August 1 in History

In August 1849, the Scottish missionary David Livingstone, together with the hunters William Cotton Oswell and Mungo Murray, reached Lake Ngami in the northern Kalahari, in what is now Botswana. The summary's phrase "first European exploration of African interior" needs some care, since Portuguese and other travelers had crossed parts of the continent earlier and African communities had long known the lake. What the journey did achieve was to bring a major Kalahari water body to the attention of European geographers, and it marked the start of Livingstone's transformation from mission worker into the most famous explorer in Africa.

In the summer of 1975, leaders from 35 countries gathered in Helsinki to sign the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The signatories included the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, and nearly every European state, with Albania the notable absence and Andorra among the small participants. The document accepted the borders drawn in Europe after the Second World War and also committed governments to respect human rights. That pairing of territorial stability and individual freedoms made the agreement far more consequential than many observers expected at the time.

MTV, short for Music Television, began broadcasting in the United States on August 1, 1981, as a cable channel devoted to round-the-clock music videos. It did not invent the promotional music film, but it turned the format into a mass medium and helped make the look of a song nearly as important as its sound. For a generation of young viewers, it became a central way to discover new music, fashion, and style.