Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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| An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2025 day arrangement | ||||||
August 1: Lughnasadh in the Northern Hemisphere; Buwan ng Wika begins in the Philippines; PLA Day in China (1927)
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Cars on the I-35W bridge after the collapse
- 527 – Upon the death of Justin I, his nephew and adopted son Justinian I became the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.
- 1814 – Britain celebrated a Grand Jubilee to mark 100 years since the accession of George I and 16 years since the start of the Battle of the Nile.
- 1971 – The Concert for Bangladesh, a pair of benefit concerts organised by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar for refugees of the Bangladesh genocide, took place at Madison Square Garden in New York.
- 2004 – Nearly 400 people died in a supermarket fire in Asunción, Paraguay, when exits were locked to prevent people from stealing merchandise.
- 2007 – Bridge 9340, carrying Interstate 35W across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, United States, suffered a catastrophic failure and collapsed (aftermath pictured), killing 13 people and injuring 145 others.
- Andrew Melville (b. 1545)
- Helen Sawyer Hogg (b. 1905)
- Frances Farmer (d. 1970)
- Lolita Lebrón (d. 2010)
August 2: Roma Holocaust Memorial Day
Drawing of the interior of the Tower Subway
- 1870 – One of the world's earliest underground tube railways opened in the Tower Subway (interior depicted), a tunnel beneath the River Thames in London.
- 1923 – Calvin Coolidge became the 30th president of the United States after Warren G. Harding suffered a fatal heart attack.
- 1932 – At the California Institute of Technology, American physicist Carl David Anderson proved the existence of antimatter with the discovery of the positron, for which he would receive the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics.
- 1971 – The English rock band the Who released Who's Next, their only album to top the UK charts.
- 2007 – Raúl Iturriaga, a former deputy director of the Chilean secret police, was captured in Viña del Mar after having been on the run following a kidnapping conviction.
- Thomas Grey (d. 1415)
- Bertha Lutz (b. 1894)
- Jean-Pierre Melville (d. 1973)
- JD Vance (b. 1984)
August 3: Tisha B'Av (Judaism, 2025)
Boeing 707 involved in the crash in Agadir
- 1857 – Indian Rebellion: An eight-day siege of a fortified outbuilding in Arrah occupied by 68 defenders against more than 10,000 men ended when a relief party dispersed the besiegers.
- 1913 – An agricultural workers' strike in Wheatland degenerated into a riot, becoming one of the first major farm-labor confrontations in California.
- 1940 – World War II: Italian forces began a conquest of British Somaliland, capturing the region in 16 days.
- 1975 – A privately chartered Boeing 707 (aircraft involved pictured) struck a mountain peak and crashed near Agadir, Morocco, killing 188.
- 2009 – The last vessels involved in Taurus 09, a Royal Navy training deployment covering 20,400 miles (32,800 km), returned to HMNB Devonport, England.
- Christopher Anstey (d. 1805)
- Han Sorya (b. 1900)
- Martha Stewart (b. 1941)
- Mary Musa (d. 2015)
MTS Oceanos in 1986
- 1265 – Second Barons' War: Royal troops led by Prince Edward defeated baronial forces under Simon de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in Worcestershire, England.
- 1862 – In Brooklyn, a mob composed largely of Irish Americans attacked a group of African Americans in a riot.
- 1991 – An explosion on the Greek cruise ship MTS Oceanos (pictured) ruptured its hull, causing it to sink off the east coast of South Africa, with all 571 people on board rescued.
- 2006 – Sri Lankan civil war: Seventeen employees of the French nongovernmental organization ACF International were massacred in Mutur.
- 2020 – A large explosion of ammonium nitrate stored at the Port of Beirut in Lebanon killed 218 people and caused US$15 billion in damage.
- Henry I of France (d. 1060)
- Samuel J. Tilden (d. 1886)
- Daniel Dae Kim (b. 1968)
- Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (b. 1981)
August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day in Croatia (1995)
Animas River after the Gold King Mine waste water spill
- 1506 – Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania achieved one of the greatest Lithuanian victories against the Tatars at the Battle of Kletsk.
