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Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866–1944) was an American jurist who served as a federal judge from 1905 to 1922 and as the first Commissioner of Baseball from 1920 until his death. He is remembered for his handling of the Black Sox scandal (in which members of the Chicago White Sox conspired to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series); he expelled eight players from organized baseball and repeatedly refused their reinstatement requests. His firm actions and iron rule over baseball in the near quarter-century of his commissionership are generally credited with restoring public confidence in the game. As a judge, Landis had received national attention in 1907 when he fined Standard Oil of Indiana more than $29 million. During and after World War I, Landis, an ardent patriot, presided over a number of high-profile trials of draft resisters and others whom he saw as opposing the war effort. He dealt out heavy sentences to the defendants, though some of the convictions were reversed on appeal; other sentences were commuted. Landis's decisions in the Black Sox matter remain controversial: advocates of Black Sox "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and Buck Weaver contend that he was overly harsh with them. (more...)

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August 3: Independence Day in Niger (1960); Flag Day in Venezuela

• 1929 – Jiddu Krishnamurti, tapped to be the messianic "World Teacher", shocked the Theosophy movement by dissolving the Order of the Star, the organisation established to support him.
• 1936 – African American athlete Jesse Owens (pictured) won the first of his four gold medals at the Summer Olympics in Berlin, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination.
• 1940 – World War II: Italy began their invasion of British Somaliland.
• 2005 – President of Mauritania Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was overthrown in a military coup while he was attending the funeral of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.
• 2007 – Former Deputy Director of the Chilean secret police Raúl Iturriaga was captured after having been on the run following a conviction for kidnapping.

More anniversaries: August 2 – August 3 – August 4