Texas.
1818 - July 24: Napoleonic exiles at Champ d'Asile on Trinity River abandoned settlements amid rumors of a Spanish move against them.
1819 - August 14: General Long began publishing Texas Republican in Nacogdoches.
1823 - July 26: San Felipe de Austin established.
1827 - August 2: Texans, under command of Hayden E. Edwards, defeated Mexicans at the Battle of Nacogdoches.
1833 - July 8: Stephen Austin reaches Mexico City with a plan to separate Texas from the state of Coahuila.
1837 - August 27: Brutus and Invincible forced aground near Galveston by two Mexican men-of-war.  Their destruction terminated the career of the first Texas Navy.
1838 - August 7: The Cordova Rebellion led by Vicente Cordova began when his opposition to the Republic of Texas was discovered.  He had about 600 Indian and Mexican troops, but Texas forces under Thomas J. Rusk were able to put down the uprising.
1839 - July 15: Battle of the Neches fought.  Chief Bowles led seven to eight hundred Cherokee against Texans.  He was killed on July 16.
1840 - August 8: Linnville in Calhoun County was sacked and burned by Comanche Indians.  It was abandoned and never rebuilt.
1840 - August 11/12: The Battle of Plum Creek, near present-day Lockhart, ended the boldest and most penetrating Comanche challenge to the Texas Republic.
1842 - August 26: Treaty with the Caddo Indians.
1843 - July 19: Commodore Moore dishonorably discharged.
1844 - August 15: President Houston calls out the militia to put down the Regulator-Moderator War.
1845 - July 4: The Texas Constitutional Convention votes to accept the United States annexation proposal; it drafts an Annexation Ordinance and State Constitution to submit to the voters of Texas.
1845 - August 1: Zachary Taylor and federal troops landed at Corpus Christi.
1849 - July 7: Fort Lincoln established on Seco Creek.  Abandoned on July 20, 1852.
1849 - August 11: Governor George Wood sends three companies of Rangers to Corpus Christi to guard settlers from Goliad to the Rio Grande against Indian attacks.
1851 - July 6: Fort Mason established on the Llano River.  Intermittently occupied until the Civil War.
1855 - July 5: Callahan Expedition authorized.
1855 - August 20: Fort Lancaster established on Live Oak Creek near its junction with the Pecos River; abandoned March 19, 1861.
1856 - July 8: Camp Verde established on the northern bank of Verde Creek near Bandera Pass.
1856 - August 2: Camp Colorado established six miles north of the Colorado River on the road between Fort Belknap and Fort Mason.
1856 - August 30: Land endowment given by the legislature to institutions for the "deaf, blind, insane, and orphaned."
1857 - July 9: The first mail leaves San Antonio for San Diego, marking the start of the first successful transcontinental mail route.
1857 - July 29: Thomas J. Rusk commits suicide.
1859 - July 13: Violent clashes between Juan "Cheno" Cortina and Anglo lawmen begin in the Brownsville area in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
1861 - July 27: Texas Confederate troops captured Fort Fillmore near Mesilla, New Mexico.
1862 - August: The Battle of Corpus Christi fought.
1863 - July 1: Hood's Texas Brigade joins in the fighting at Gettysburg.
1863 - July 26: Sam Houston dies at his home in Huntsville.
1864 - August 17: Major General John G. Walker took over command of Texas Confederate forces.
1866 - August 20: President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation of peace between the United States and Texas.
1867 - July 29: Fort Griffin established to replace Fort Belknap; built on the right bank of the Clear Fork of the Brazos.  It was first called Camp Wilson; name changed to Fort Griffin on February 6, 1868; abandoned on May 31, 1881.
1867 - July 30: Governor Throckmorton removed from office.
1870 - July 1: State Police organized.
1870 - July 12: The Sixth Cavalry engages the Kiowas in the Battle of the Little Wichita River.
1874 - August 30: The first fight of the Red River Indian War takes place in Palo Duro Canyon.
1878 - July 21: Sam Bass is killed by Texas Rangers at Round Rock on his 27th birthday.
1882 - July 25: Judge Roy Bean opens his first saloon west of the Pecos.
1883 - July 4: The first recorded rodeo in Texas is held at Pecos.
1886 - August 19: Hurricane destroyed or damaged every house is Indianola over a three day period.  Town was never rebuilt.
1906 - August 21: Captain Bill McDonald of the Rangers quells a race riot in Brownsville.
1908 - August 27: Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States, born near Johnson City.
1917 - July 18: The 36th United States Infantry Division, also known as the Texas Division, was organized.  It is said to be the first American division to invade Europe during World War II.
1917 - August 25: Governor Jim Ferguson resigns after being impeached.
1923 - July 6: The Dr. Pepper Company was officially incorporated. This soft drink was first created in the pharmacy of Morrison’s Old Corner Drug in Waco, Texas in 1885.
1923 - July 30: Roy Mitchell is strung up in Waco; his is the last legal public hanging in Texas.
1931 - July 27: Oklahoma Governor Bill Murray sends the national guard to seal off the entrance to Texas via the Red River Bridge.
1931 - August 17: Governor Ross Sterling ordered the National Guard to the East Texas oil fields to enforce regulation of oil production. Martial law declared.
1934 - August 7: Franklin O. Fuller, 44th Speaker (1917-1918), died in Houston.  Fuller was the only speaker to call the legislature into special session on his own authority.
1938 - July 19: Douglas "Wrong Way" Corrigan of Galveston flies "by mistake" to Ireland.
1941 - August 4: W. Lee O'Daniel resigns his governor's post to become a senator; Coke Stevenson replaces him.
1948 - August 28: Lyndon Johnson wins his senate race by 87 votes, thanks to Box 13 in Jim Wells County.
1949 - July 11: Governor Beauford Jester dies en route to Houston; he is the first governor to die in office.
1966 - August 1: Charles Whitman kills 17 people, shooting them from the observation deck of the main-building tower on The University of Texas campus in Austin.
1984 - August 20-23: The National Republican Convention is held in Dallas.