- 1600 – Scottish nobleman John Ruthven, 3rd Earl of Gowrie, was killed during what was most likely a failed attempt to kidnap King James VI.
- 1772 – Russia, Prussia and Habsburg Austria began the First Partition of Poland, with the primary motive to restore the regional balance of power in Eastern Europe.
- 1973 – Due to an athletics scandal, the National Collegiate Athletic Association applied the death penalty to the basketball program at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.
- 2015 – United States Environmental Protection Agency personnel accidentally caused a spillage (aftermath pictured) of 3 million gallons (11 million litres) of mine waste water and tailings trapped inside the Gold King Mine near Silverton, Colorado.
- Jerry Pentland (b. 1894)
- Motoi Sakuraba (b. 1965)
- Soichiro Honda (d. 1991)
- Hawa Abdi (d. 2020)
Mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the Little Boy explosion
- 1777 – The Battle of Oriskany, one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolutionary War, was fought about 6 mi (10 km) east of Fort Stanwix, New York.
- 1945 – World War II: The U.S. Army Air Force bomber Enola Gay dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (mushroom cloud pictured), killing about 70,000 people instantly.
- 1965 – U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, outlawing literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disfranchisement of African Americans.
- 1991 – British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee posted a public invitation to collaborate on a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessible via the Internet, known as the World Wide Web.
- 2008 – Mauritanian president Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was ousted from power by a group of high-ranking generals that he had dismissed from office several hours earlier.
- William Hillcourt (b. 1900)
- Jennie Lozier (d. 1915)
- Geri Halliwell (b. 1972)
- Shapour Bakhtiar (d. 1991)
August 7: Assyrian Martyrs Day (1933)
U.S. Marines wading ashore on Tulagi Island
- 1461 – Ming Chinese general Cao Qin staged a failed coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
- 1942 – World War II: U.S. Marines initiated the first American offensive of the Guadalcanal campaign, with landings on Tulagi (pictured), Gavutu–Tanambogo and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.
- 1946 – The Soviet Union informed Turkey that the way in which the latter was handling the Turkish straits no longer represented the security interests of its fellow Black Sea nations, escalating the Turkish Straits crisis.
- 1970 – Jonathan Jackson took hostages in a courthouse in Marin County, California, to coerce the release of the Soledad Brothers, resulting in the deaths of judge Harold Haley and three others.
- 1985 – Five members of the Bamber family were found murdered at a farmhouse in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, England.
- Jin Shengtan (d. 1661)
- Jöns Jacob Berzelius (d. 1848)
- Charlize Theron (b. 1975)
- Wout Weghorst (b. 1992)
Warsaw radio mast
- 685 BC – Spring and Autumn period: Amid a succession dispute, the forces of Duke Zhuang of Lu, who was attempting to install a claimant to the Qi throne, were defeated at the Battle of Qianshi.
- 1695 – The foundation for what is now known as the Wren Building, the oldest surviving college building in the United States, was laid in a ceremony at Middle Plantation, Virginia.
- 1918 – The Battle of Amiens began in northern France, marking the start of the Allies' Hundred Days Offensive through the German front lines that ultimately led to the end of World War I.
- 1991 – The Warsaw radio mast (pictured), then the tallest structure ever built, at 646.38 metres (2,120.7 ft), collapsed due to an error in exchanging the guys on the highest telecommunications equipment of the mast.
- 2010 – A massive mudslide in the Chinese province of Gansu killed at least 1,471 people.
- Sophia Duleep Singh (b. 1876)
- S.Coups (b. 1995)
- Daniel Jarque (d. 2009)
- Olivia Newton-John (d. 2022)
August 9: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples; National Women's Day in South Africa (1956)
- 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops counter-attacked and won the Battle of Cedar Mountain, after nearly being driven from the field in the early part of the battle.
- 1902 – In a ceremony at Westminster Abbey, Edward VII and Alexandra were crowned King and Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor and Empress of India.
