The Real Story Behind National Coast Guard Day and 4 Other August Days Worth Knowing
August is packed with days most people scroll past on a calendar app.
A few of them turn out to have real, well-documented history behind them, and the story is almost never the one you’d guess. Photo by Freepik.
Here are five, starting with the one that surprises people the most.
National Coast Guard Day, August 4: born to catch tax cheats, not enemies
Most people assume a military service starts with a war. The Coast Guard didn’t.
The Real Founding Story
On August 4, 1790, Congress authorized a fleet of ten small ships called revenue cutters. The idea came from Alexander Hamilton, the country’s first Secretary of the Treasury, and it had nothing to do with defending the coast from an enemy fleet. It was about tax collection.
The young United States had no federal income tax. Tariffs on imported goods were the main source of government revenue, and smugglers were landing ships at night or bribing officials to avoid paying them. Hamilton’s fix was a small, fast fleet that could patrol the coastline and catch the cheats.
The service didn’t even get its current name until 1915, when the Revenue Cutter Service merged with the U.S. Life-Saving Service. It’s actually older than the U.S. Navy itself, since the Navy had been disbanded after the Revolutionary War and wasn’t re-established until 1798, eight years later.
The detail almost nobody mentions
To catch smugglers, the government needed people who understood how smugglers operated. So it hired some of them.
Reformed smugglers, who knew exactly which coves and coastal tricks their old colleagues used, became some of the earliest crew.
Purple Heart Day, August 7: an honor that was forgotten for 150 years
The Purple Heart is the oldest U.S. military decoration still in use, but its history has a huge gap in the middle that rarely gets told.
Washington’s Original Idea
On August 7, 1782, George Washington created the Badge of Military Merit at his headquarters in Newburgh, New York. It was a purple heart-shaped piece of silk with the word “Merit” stitched in silver, and it mattered for a reason beyond the design.
At the time, the Continental Congress wouldn’t let Washington hand out promotions or commissions to reward merit. So he invented an award instead, one of the first military honors in the world specifically designed to recognize enlisted soldiers rather than only officers.
It was, at most, given to a handful of men, then forgotten
Historical records show only a small number of soldiers, likely just three, actually received the badge during the Revolutionary War.
After the war, it fell completely out of use. It wasn’t awarded during the Civil War. It wasn’t awarded during the century of American wars that followed. The paperwork recording its recipients was lost.
It sat dormant for roughly 150 years until 1932, when the Army revived it as the modern Purple Heart, timed deliberately to Washington’s 200th birthday.
Even then, it still recognized meritorious service broadly. It wasn’t until 1944, over a decade later, that the requirements narrowed to specifically cover troops wounded or killed in combat.
National Navajo Code Talkers Day, August 14: the veterans who couldn’t talk about their own service
This is a story about a code that worked so well the government kept it secret from the men who created it for more than two decades.
An Unbreakable Code, and a Program Even Congress Didn’t Know About
During World War II, the Marine Corps recruited Navajo men to build a code based on their unwritten native language. It worked. Historians and military accounts have since described it as one of the only codes in the history of modern warfare that was never broken by an enemy.
Then the program was classified, and it stayed classified until 1968. That means the code talkers came home from the war and, for more than 20 years, could not tell their own families what they had actually done in the Pacific.
Recognition, decades late
It took a 1982 proclamation from President Ronald Reagan, requested by Congress, to formally designate August 14 as National Navajo Code Talkers Day.
The original 29 code talkers didn’t receive the Congressional Gold Medal until 2001, nearly 60 years after they developed the code, and only a handful were still alive to receive it.
National Aviation Day, August 19: tied to a man’s birthday while he was still alive to see it
This one is more straightforward than the others, but the timing is the interesting part.
National Aviation Day
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation designating August 19, the birthday of Orville Wright, as National Aviation Day.
