Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August

"The Lost Chord", 1888 recording

• 1385 – Forces under John I defeated the Castilians in the Battle of Aljubarrota, ending the 1383–1385 Crisis in Portugal.
• 1842 – American Indian Wars: United States general William Jenkins Worth declared the Second Seminole War to be over.
• 1888 – A recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan's The Lost Chord (audio clip right), one of the first recordings of music ever made, was played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison's phonograph in London.
• 1994 – Leftist revolutionary and mercenary Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, known as Carlos the Jackal, was handed over to French agents by his own bodyguards.
• 2005 – Helios Airways Flight 522 crashed into a mountain north of Marathon and Varnava, Greece, killing all 121 on board.
• 2006 – The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in the Lebanon War between Lebanon and Israel.

More anniversaries: August 13 – August 14 – August 15

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August 15: Victory over Japan Day; Independence Day in North Korea & South Korea (1945), India (1947), and Congo (1960); The Feast of the Assumption/Feast of the Dormition in Christianity.

• 778 – A Frankish army led by Roland was defeated by the Basques at Roncevaux Pass in the Pyrenees on the border between France and Spain, a tale retold in the Old French epic poem The Song of Roland.
• 1248 – The foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral (pictured), built to house the relics of the Three Wise Men, was laid.
• 1914 – The Panama Canal opened to traffic, providing a shortcut from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through the Isthmus of Panama.
• 1945 – The Gyokuon-hōsō was broadcast in Japan, announcing the unconditional surrender of the Japanese army and naval forces, bringing World War II to a close.
• 1947 – The British Raj was partitioned into the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.
• 1998 – A car bomb attack carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army killed 29 people and injured approximately 220 others in Omagh, Northern Ireland.

More anniversaries: August 14 – August 15 – August 16

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August 16: Children's Day in Paraguay

• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: The Americans led by General John Stark routed British and Brunswick troops under Friedrich Baum at the Battle of Bennington in Walloomsac, New York.
• 1819 – Cavalry charged into a crowd of 60–80,000 (pictured) gathered at St Peter's Field, Manchester, England, to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, killing 15 people and injuring 400–700 others.
• 1896 – A group led by Skookum Jim Mason discovered gold near Dawson City, Yukon, Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
• 1960 – Joseph Kittinger parachuted from a balloon over New Mexico at 102,800 feet (31,330 m), setting records for high-altitude jump, free-fall height, and fastest speed by a human without an aircraft.
• 1977 – Elvis Presley, "The King of Rock and Roll", was officially pronounced dead at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, after he was found unresponsive on the floor of his Graceland bathroom.

More anniversaries: August 15 – August 16 – August 17

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August 17: Paryusana Parva begins (Jainism, 2009); Independence Day in Indonesia (1945) and Gabon (1960)

• 986 – Byzantine–Bulgarian Wars: The Bulgarians defeated the Byzantine forces at the Gate of Trajan near present-day Ihtiman, with Byzantine Emperor Basil II barely escaping.
• 1862 – A council of Dakota decided to attack settlements throughout the Minnesota River valley in an effort to drive whites out of the area, sparking the Dakota War.
• 1914 – World War I: Ignoring orders to retreat, Hermann von François (pictured) led a successful counterattack defending East Prussia at the Battle of Stallupönen and scored the first German victory in the Eastern Front.
• 1969 – Hurricane Camille struck the Mississippi coast of the United States, killing 259 people and causing US$1.42 billion in damages.
• 1999 – A 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck northwestern Turkey, killing over 17,000 people and leaving approximately half a million people homeless.

More anniversaries: August 16 – August 17 – August 18

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August 18: Long Tan Day in Australia (1966)

• 1572 – French Wars of Religion: Marguerite de Valois (pictured) was married to Huguenot King Henry of Navarre, in a supposed attempt to reconcile Protestants and Catholics.
• 1868 – Astronomer Pierre Janssen discovered helium while analyzing the chromosphere of the sun during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India.
• 1891 – A hurricane struck the island of Martinique, killing about 700 people.
• 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage.
• 1976 – North Korean soldiers killed two American soldiers in the Joint Security Area of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, heightening tensions over a 100-foot (30 m) poplar tree that blocked the line of sight between a United Nations Command checkpoint and an observation post.
• 1989 – Leading Colombian presidential hopeful Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated during a public demonstration in the town of Soacha, Cundinamarca.

More anniversaries: August 17 – August 18 – August 19

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August 19: Independence Day in Afghanistan (1919); National Aviation Day in the United States

• 1666 – Second Anglo–Dutch War: English Rear-Admiral Robert Holmes led a raid on Terschelling and on the Vlie estuary in the Netherlands, destroying 130 merchant ships within two days.
• 1812 – War of 1812: American Navy frigate USS Constitution (pictured in 1997) defeated British Royal Navy frigate HMS Guerrière off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, earning her nickname "Old Ironsides".
• 1953 – The government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq was overthrown in a coup d'état and was replaced by Fazlollah Zahedi.
• 1960 – Russian space dogs Belka and Strelka began to orbit the Earth aboard the Korabl-Sputnik-2 spacecraft.
• 1980 – Saudi Arabian Airlines Flight 163 burned after making an emergency landing at Riyadh International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing all 301 people on board.
• 2003 – A car bomb destroyed the United Nations headquarters at Baghdad's Canal Hotel, killing Brazilian diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello and 21 others.