- 1965 – The state of Singapore (flag pictured) was expelled from the Malaysian federation due to a heated ideological conflict between their ruling parties; the day is now celebrated as Singapore's National Day.
- 2001 – Second Intifada: A suicide bomber attacked a pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, killing 15 people and wounding 130 others.
- 2006 – British police arrested 24 people for conspiring to detonate liquid explosives carried on board airliners travelling from the UK to the US and Canada.
- Hieronymus Bosch (d. 1516)
- John Key (b. 1961)
- Gillian Anderson (b. 1968)
- Susan Wojcicki (d. 2024)
The Hungarian Battle of Lechfeld 955 by Michael Echter
- 955 – Hungarian invasions of Europe: Forces under Otto the Great were victorious at the Battle of Lechfeld (depicted) near present-day Augsburg, Germany, holding off the incursions of the Magyars into Central Europe.
- 1270 – Yekuno Amlak deposed the last Zagwe king and seized the imperial throne of Ethiopia, beginning the reign of the Solomonic dynasty, which would last for more than 700 years.
- 1966 – The Heron Road Bridge in Ottawa, Canada, collapsed during its construction, killing nine workers.
- 2007 – Amid large protests against the impending demolition of the Queen's Pier, the High Court of Hong Kong dismissed legal attempts to preserve the landmark.
- 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York.
- Joséphine Fodor (d. 1870)
- Angus Lewis Macdonald (b. 1890)
- Aletta Jacobs (d. 1929)
- Antonio Banderas (b. 1960)
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1975 Ford Pinto
- 106 – The region of Dacia, comprising parts of modern Romania, became a province of the Roman Empire.
- 1952 – King Talal of Jordan was forced to abdicate due to mental illness and was succeeded by his eldest son Hussein.
- 1975 – The Timorese Democratic Union launched a coup in Portuguese Timor, starting the East Timorese civil war.
- 1977 – The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration initiated an investigation into the alleged vulnerability of the Ford Pinto (example pictured) to fuel leakage and fire in a rear-end collision.
- 1999 – A tornado struck downtown Salt Lake City, damaging 120 homes and injuring over 100 people.
- Guttorm of Norway (d. 1204)
- Wanda Wesołowska (b. 1950)
- Steve Wozniak (b. 1950)
- Robin Williams (d. 2014)
Aircraft involved in Japan Air Lines Flight 123
- 1881 – Franco-American children as young as seven years old began striking against Cabot Mill in Brunswick, Maine, shutting down operations for three days.
- 1952 – Thirteen Jewish poets were executed in Moscow for espionage based on false confessions.
- 1985 – Japan Air Lines Flight 123 (aircraft involved pictured) crashed into Mount Takamagahara in Gunma Prefecture, killing 520 of 524 people on board, including singer Kyu Sakamoto, in the world's worst single-aircraft aviation disaster.
- 2000 – Kursk, an Oscar-class submarine of the Russian Navy, suffered an on-board explosion and sank in the Barents Sea during a military exercise, killing 118 people.
- 2016 – The state-owned Taedonggang Brewing Company inaugurated the first beer festival in North Korea.
- George McGinnis (b. 1950)
- Mario Balotelli (b. 1990)
- Les Paul (d. 2009)
- Una Stubbs (d. 2021)
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Opha May Johnson
- 582 – Maurice was crowned Byzantine emperor to succeed Tiberius II Constantine.
- 1650 – General George Monck founded the predecessor to the Coldstream Guards, the oldest regular regiment of the British Army in continuous active service.
- 1918 – Opha May Johnson (pictured) became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.
- 1940 – World War II: The German Luftwaffe launched an air operation, codenamed Adlertag, to destroy the British Royal Air Force; its failure indefinitely postponed the German invasion of the United Kingdom.
- 2010 – After being boarded by Canadian authorities, MV Sun Sea docked in British Columbia and the 492 Sri Lankan Tamil refugee claimants on board were placed into detention.
