| 2 August 1057 | Holy Roman Empire [administration] | Following the death earlier in the year of Pope Victor II, Frederick of Lorraine, the abbot of Monte Cassino, is elected as Pope Stephen IX. The weak regency of the infant Henry IV of Germany is unable to interfere with the election, which begins the process of freeing the papacy from secular control. |
| 2 August 1483 | Spain, Castile, Papal States, Italy [Christianity] | A bull of Pope Sixtus IV appoints Queen Isabella I's confessor, the harsh Dominican Tomás de Torquemada, as the first Grand Inquisitor of Castile. His implacable paranoid hostility toward Jews and Muslims subsequently directs the actions of the Inquisition. |
| 2 August 1649 | UK [British Civil Wars (1642–51)] | Irish Royalists under the Earl of Ormonde, who have risen in support of Charles II, the son and heir of the late King Charles I of Great Britain and Ireland, are defeated by parliamentarian forces at the Battle of Rathmines, near Dublin, Ireland. |
| 2 August 1788 | England [births and deaths] | Thomas Gainsborough, English portrait and landscape painter, dies in London, England (61). |
| 2 August 1830 | France [political events] | Charles X abdicates as king of France following continued opposition to his rule. |
| 2 August 1858 | Canada, UK [colonies and mandate] | British Columbia in Canada is organized as a British colony following the discovery of gold there. |
| 2 August 1922 | [births and deaths] | Alexander Graham Bell, Scottish-born US scientist who invented the telephone, dies in Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada (75). |
| 2 August 1923 | USA [political events] | Following the death of US president Warren G Harding, he is succeeded on 3 August by Vice-President Calvin Coolidge. |
| 2 August 1932 | United Kingdom [food and drink] | In Slough, England, Forrest Mars launches the Mars Bar: this product will form the basis of the Mars confectionery empire. |
| 2 August 1934 | Germany [administration] | When the German president, Paul von Hindenburg, dies, the German presidency is merged with the chancellorship and all members of the armed forces take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler personally as Führer (‘Leader’). |
| 2 August 1935 | India, UK [legislation] | The British Parliament passes the Government of India Act. It reforms the governmental system, separates Burma and Aden from India, grants provincial governments greater autonomy, and creates a central legislature in Delhi (effective from 1 April 1937). |
| 2 August 1993 | Europe [political events] | Following speculative pressure on currencies in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), the mechanism collapses and currencies are allowed to fluctuate within a broad band of 15% on either side of central rates. |
| 2 August 2001 | Netherlands [crime and punishment] | The United Nations War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, the Netherlands, sentences Radislav Krstic, the Bosnian Serb general who oversaw the 1995 massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica, to a record 46 years in prison for genocide. |
