Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
It is now 02:21 on Monday, August 17, 2026 (UTC)|Purge cache for this page
| << | Selected anniversaries for August | >> | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Su | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa |
| 1 | ||||||
| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
| 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 |
| 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 |
| 30 | 31 | |||||
| An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2026 day arrangement | ||||||
August 1: Emancipation Day in former British colonies; Lughnasadh in the Northern Hemisphere; Buwan ng Wika begins in the Philippines; PLA Day in China (1927)
.jpg)
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 the 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.
- 1984 – Commercial peat cutters discovered a preserved bog body, now known as Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss in Cheshire, England.
- 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.
- 1914 – The French army's general headquarters was activated in anticipation of war with Germany.
- 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.
- 1939 – Leo Szilard penned a letter, signed by Albert Einstein and addressed to U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Germany may develop atomic bombs, leading to the establishment of the Manhattan Project.
- 1986 – The animated film Castle in the Sky, the first from Studio Ghibli, was released.
- Nehemiah Persoff (b. 1919)
- James Jamerson (d. 1983)
- Chrystia Freeland (b. 1968)
- Kevin Sanjaya Sukamuljo (b. 1995)
.jpg)
James II of Scotland
- 1460 – James II of Scotland (pictured) was killed by an exploding cannon at Roxburgh Castle.
- 1903 – Macedonian rebels in Kruševo established a republic, which existed for ten days before Ottoman forces destroyed the town.
- 1936 – African-American athlete Jesse Owens won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination at the games.
- 1971 – Fighting Dinosaurs, a fossil specimen featuring a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops in combat, was unearthed in the Djadochta Formation of Mongolia.
- 2005 – Mauritanian president Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya was overthrown in a military coup while he attended the funeral of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.
- Connie Converse (b. 1924)
- Tony Bennett (b. 1926)
- Signe Salén (d. 1963)
- Masahiro Sakurai (b. 1970)
_underway_at_sea,_circa_the_early_1960s_(NH_97900).jpg)
- 1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: Commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Army of Italy decisively defeated Austrian forces led by Peter Vitus von Quosdanovich at the Battle of Lonato.
- 1830 – American surveyor James Thompson produced the first plat of Chicago for the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commissioners.
- 1964 – Vietnam War: The National Security Agency falsely claimed that a U.S. Navy destroyer (pictured) was attacked a second time by North Vietnamese vessels in the Gulf of Tonkin, leading Congress to authorize the use of military force.
- 1983 – Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, the president of Upper Volta, was ousted in a coup d'état led by Thomas Sankara.
- 1995 – Yugoslav Wars: The Croatian Army initiated Operation Storm, the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence and the largest European land battle since the Second World War.
- Wenceslaus III of Bohemia (d. 1306)
- Jeff Gordon (b. 1971)
- Mariah May (b. 1998)
- Keith H. Basso (d. 2013)
August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day in Croatia (1995)
Emperor Guangwu depicted in the Sancai Tuhui
- AD 25 – Liu Xiu (pictured) proclaimed himself the monarch of the Han dynasty as Emperor Guangwu.
- 641 or 642 – King Penda of Mercia defeated and killed King Oswald of Northumbria at the Battle of Maserfield, traditionally believed to have been fought in Oswestry, England.
- 1716 – Austro-Turkish War: The Ottoman army were defeated in their attempt to capture the Habsburg-controlled Petrovaradin Fortress despite having twice the number of soldiers.
- 1816 – Sir John Barrow, secretary at the Admiralty, rejected a proposal to use Francis Ronalds's electrical telegraph, deeming it "wholly unnecessary".
- 2012 – Radio Network House, damaged in the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, becomes the first building to be demolished by implosion in New Zealand.
- Clair Blank (b. 1915)
- Motoi Sakuraba (b. 1965)
- Gavi (b. 2004)
- Zyzz (d. 2011)
ALH84001
- 686 – Second Fitna: Pro-Alid forces defeated the Umayyad Caliphate at the Battle of Khazir, allowing them to take control of Mosul in present-day Iraq.
- 1930 – New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater disappeared in Manhattan, in a case that was never solved.
- 1996 – Researchers announced that the meteorite ALH84001 (pictured), discovered in the Allan Hills of Antarctica, may contain evidence of life on Mars, but further tests were inconclusive.
- 2010 – Flash floods, mudslides, and debris flows across Ladakh in Indian-administered Kashmir left at least 255 people dead.
