Virginia Geographic Calendar - August

August 1

- In 1961, the Virginia Blue Ridge Railway ended steam operations.

August 2

- In 2018, College Lake overflowed and the threat of flooding forced an evacuation in Lynchburg.

August 3

- In 2023, the US Army held a ground-breaking ceremony for a new incinerator at Radford Army Ammunition Plant to eliminate 99% of the remaining open-air burning that generated the most air pollution of any facility in Virginia.

August 4

- Robert Carter, land agent for Lord Fairfax's proprietary land grant, died. Lord Fairfax did not authorize anyone to issue new grants for four years, until he physically came to see his property in 1736.

August 5

- In 1975, Gerald Ford signed a law restoring the citizenship of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Lee signed the Oath of Allegiance in Lexington on October 2, 1865, after his inauguration as President of Washington College, but the "paperwork was lost" in the Federal bureaucracy.

August 6

- In 1993, a tornado with winds reaching 225 miles per hour blasted downtown Petersburg.

August 7

- In 1918, three months before the end of wrld War I, President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive proclamation creating Navy Mine Depot Yorktown (now Naval Weapons Station Yorktown).

August 8

- In 2019, horse racing and gambling restarted at Colonial Downs.

August 9

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August 10

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August 11

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August 12

- In 2017, white supremacists organized a Unite the Right rallly in Charlottesville to protest the city's plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park

August 13

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August 14

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August 15

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August 16

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August 17

- In 2023, the "FredEx" toll lanes on I-95 opened.

- In 1943, Naval Auxiliary Air Station Oceana was officially established.

August 18

- In 2022, Alexandria lowered the first part of the tunnel boring machine named "Hazel" into a shaft, so it could start drilling the two-mile Waterfront Tunnel to reduce the flow of raw sewage from the city's Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) pipes into the Potomac River

August 19

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August 20

- The Wheeling Convention passed the ordinance for creating West Virginia in 1861. In 1863, when Congress accepted West Virginia into the Union, the boundaries had shifted eastward to incorporate the border counties from Mercer to Morgan into West Virginia. In 1871, the Supreme Court ruled that Berkeley and Jefferson counties had been added legally to West Virginia.

August 21

- Nat Turner's Rebellion started in Southampton County, resulting in the death of approximately 55 men, women, and children between August 21-23. Turner claimed in his Confessions that, at one point, "Our number amounted now to fifty or sixty, all mounted and armed with guns, axes, swords and clubs..." (1831)

- In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved Virginia's plan to improve air quality and reduce haze at Shenandoah National Park and James River Face Wilderness.

August 22

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August 23

- A 1933 storm, later named the Chesapeake and Potomac Hurricane, totally covered Tangier Island with water deep enough to flood some structures up to the second story.

- In 2011, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake centered near Mineral, Virginia cracked the Washington Monument.

August 24

- The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were taken from the State Department just ahead of the invading British army, who burned the Executive Mansion after President Madison and his wide Dolly had fled. The national documents were carried across Chain Bridge to a gristmill at Pimmitt Run, then left overnight in the Littlejohn House in Leesburg. (Later, they are stored at Rokeby Manor in Leesburg, before finally being returned to DC.) President Madison fled to Salona, home of William Maffitt in today's McLean, where he planned to meet his wife Dolley. She is given credit for rescuing Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington from the Executive Mansion.

August 25

- In 1917, the chief of the Pamunkey tribe testified that they were "Indians not taxed" and thus not citizens who could be drafted into the US Army.

- A Federal court rejected the redistricting plan for the House of Delegates after the 1980 Census The court allowed elections using the unconstitutional boundaries in 1981, but required new elections for House of Delegates seats using new boundaries in 1982.

August 26

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August 27

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August 28

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August 29

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August 30

- Gabriel Prosser reportedly planned to launch a major slave insurrection, starting in Henrico County north of Richmond and moving to capture Governor James Monroe and the State Capitol (and including plans to capture Petersburg and Norfolk). However, a thunderstorm blocked the slaves from traveling on the local roads to assemble, and the plot was revealed before the "rain date" of August 31.

August 31

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