- Eugène Delacroix (d. 1863)
- H. G. Wells (d. 1946)
- Alan Shearer (b. 1970)
- Sarah Huckabee Sanders (b. 1982)
August 14: Arba'in (Shia Islam), Independence Day in Pakistan (1947)
Defeat of the Villasur expedition depicted on buffalo hide
- 1720 – The Spanish Villasur expedition, intended to slow the progress of French influence on the Great Plains of North America, ended in failure when it was ambushed (depicted) by Pawnee and Otoe forces.
- 1888 – One of the first recordings of music, of Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord", was played at a press conference in London to introduce Thomas Edison's phonograph.
- 1975 – The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in London, the first in its record-breaking run in cinemas, which continues in limited release.
- 2005 – Helios Airways Flight 522 crashed into a mountain north of Marathon, Greece, killing all 121 people on board.
- 2007 – Four coordinated suicide bomb attacks detonated in the Yazidi communities of Qahtaniya and Jazeera, Iraq, killing 796 people and wounding 1,562 others.
- Badr al-Mu'tadidi (d. 902)
- Guangxu Emperor (b. 1871)
- Connie Smith (b. 1941)
- Enzo Ferrari (d. 1988)
August 15: Independence Day in India (1947); National Liberation Day of Korea (1945)
Fort Dearborn
- 1018 – Byzantine general Eustathios Daphnomeles captured and blinded Ibatzes of Bulgaria by means of a ruse, ending the last resistance against Emperor Basil II's conquest of Bulgaria.
- 1461 – Byzantine–Ottoman wars: The Empire of Trebizond, the longest-surviving Byzantine successor state, was conquered by Ottoman forces following a month-long siege.
- 1812 – War of 1812: Potawatomi warriors ambushed a United States Army convoy after it had evacuated Fort Dearborn (site pictured), in present-day Chicago, and razed the fort.
- 1963 – President Fulbert Youlou was overthrown in the Republic of Congo, after a three-day uprising in the capital.
- 2005 – The Helsinki Agreement between the Free Aceh Movement and the Government of Indonesia was signed, ending more than 28 years of fighting.
- Stephen Breyer (b. 1938)
- Anne, Princess Royal (b. 1950)
- Rosalía Mera (d. 2013)
- Gerd Müller (d. 2021)
Elvis Presley
- 1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: English and Imperial forces defeated French cavalry, forcing them to retreat.
- 1900 – Second Boer War: A 10,000-strong column of soldiers led by Lord Kitchener broke a 13-day siege of a small garrison.
- 1920 – The British parliament's Blind Persons Act received royal assent, becoming the first first disability-specific legislation to be passed anywhere in the world.
- 1977 – American singer and actor Elvis Presley (pictured) was found dead in his home in Memphis, Tennessee.
- 2015 – Suicide bombers assassinated Pakistani politician Shuja Khanzada and killed at least 21 others at his home in Attock District.
- Theodore II Laskaris (d. 1258)
- Ramakrishna (d. 1886)
- Angela Bassett (b. 1958)
- Jannik Sinner (b. 2001)
August 17: Independence Day in Indonesia (1945)
Pike Place Market
- 986 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: The Bulgarians defeated Byzantine forces at the Battle of the Gates of Trajan near present-day Ihtiman, with Emperor Basil II barely escaping.
- 1560 – The Scottish Reformation Parliament approved a Protestant confession of faith, initiating the Scottish Reformation and disestablishing Catholicism as the national religion.
- 1907 – Pike Place Market (pictured), one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the U.S. and a popular tourist attraction, was opened in Seattle, Washington.
- 1950 – Korean War: Forty-two American prisoners of war were massacred by the Korean People's Army on a hill above Waegwan, South Korea.
- 2008 – Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Summer Olympics, the most golds by any person at a single games.
- Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (d. 1676)
- Billy Fiske (d. 1940)
- Larry Ellison (b. 1944)
- Saraya Bevis (b. 1992)
Royal Australian Air Force helicopter
- 1783 – A meteor procession blazed across the night sky over Great Britain.
- 1891 – A hurricane struck the Caribbean island of Martinique, killing about 700 people, injuring at least 1,000 others, and causing severe damage.