- 2011 – A series of riots broke out in several London boroughs and in cities and towns across England in response to the shooting of Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police officers.
- Dominic de Guzmán (d. 1221)
- Lucille Ball (b. 1911)
- Bix Beiderbecke (d. 1931)
- John Richard Clark Hall (d. 1931)
August 7: Assyrian Martyrs Day (1933)
U.S. Marines wading ashore on Tulagi
- 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 Turkey's 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.
- 2020 – Air India Express Flight 1344 overshot the runway at Calicut International Airport in Kerala, India, and crashed, killing 21 of the 190 people on board.
- Jin Shengtan (d. 1661)
- Charlize Theron (b. 1975)
- Wout Weghorst (b. 1992)
- Douglas Applegate (d. 2021)
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)
Fernando Villavicencio
- 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.
- 1960 – Led by Albert Kalonji, South Kasai declared its unilateral secession from the Republic of the Congo.
- 1979 – Female workers of YH Trading in South Korea held a sit-in protest in response to the company's unilateral shutdown.
- 2018 – A civilian school bus in Dahyan, Yemen, was bombed by Saudi forces, killing at least 40 children.
- 2023 – Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated in Quito, eleven days before the general election.
- Irene of Athens (d. 803)
- Bang Si-hyuk (b. 1972)
- Buffy Chen (b. 2000)
- Zhu Liang (d. 2025)
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 Hong Kong High Court 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)
Mall of America
- 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 to fuel leakage and fire in a rear-end collision.
- 1992 – The Mall of America (pictured) in Bloomington, Minnesota, opened as the largest shopping mall in the United States.
- Benjamin Franklin Mudge (b. 1817)
- Andreas Vogt (b. 1880)
- Úrsula Corberó (b. 1989)
- Terry A. Davis (d. 2018)
Aircraft involved in Japan Air Lines Flight 123
- 1323 – Sweden and the Novgorod Republic signed the Treaty of Nöteborg, resulting in a hiatus in the Swedish–Novgorodian Wars.
- 1834 – A race riot in Philadelphia, United States, destroyed African-American businesses and killed two people.
- 1985 – Japan Air Lines Flight 123 (aircraft involved pictured) crashed into Mount Takamagahara in Japan, killing 520 of 524 people on board, including singer Kyu Sakamoto, in the world's deadliest 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.
- 2021 – Six people, including the perpetrator, were killed in a mass shooting in Plymouth, England.
- Guy de Beauchamp, 10th Earl of Warwick (d. 1315)
- Luigi Galleani (b. 1861)
- Mohammed Deif (b. 1965)
- Aino Pervik (d. 2025)
.jpg)
Scene from the 1876 production of Das Rheingold
- 582 – Maurice was crowned as Byzantine emperor, succeeding Tiberius II Constantine.
- 1650 – General George Monck founded Monck's Regiment of Foot, the predecessor to the Coldstream Guards, the oldest regular regiment of the British Army in continuous active service.
- 1876 – A performance of Das Rheingold (scene pictured) opened the first performance of Richard Wagner's Ring cycle at the inaugural Bayreuth Festival, attended by emperors and other composers.
- 1918 – Opha May Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.
- 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 in detention.
- George Grove (b. 1820)
- Hayato Ikeda (d. 1965)
- Sebastian Stan (b. 1982)
- Nazia Hassan (d. 2000)
August 14: Independence Day in Pakistan (1947)
Kenji Hatanaka
- 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 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.
- 1945 – Kenji Hatanaka (pictured) and other Japanese military officers launched an attempted coup d'état to prevent the surrender of Japan.
- 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.
- Pieter Coecke van Aelst (b. 1502)
- Louise Slaughter (b. 1929)
- HueningKai (b. 2002)
- Shammi Kapoor (d. 2011)
August 15: Independence Day in India (1947); National Liberation Day of Korea (1945); Liechtenstein National Day
Wow! signal
- 1261 – Michael VIII Palaiologos was crowned Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.
- 1909 – A military coup against the government of Dimitrios Rallis began in the neighbourhood of Goudi in Athens, Greece.
- 1941 – Josef Jakobs, a German spy, became the last person executed at the Tower of London.
- 1948 – The Republic of Korea was established with Syngman Rhee as its first president.
