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Roy Welensky (1907–1991) was a White African politician and the second and final prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia to parents of Jewish and Afrikaner ancestry, he moved to Northern Rhodesia, became involved with the trade unions, and entered the colonial legislative council in 1938. There, he campaigned for the amalgamation of Northern and Southern Rhodesia. Although unsuccessful, he succeeded in the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, a state within the British Empire that sought to retain disproportionate power for the white minority while moving in a progressive political direction, in contrast to apartheid South Africa. Becoming Prime Minister of the Federation in 1957, Welensky opposed British moves towards African majority rule, and used force to suppress politically motivated violence in the territories. After the advent of African rule in two of the Federation's three territories, it collapsed in 1963. Welensky retired to Salisbury, where he re-entered politics and attempted to stop Rhodesia from unilaterally declaring itself independent. With the end of white rule in 1979, and the independence of Rhodesia as Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe in 1980, Welensky moved to England, where he died in 1991. A fervent admirer of Britain and the Empire, Welensky described himself as "half Jewish, half Afrikaner [and] 100% British". (more...)

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August 1: Total solar eclipse visible in parts of Canada, Russia, Mongolia, and China (09:21–11:21 UTC, 2008); Emancipation Day in Trinidad and Tobago; Imbolc in the Southern Hemisphere; Swiss National Day in Switzerland

• 1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
• 1831 – A new London Bridge (pictured), designed by engineer John Rennie, opened. It stood over London's River Thames until American entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch bought it in 1968 and subsequently moved it to Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
• 1907 – Robert Baden-Powell held the first scout camp at Brownsea Island in Dorset, England, beginning the Scouting movement.
• 1927 – In the Nanchang Uprising, the first major engagement in the Chinese Civil War, Communist forces seized control over the entire city of Nanchang from the Kuomintang.
• 1944 – World War II: The Polish Home Army began the Warsaw Uprising in Warsaw against the Nazi occupation of Poland.

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