More anniversaries: August 18 – August 19 – August 20

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August 20: St. Stephen's Day in Hungary

• 917 – Byzantine–Bulgarian Wars: Bulgarians led by Tsar Simeon I (seal pictured) drove the Byzantines out of Thrace with a decisive victory in the Battle of Anchialus.
• 1794 – American troops defeated the Western Confederacy, a Native American alliance, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the decisive battle of the Northwest Indian War.
• 1804 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition, exploring the Louisiana Purchase, suffered its only death when Sergeant Charles Floyd died, apparently from acute appendicitis.
• 1991 – Singing Revolution: Estonia regained its independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1998 – The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan was destroyed by a bombing attack launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 U.S. embassy bombings.

More anniversaries: August 19 – August 20 – August 21

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August 21: Ramadan begins at sunset (Islam, 2009); Ninoy Aquino Day in the Philippines

• 1772 – A bloodless coup d'état led by Gustav III (pictured) was completed with the adoption of a new Swedish Constitution.
• 1831 – Nat Turner led a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, USA, but it was suppressed about 48 hours later.
• 1959 – Under the terms of the Hawaii Admission Act and a subsequent plebiscite, the Territory of Hawaii was officially admitted as the 50th U.S. state.
• 1963 – The Army of the Republic of Vietnam Special Forces loyal to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of President Ngo Dinh Diem, raided and vandalised Buddhist pagodas across the country, arresting thousands and leaving an estimated hundreds dead.
• 1968 – The "Prague Spring", a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia, abruptly ended after Warsaw Pact troops invaded the country, killing 72 Czechoslovaks and arresting their leader Alexander Dubček.

More anniversaries: August 20 – August 21 – August 22

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August 22: First day of Ramadan (Islam, 2009); Feast Day of the Queenship of Mary (Roman Catholic Church)

• 1639 – The British East India Company bought a small strip of land on what is today Chennai, the capital city of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, from the King of the Vijayanagara Empire, Peda Venkata Raya.
• 1791 – A slave rebellion erupted in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, starting the Haitian Revolution.
• 1864 – The Red Cross movement led by Henry Dunant (pictured) officially began when twelve European nations signed the First Geneva Convention, establishing the International Committee of the Red Cross.
• 1910 – Korea was annexed by Japan with the signing of the Japan–Korea Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that lasted until the end of World War II.
• 1922 – Irish Civil War: Irish National Army commander-in-chief Michael Collins was assassinated in an ambush while en route through County Cork at the village of Béal na mBláth.

More anniversaries: August 21 – August 22 – August 23

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August 23: Ganesh Chaturthi (Hinduism, 2009); International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition; Liberation Day in Romania

• 1784 – Western North Carolina declared itself an independent state under the name of Franklin.
• 1914 – In their first major action of World War I, the British Expeditionary Force defeated German troops in Mons, Belgium.
• 1929 – Arabs began attacking Jews in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, killing over sixty people in two days. (A man reflecting on the aftermath pictured)
• 1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a 10-year, mutual non-aggression treaty that was eventually broken when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union two years later.
• 1958 – The People's Liberation Army began an intense artillery bombardment of Quemoy, sparking the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
• 1989 – Singing Revolution: Approximately two million people joined their hands to form an over 600 km (373 mi) long human chain across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics.

More anniversaries: August 22 – August 23 – August 24

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August 24: Independence Day in Ukraine (1991)

• 79 – The volcano Mount Vesuvius (artist's depiction pictured) erupted, burying the towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae in Italy.
• 1814 – War of 1812: British forces invaded Washington, D.C., setting fire to various U.S. government buildings, including what is now the White House.
• 1821 – The Treaty of Córdoba was signed in Córdoba, Veracruz, ratifying the Plan of Iguala and concluding Mexico's War of Independence from Spain.
• 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.
• 1942 – World War II: The United States aircraft carrier Saratoga sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons near Santa Isabel, Solomon Islands, helping to lead to an Allied powers victory.
• 2006 – The International Astronomical Union redefined the term "planet", reclassifying Pluto as a dwarf planet.

More anniversaries: August 23 – August 24 – August 25

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August 25: Independence Day in Uruguay (1825)

• 1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, currently the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, was formed by Royal Charter from King Henry VIII.
• 1609 – Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei demonstrated his first telescope, a device that became known as a terrestrial or spyglass refracting telescope, to Venetian lawmakers.
• 1835 – The New York Sun perpetrated the Great Moon Hoax, publishing articles about the supposed discovery of life on the Moon.
• 1920 – Polish forces under Józef Piłsudski successfully forced the Russians to withdraw from Warsaw at the Battle of Warsaw, the decisive battle of the Polish–Soviet War.
• 1945 – About ten days after World War II ended with Japan announcing its surrender, armed supporters of the Communist Party of China killed Baptist missionary John Birch.
• 1989 – The Voyager 2 spacecraft (pictured) made its closest approach to Neptune, the last planet visited before leaving the solar system.