- 1977 – Big Ear, a radio telescope at Ohio State University, received a strong, apparently extraterrestrial radio signal that became known as the Wow! signal (printout pictured).
- Isabella of Portugal, Queen of Castile (d. 1496)
- Ludwig Prandtl (d. 1953)
- Brendan Morrison (b. 1975)
- Waleed Aly (b. 1978)
San Sebastian Church in Manila
- 1891 – San Sebastian Church (pictured), an all-iron church in Manila, was officially consecrated.
- 1896 – A group including George Carmack and Skookum Jim Mason discovered gold near Dawson City, Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
- 1900 – Second Boer War: A 10,000-strong column of soldiers led by Lord Kitchener broke a 13-day siege of a small garrison.
- 1906 – An earthquake registering approximately 8.2 Mw struck Valparaíso, Chile, killing 3,882 people.
- 1986 – Typhoon Wayne formed over the South China Sea, going on to become one of the longest-lived tropical cyclones in the north-western Pacific, lasting 21 days.
- Ranavalona I (d. 1861)
- Georgette Heyer (b. 1902)
- Jannik Sinner (b. 2001)
- Dorival Caymmi (d. 2008)
Richard Wagner
- 1676 – Scanian War: Swedish forces defeated Danish troops at the Battle of Halmstad.
- 1876 – The premiere of Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner (pictured) closed the first Bayreuth Festival.
- 1915 – A category 4 hurricane made landfall in Galveston, Texas, leaving at least 275 people dead and causing $50 million in damage.
- 1943 – Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in a highly secret military conference held in Quebec City.
- 1945 – The independence of Indonesia was proclaimed by Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, igniting a revolution against the Dutch Empire.
- Li Shouzhen (d. 949)
- Margaret Hamilton (b. 1936)
- Austin Butler (b. 1991)
- Kim Kum Yong (b. 2001)
Royal Australian Air Force helicopter in Vietnam
- 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 (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.
- Mother Solomon (d. 1890)
- Evan Gattis (b. 1986)
- Nick Fuentes (b. 1998)
- Machali (d. 2016)
August 19: Afghan Independence Day; Qixi Festival in China (2026)
The Luck of Cumberland
- 1759 – Seven Years' War: Having damaged several French vessels, British ships pursued the remainder of the fleet to Lagos, Portugal, and continued the battle there in violation of Portuguese neutrality.
- 1905 – In a ceremony officiated by Albert Grey, 4th Earl Grey, The Luck of Cumberland (pictured) was presented to HMS Cumberland.
- 1950 – The 766th Independent Infantry Regiment of North Korea was disbanded after fighting for less than two months in the Korean War.
- 2002 – Second Chechen War: A Russian Mil Mi-26 was brought down by Chechen separatists with a man-portable air-defense system near Khankala, killing 127 people in the deadliest helicopter crash in history.
- 2017 – Around 250,000 farmed non-native Atlantic salmon were accidentally released into the wild near Cypress Island, Washington.
- Coco Chanel (b. 1883)
- Bill Clinton (b. 1946)
- Otto Frank (d. 1980)
- Levy Mwanawasa (d. 2008)
.jpg)
Bus on the O-Bahn Busway
- 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) on the single worst day of the conflagration.
- 1989 – The final stage of the O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, South Australia, was finished, completing at the time the world's longest and fastest guided busway, with buses (example pictured) travelling 12 km (7.5 mi) at 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 Prince Eugene of Savoy captured the strategically important city of Belgrade from the Ottoman Empire.
- 1808 – Peninsular War: British and 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)
.jpg)
America's Cup
- 1485 – At the Battle of Bosworth Field, Lancastrian forces under Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, defeated Yorkist forces under Richard III of England, 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 race for the Cup of One Hundred Sovereigns (trophy pictured), later renamed the America's Cup, near the Isle of Wight, England.
- 1985 – A fire broke out on British Airtours Flight 28M at Manchester Airport, causing 55 deaths mostly due to smoke inhalation, and leading to changes to make aircraft evacuation more effective.
- 2003 – Roy Moore, Alabama's chief justice, was suspended after refusing to comply with a U.S. federal court order to remove a rock inscribed with the Ten Commandments from the lobby of the Supreme Court of Alabama 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 forces launched an invasion of South Kasai.
- 2006 – Natascha Kampusch (pictured), 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)
- 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
- 1270 – Philip III became King of France following the death of his father Louis IX during the Eighth Crusade.
