August 11 in History

Babe Ruth hit his 500th career home run off Willis Hudlin at League Park in Cleveland on August 11, 1929, becoming the first player in Major League Baseball history to reach the milestone. The ball sailed into the right-field bleachers in the second inning of a game the Yankees won 6-5. Ruth was 34 years old and had been hitting home runs at a pace no one had imagined possible when he entered the league as a pitcher fifteen years earlier. The 500-homer mark became baseball's definitive measure of power-hitting greatness. Only 28 players have reached it in over a century of professional baseball, and the number remains a virtual guarantee of Hall of Fame induction.

Hedy Lamarr, the Austrian-born Hollywood actress, and George Antheil, an avant-garde composer, received U.S. Patent 2,292,387 on August 11, 1942, for a "Secret Communication System" that used frequency hopping to prevent radio-guided torpedoes from being jammed. The Navy dismissed the invention during the war, partly because Lamarr was an actress and Antheil was known for composing music for synchronized player pianos. The technology sat unused for decades. In the 1960s, the military adopted frequency hopping for secure communications during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, the principle is foundational to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and all cellular networks. Lamarr received no royalties and was not recognized for her contribution until the 1990s.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah addressed Pakistan's first Constituent Assembly on August 11, 1947, three days before the country's official independence, with a speech that continues to divide historians. He declared that citizens would be free to worship at any temple or mosque and that religion would have "nothing to do with the business of the state." This secular vision contradicted the two-nation theory that had justified partition, the argument that Muslims needed a separate homeland because they could not coexist with Hindus. Jinnah died of tuberculosis just thirteen months later, on September 11, 1948, before he could anchor his vision in the constitution. Pakistan has oscillated between secular and Islamic governance ever since.

The Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles erupted on August 11, 1965, after California Highway Patrol officer Lee Minikus pulled over Marquette Frye for erratic driving. A routine traffic stop escalated when Frye's mother arrived and a scuffle broke out, drawing a crowd that grew increasingly angry. Over the next six days, residents burned and looted businesses across a 46-square-mile area. The California National Guard deployed 14,000 troops. When the violence subsided, 34 people were dead, over 1,000 injured, and nearly 4,000 arrested. Property damage exceeded $40 million. Governor Pat Brown appointed a commission under John McCone that identified unemployment, poverty, and police brutality as root causes, but few of its recommendations were implemented.

Governor Mario Lemos Pires fled the East Timorese capital of Dili on August 11, 1975, as fighting erupted between the Timorese Democratic Union (UDT) and the Fretilin independence movement. Portugal, which had ruled East Timor for over 400 years, was itself in the throes of a revolution following the 1974 Carnation Revolution and had neither the will nor the resources to manage the decolonization process. The power vacuum created by Portugal's withdrawal gave Indonesia the pretext it needed. On December 7, 1975, Indonesian forces invaded East Timor, beginning a 24-year occupation that killed an estimated 100,000 to 180,000 Timorese through violence, famine, and disease, roughly a quarter of the population.

King Leonidas of Sparta led a force of roughly 7,000 Greeks, including his personal guard of 300 Spartans, to block the Persian army of Xerxes I at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae in 480 BC. For two days, the Greeks held the pass against overwhelming numbers by exploiting the terrain. When a local traitor named Ephialtes revealed a mountain path that allowed the Persians to outflank the position, Leonidas dismissed most of the Greek army and fought a last stand with his 300 Spartans, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans. They were annihilated. The three-day delay allowed the Greek fleet to organize at Salamis, where it destroyed the Persian navy and saved Greek civilization from conquest.