- 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage in the country.
- 1966 – Vietnam War: Members of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment were surrounded by a much larger Viet Cong unit at the Battle of Long Tan (RAAF helicopter pictured), but held them off for several hours until reinforcements arrived.
- 2008 – Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf resigned under pressure from a movement to impeach him.
- Iso Rae (b. 1860)
- Ruth Norman (b. 1900)
- Kofi Annan (d. 2018)
- Phil Donahue (d. 2024)
August 19: Afghan Independence Day; National Aviation Day in the United States
Bersey electric cab
- 1745 – Bonnie Prince Charlie raised the Jacobite standard at Glenfinnan, Scotland, in an attempt to regain the British throne for his father, beginning the Jacobite rising of 1745.
- 1897 – The Bersey Electric Cab (pictured) entered service as the first electric taxi in London.
- 1920 – Russian Civil War: Peasants in Tambov Governorate began a rebellion against the Bolshevik government of Soviet Russia.
- 2003 – A Hamas suicide bomber killed 23 people and wounded more than 130 others, including many Orthodox Jewish children, on a crowded public bus in Shmuel HaNavi, Jerusalem.
- 2005 – Thunderstorms in southern Ontario, Canada, spawned at least three tornadoes that caused over C$500 million in damage.
- Tom Wills (b. 1835)
- Régine Chassagne (b. 1976)
- Aleksander Kreek (d. 1977)
- Linus Pauling (d. 1994)
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Mercedes-Benz O305 on the O-Bahn
- 1710 – War of the Spanish Succession: A Spanish Bourbon army commanded by the Marquis de Bay was soundly defeated by a multinational army led by the Austrian commander Guido Starhemberg.
- 1920 – The American Professional Football Association, a predecessor of the National Football League, was founded.
- 1988 – Fires in the United States' Yellowstone National Park ravaged more than 150,000 acres (610 km2), the single-worst day of the conflagration.
- 1989 – The final stage of the O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, South Australia, was completed, at the time the world's longest and fastest guided busway with buses (example pictured) travelling a total of 12 km (7.5 mi) at maximum speeds of up to 100 km/h (62 mph).
- 2018 – Silent Sam, a Confederate monument on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was toppled by protestors.
- George Tucker (b. 1775)
- Ron Paul (b. 1935)
- Mika Yamamoto (d. 2012)
- B. K. S. Iyengar (d. 2014)
Xá Lợi Pagoda, raided by South Vietnamese special forces
- 1717 – Austro-Turkish War: Austrian troops under the command of Prince Eugene of Savoy captured the strategically important city of Belgrade from the Ottoman Empire.
- 1808 – Peninsular War: British–Portuguese forces put an end to the first French invasion of Portugal at the Battle of Vimeiro.
- 1942 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army lost the Battle of the Tenaru, the first of its three major land offensives during the Guadalcanal campaign.
- 1963 – South Vietnamese special forces loyal to Ngô Đình Nhu, the brother of President Ngô Đình Diệm, raided and vandalised Buddhist pagodas (one pictured) across the country, arresting thousands and leaving hundreds dead.
- 2015 – Passengers on a Thalys train from Amsterdam to Paris confronted and subdued an attacker who attempted a mass shooting.
- Baldwin II of Jerusalem (d. 1131)
- John Claypole (b. 1625)
- Ettore Bugatti (d. 1947)
- Millie Bright (b. 1993)
August 22: Madras Day in Chennai, India (1639)
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America's Cup
- 1485 – Lancastrian forces under Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, defeated Yorkist forces under Richard III of England at the Battle of Bosworth Field, decisively ending the Wars of the Roses.
- 1711 – Queen Anne's War: A British attempt to attack Quebec failed when eight ships wrecked on the St. Lawrence River.
- 1851 – The yacht America won the Cup of One Hundred Sovereigns race (trophy pictured), later renamed the America's Cup, near the Isle of Wight, England.
- 1985 – A fire broke out on British Airtours Flight 28M, causing 55 deaths mostly due to smoke inhalation and bringing about changes to make aircraft evacuation more effective.