More anniversaries: August 24 – August 25 – August 26

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August 26: Qi Xi in the Chinese lunar calendar (2009); Namibia Day

• 1071 – Byzantine-Seljuk wars: Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan captured Byzantine Emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert (pictured).
• 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.
• 1789 – French Revolution: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, defining a set of individual and collective rights of the people, was approved by the National Constituent Assembly at Versailles.
• 1928 – At a cafe in Paisley, Scotland, May Donoghue found the remains of a snail in her bottle of ginger beer, causing her to launch one of the landmark civil action cases in British common law, Donoghue v Stevenson.
• 1968 – The U.S. Democratic Party's National Convention began at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, sparking four days of clashes between anti–Vietnam War protesters and police.

More anniversaries: August 25 – August 26 – August 27

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August 27: Independence Day for Moldova (1991)

• 1776 – British forces led by William Howe defeated the American Continental Army under George Washington at the Battle of Long Island in Brooklyn, New York, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War.
• 1883 – Four enormous explosions from the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa generated tsunamis that destroyed many settlements on Java and Sumatra in Indonesia.
• 1896 – The Anglo-Zanzibar War set the record for the shortest war in recorded history when Zanzibar surrendered less than an hour after the conflict broke out, with British forces destroying the Sultan's Palace and Harem (pictured).
• 1957 – The Constitution of Malaya came into force, three days before the Federation of Malaya achieved formal independence from the United Kingdom.
• 2003 – The planet Mars made its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years: 55,758,006 kilometres (34,646,419 mi).

More anniversaries: August 26 – August 27 – August 28

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August 28: Feast of Dormition/Feast of the Assumption (Julian calendar)

• 1850 – German composer Richard Wagner's romantic opera Lohengrin, containing the Bridal Chorus, was first performed under the direction of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt in Weimar, present-day Germany.
• 1914 – In the first naval battle of World War I, British ships defeated the German fleet in the Heligoland Bight area of the North Sea.
• 1924 – The August Uprising, an unsuccessful insurrection against the Soviet rule in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, began.
• 1955 – African-American teenager Emmett Till was murdered near Money, Mississippi, for flirting with a white woman, energizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.
• 1963 – Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured) delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., describing his desire for a future where blacks and whites would coexist harmoniously as equals.

More anniversaries: August 27 – August 28 – August 29

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August 29: Feast day for the Beheading of St. John the Baptist (Christianity)

• 1526 – Ottoman forces led by Suleiman the Magnificent (pictured) defeated and killed Louis II, the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia, at the Battle of Mohács.
• 1756 – As neighboring countries began conspiring against him, Frederick II of Prussia launched a preemptive invasion of Saxony, starting the Seven Years' War.
• 1842 – The Treaty of Nanking, an Unequal Treaty ending the First Opium War, was signed, forcing the Chinese Qing Dynasty to give foreign trading privileges, war reparations, control of Hong Kong Island, and other concessions to the British.
• 2003 – Two car bombs exploded outside of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, killing Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the spiritual leader of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, and over eighty others.
• 2005 – Storm surges of Hurricane Katrina caused multiple breaches in levees around New Orleans, flooding about 80 percent of the city and many neighboring areas for weeks.

More anniversaries: August 28 – August 29 – August 30

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August 30: St. Rose of Lima's Day in Peru; Victory Day in Turkey

• 1813 – Napoleonic Wars: Forces of the Sixth Coalition under Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly (pictured) captured French General Dominique Vandamme and thousands of his soldiers at the Battle of Kulm.
• 1835 – European settlers landing on the north banks of the Yarra River in Southern Australia founded the city of Melbourne.
• 1862 – American Civil War: James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson led their Confederate troops to a decisive victory against John Pope's Union Army at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Prince William County, Virginia.
• 1918 – Fanny Kaplan shot and wounded Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, helping to spark the Red Terror in the Soviet Union, a repression against Socialist-Revolutionary Party members and other political opponents.
• 1999 – The people of East Timor voted for independence from Indonesia in a United Nations-supervised referendum.

More anniversaries: August 29 – August 30 – August 31

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August 31: Independence Day in Malaysia (1957), Trinidad and Tobago (1962) and Kyrgyzstan (1991)

• 1422 – As the only heir to the throne, Henry VI became King of England at the age of eight months following the death of his father Henry V.
• 1888 – Mary Ann Nichols' body was found on the ground in front of a gated stable entrance in Buck's Row, London, allegedly the first victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
• 1907 – The Great Game: Russia and the United Kingdom signed the Anglo-Russian Entente, defining their respective spheres of interest in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet.
• 1939 – Nazi forces mounted a staged attack on a German radio station (radio tower pictured) in Gleiwitz, then part of Germany, to create the appearance of Polish aggression on their country, giving them an excuse to invade Poland the following day and begin World War II in Europe.
• 1986 – After a collision with a freighter, the Soviet ocean liner Admiral Nakhimov sank in the Tsemes Bay area of the Black Sea within seven minutes, killing more than 400 people on board.

More anniversaries: August 30 – August 31 – September 1

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