What’s easy to miss is that Wright was still alive when it happened. He got to watch the country turn his birthday into a national tribute to the industry he helped invent, and lived another nine years afterward.
Women’s Equality Day, August 26: the date almost doesn’t match the history
Save this one for last, because it has the best twist.
The 19th Amendment’s Anniversary
Everyone assumes the date is the 19th Amendment’s anniversary. It’s not quite. The 19th Amendment secured the final state needed for ratification on August 18, 1920, when Tennessee narrowly approved it.
That vote came down to a 24-year-old legislator named Harry T. Burn, who was set to vote against it until he received a note from his mother urging him to support suffrage. He switched his vote, and the amendment had its 36 states.
But a constitutional amendment isn’t official the moment it’s ratified. It has to be certified by the Secretary of State. And that’s where the story gets almost absurd.
Certified quietly, at 8 a.m., with no cameras allowed
Suffragist leaders Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt asked Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby to let them witness and film the certification, a genuinely historic moment decades in the making. Colby said no.
On August 26, 1920, he signed the proclamation alone, at his own home, at 8 in the morning, with no ceremony and no press present.
Representative Bella Abzug introduced a resolution to designate the date as Women’s Equality Day in 1971, following the massive Women’s Strike for Equality march down New York’s Fifth Avenue the year before. It didn’t pass right away.
President Richard Nixon issued a proclamation for a version of the day in 1972, and Congress finally approved the formal designation in 1973. Every president since Nixon has issued an annual proclamation recognizing the day.
The five days at a glance
| Date | Observance | What most people don’t know |
|---|---|---|
| August 4 | National Coast Guard Day | Founded to catch tax-dodging smugglers, not to fight a war, and it hired ex-smugglers to do it |
| August 7 | Purple Heart Day | Created in 1782, then went unused for about 150 years before its 1932 revival |
| August 14 | National Navajo Code Talkers Day | The code stayed classified until 1968, so the veterans couldn’t discuss it for over 20 years |
| August 19 | National Aviation Day | Tied to Orville Wright’s birthday while he was still alive to see the tribute |
| August 26 | Women’s Equality Day | The amendment was ratified August 18, but certified quietly, alone, on August 26 |
Frequently asked questions
How we verified this
Dates and founding details were checked against primary government sources where available, including presidential proclamations and federal agency histories, along with major historical archives and reputable news organizations for the surrounding context.
This article is for general historical information. Some figures, such as the exact number of early Purple Heart recipients, come from historical records that are incomplete, and are presented as commonly cited rather than definitively confirmed.
Sources
- National Coast Guard Day origins and the Revenue Cutter Service: Military.com (https://www.military.com/military-appreciation-month/origins-of-coast-guard-day.html) and HISTORY (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/august-4/hamilton-creates-coast-guard).
- Purple Heart Day and the Badge of Military Merit: HISTORY (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/august-7/washington-creates-the-purple-heart) and the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor (https://www.thepurpleheart.com/history/).
- National Navajo Code Talkers Day and Reagan’s 1982 proclamation: Reagan Presidential Library archives (https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/proclamation-4954-national-navaho-code-talkers-day) and the Associated Press.
- National Aviation Day and Orville Wright’s birthday: Federal Aviation Administration (https://www.faa.gov/blog/clearedfortakeoff/celebrating-national-aviation-day) and Wikipedia.
- Women’s Equality Day, the Tennessee vote, and the certification story: National Constitution Center (https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/why-august-26-is-known-as-womans-equality-day) and the National Women’s History Museum (https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/womens-equality-day).
Gabriel is a writer with a decade of experience in the newsroom and beyond. He has covered just about everything, but over the past five years he has built a clear focus on two beats: finance and travel. He earned his Communications degree from Unicamp, spent six months at Fontys in the Netherlands, and holds a postgraduate degree in Journalism. He is currently pursuing a master's degree at the University of Lisbon, where he continues to sharpen his perspective on communication and content.