- 2003 – Chief Justice of Alabama Roy Moore was suspended after refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the state's Supreme Court building.
- John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland (d. 1553)
- George Herriman (b. 1880)
- Kate Chopin (d. 1904)
- Lautaro Martínez (b. 1997)
Natascha Kampusch
- 1305 – William Wallace, a leader of Scottish resistance against England during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was hanged, drawn and quartered.
- 1775 – King George III issued a proclamation that declared elements of the American colonies of Great Britain to be in a state of "open and avowed rebellion".
- 1960 – Congo Crisis: In order to stop the secession of South Kasai from the Republic of Congo, Armée Nationale Congolaise forced launched an invasion of South Kasai.
- 2006 – Natascha Kampusch (depicted), who had been abducted at the age of ten in Vienna, escaped from her captor's house in Strasshof an der Nordbahn after more than eight years in captivity.
- 2011 – A 5.8 MW earthquake struck the Piedmont region of Virginia, and was felt by more people than any other quake in U.S. history.
- Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal (d. 1498)
- Jimi Jamison (b. 1951)
- Laura Dahlmeier (b. 1993)
- James White (d. 1999)
August 24: Feast day of Saint Bartholomew (Western Christianity); Independence Day in Ukraine (1991)
Jokhang Temple
- 1456 – The oldest known version of the Gutenberg Bible, the first major book produced on a printing press, was completed.
- 1781 – American Revolutionary War: Near present-day Aurora, Indiana, American Indians led by Joseph Brant killed or captured all members of a Pennsylvania militia.
- 1857 – The New York City branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Co. collapsed following widespread embezzlement, leading to a severe recession that caused about 5,000 businesses to fail.
- 1941 – Adolf Hitler ordered the suspension of the T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and disabled, although killings continued in secret for the remainder of World War II.
- 1966 – Cultural Revolution: Red Guards vandalised the Jokhang (depicted), the holiest Buddhist temple in Tibet.
- Agnes Marshall (b. 1852)
- Louis Prima (d. 1978)
- Alan Walker (b. 1997)
- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (d. 2004)
Galileo Galilei
- 1543 – António Mota and a few companions become the first Europeans to visit Japan.
- 1609 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (pictured) demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
- 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces attacked the Australian base at Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea.
- 1975 – Bruce Springsteen released his commercial breakthrough album, Born to Run.
- 2012 – The skeleton of King Richard III of England (pictured) was discovered under a car park in Leicester.
- Gennadius of Constantinople (d. 471)
- Genghis Khan (d. 1227)
- Sean Connery (b. 1930)
- Theresa Andrews (b. 1962)
August 26: Heroes' Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Day in the United States
Sigmund Jähn
- 1346 – Hundred Years' War: English forces established the military supremacy of the English longbow over the French combination of crossbow and armoured knights at the Battle of Crécy.
- 1914 – World War I: As the British Expeditionary Force and French Fifth Army began their retreat from Mons, the British II Corps delayed the pursuing Germans at the Battle of Le Cateau long enough for the main force to escape.
- 1970 – Betty Friedan and the National Organization for Women organized the Women's Strike for Equality in New York City, in which 50,000 women protested the continuing lack of gender equality.
- 1978 – Aboard the Soviet Soyuz 31 spacecraft, Sigmund Jähn (pictured) became the first German in space.
- 2015 – Two American journalists were murdered on live television while conducting an interview in Moneta, Virginia.
- Geraldine Ferraro (b. 1935)
- David Hurley (b. 1953)
- Mildred Albert (d. 1991)
- Sven-Göran Eriksson (d. 2024)
August 27: Independence Day in Moldova (1991)
Chief Black Hawk
- 1776 – British forces led by William Howe defeated the Continental Army under George Washington at the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War.
- 1810 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Navy defeated the Royal Navy, preventing them from capturing the harbour of Grand Port on Mauritius.
- 1832 – Black Hawk (pictured), the leader of the Sauk tribe of Native Americans, surrendered to U.S. authorities to end the Black Hawk War.