- 1609 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (pictured) demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
- 1875 – Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, doing so in approximately 21 hours 40 minutes.
- 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces attacked the Australian base at Milne Bay on the eastern tip of New Guinea.
- 2012 – The skeleton of King Richard III of England was discovered under a car park in Leicester.
- Henry Morgan (d. 1688)
- Agnes Mowinckel (b. 1875)
- Mary Tappan Wright (d. 1916)
- Sean Connery (b. 1930)
August 26: Heroes' Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Day in the United States
Eruption of Krakatoa
- 1346 – Hundred Years' War: At the Battle of Crécy, English forces established the military supremacy of English longbows over the French combination of crossbows and armoured knights.
- 1826 – Quincy Market in Boston opens as a replacement for an overcrowded market in Faneuil Hall, later becoming a major tourist attraction.
- 1883 – A massive eruption (pictured) destroyed the island of Krakatoa, Indonesia, ejecting so much volcanic ash that average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 °C (2.2 °F) over the next year.
- 1955 – Pather Panchali, the first film in The Apu Trilogy by Satyajit Ray, was released and went on to win many Indian and international film awards.
- 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: Ghost Festival in China (2026); Independence Day in Moldova
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.
- 1979 – The Troubles: the IRA ambushed and killed 18 British soldiers near Warrenpoint, and assassinated Lord Mountbatten on his boat at Mullaghmore.
- 1990 – American musician Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of the most influential guitarists in the revival of blues in the 1980s, was killed in a helicopter crash.
- Eric III of Denmark (d. 1146)
- Francisco de Zurbarán (d. 1664)
- Giorgio Mitrovich (b. 1795)
- Sebastian Kurz (b. 1986)
Replica of Tom Thumb
- 475 – Orestes took control of Ravenna, the capital of the Western Roman Empire, forcing Emperor Julius Nepos to flee.
- 1830 – Tom Thumb (replica pictured), the first American-built steam locomotive, took part in an impromptu race against a horse-drawn car in Maryland.
- 1950 – American tennis player Althea Gibson became the first African-American woman to compete at the U.S. National Championships.
- 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; the hostages had bonded with their captors during the incident, leading to the term Stockholm syndrome.
- Augustine of Hippo (d. 430)
- Prince William of Gloucester (d. 1972)
- Valtteri Bottas (b. 1989)
- Ons Jabeur (b. 1994)
August 29: Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (Catholicism, Anglicanism)
.jpg)
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.
- 1960 – Air France Flight 343 crashed while attempting to land at Yoff Airport, Dakar, killing all 63 occupants.
- Basil I (d. 886)
- Hamida Banu Begum (d. 1604)
- Ingrid Bergman (b. 1915; d. 1982)
- Thomas Tuchel (b. 1973)
August 30: Victory Day in Turkey (1922)
Parliament House, Melbourne
- 1464 – Paul II succeeded Pius II as pope of the Catholic Church.
- 1835 – European settlers landing on the north banks of the Yarra River in Southeastern Australia founded the city of Melbourne (Parliament House pictured).
- 1967 – Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African-American Supreme Court justice.
- 1974 – A powerful bomb exploded at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo, killing eight people.
- 2021 – The last remaining American troops left Afghanistan, ending U.S. involvement in the war.
- Queen Anne-Marie of Greece (b. 1946)
- Pavel Nedvěd (b. 1972)
- Mikhail Gorbachev (d. 2022)
- Tūheitia (d. 2024)
August 31: Independence Day in Malaysia (1957); Romanian Language Day
.png)
- 1814 – War of 1812: American militia forces repelled a British force at the Battle of Caulk's Field, killing 41 people including Captain Peter Parker of the Royal Navy.
- 1876 – Sultan Murad V of the Ottoman Empire was deposed after a reign of 93 days on grounds of mental illness.
- 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.
- 1959 – A parcel bomb sent by Ngô Đình Nhu (pictured), younger brother and chief adviser of South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm, failed to kill Norodom Sihanouk, Prime Minister of Cambodia.
- 2010 – The last episode of The Bill, the longest-running police drama in British television history, was broadcast.
- Agnes Bulmer (b. 1775)
- Itzhak Perlman (b. 1945)
- Sara Ramirez (b. 1975)
- Tantely Andrianarivo (d. 2023)
More anniversaries:
Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
It is now 02:21 on Monday, August 17, 2026 (UTC)|Purge cache for this page