- 1928 – The first three of more than sixty nations signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy.
- 1979 – The Troubles: IRA bombs killed 18 British soldiers in an ambush near Warrenpoint, and British royal family member Lord Mountbatten and three others on his boat at Mullaghmore.
- Josquin des Prez (d. 1521)
- Francisco de Zurbarán (d. 1664)
- Sarah Neufeld (b. 1979)
- Sebastian Kurz (b. 1986)
A 1927 replica of Tom Thumb
- 1413 – The University of St Andrews, the third-oldest university in the English-speaking world, was founded when Antipope Benedict XIII issued a papal bull to a small founding group of Augustinian clergy.
- 1830 – Tom Thumb (replica pictured), the first American-built steam locomotive, engaged in an impromptu race against a horse-drawn car in Maryland.
- 1941 – The Volga German ASSR was abolished as part of the mass deportation of Soviet Germans.
- 1955 – African-American teenager Emmett Till was lynched near Money, Mississippi, for allegedly flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American civil rights movement.
- 1973 – Swedish police used gas bombs to end a seven-day hostage situation in Stockholm; during the incident the hostages had bonded with their captors, leading to the term Stockholm syndrome.
- Augustine of Hippo (d. 430)
- Béla Guttmann (d. 1981)
- Valtteri Bottas (b. 1989)
- Ons Jabeur (b. 1994)
August 29: Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (Catholicism, Anglicanism); Qixi Festival in China (2025)
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Daimler Reitwagen replica
- 1475 – France signed the Treaty of Picquigny with England, freeing Louis XI to deal with the threat posed by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.
- 1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patented the world's first internal-combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen (replica pictured).
- 1911 – The last member of the Yahi, known as Ishi, emerged from the wilderness near Oroville, California, to join European American society.
- 1959 – Mona Best opened the Casbah Coffee Club with a performance by the Quarrymen, the precursor of the Beatles.
- 2007 – Six nuclear warheads were mistakenly loaded onto a United States Air Force heavy bomber that flew from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
- Basil I (d. 886)
- Hamida Banu Begum (d. 1604)
- Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (b. 1780)
- Thomas Tuchel (b. 1973)
August 30: Victory Day in Turkey (1922)
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Michael Schumacher
- 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Tannenberg resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian 2nd Army by the German 8th Army.
- 1959 – Writer and politician Abdul Muis became the first person to be awarded the posthumous title of National Hero of Indonesia.
- 1981 – Iranian president Mohammad-Ali Rajai and prime minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar were assassinated in a bombing committed by the People's Mujahedin of Iran.
- 1984 – Discovery, the third orbiter of NASA's Space Shuttle program, lifted off on its maiden voyage from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
- 1992 – German racing driver Michael Schumacher (pictured) won the Belgian Grand Prix, the first of his 91 Formula One Grand Prix wins.
- Theodor Svedberg (b. 1884)
- Anna Politkovskaya (b. 1958)
- Jack Marshall (d. 1988)
- Oliver Sacks (d. 2015)
August 31: Independence Day in Malaysia (1957); Romanian Language Day in Moldova and Romania
Dilma Rousseff
- 1876 – Sultan Murad V of the Ottoman Empire was deposed after a reign of 93 days on grounds of mental illness.
- 1907 – Russia and the United Kingdom signed the Anglo-Russian Convention, defining their respective spheres of interest in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.
- 1939 – Nazi forces, posing as Poles, staged an attack against the German radio station Sender Gleiwitz in Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, Germany, creating an excuse to invade Poland the next day.
- 1942 – The Matagorda hurricane, the most intense and costliest tropical cyclone of the 1942 Atlantic hurricane season, dissipated after causing $26.5 million in damages and eight deaths.
- 2016 – Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff (pictured) was removed from office following her impeachment on charges of criminal administrative misconduct.
- Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Ta'i (d. 894)
- Agnes Bulmer (b. 1775)
- Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin (b. 1842)
- Tantely Andrianarivo (d. 2023)
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Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
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