August 1: Lughnasadh in the Northern Hemisphere; Buwan ng Wika begins in the Philippines; PLA Day in China (1927)

Joseph Priestley

• 30 BC – War of Actium: Octavian defeated the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Alexandria, establishing Roman Egypt.
• 902 – Arab–Byzantine wars: Led by Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya, Aghlabid forces captured the Byzantine stronghold of Taormina, concluding the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
• 1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley (pictured) liberated oxygen gas, corroborating the discovery of the element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
• 1892 – Belgian carillonneur Jef Denyn hosted the world's first carillon concert at St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen.
• 1911 – Harriet Quimby became the first woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator certificate.

August 2: Roma Holocaust Memorial Day

Krishna Lal Adhikari

• 461 – Unpopular among the Senate aristocracy for his reforming efforts, Roman emperor Majorian was deposed by Ricimer and executed five days later.
• 1100 – While on a hunting trip in the New Forest, King William II of England was killed by an arrow through the lung loosed by one of his own men.
• 1790 – The first United States census was officially completed, with the nation's residential population enumerated to be 3,929,214.
• 1920 – Nepalese author Krishna Lal Adhikari (pictured) was sentenced to nine years in prison for publishing a book about the cultivation of corn.
• 1973 – A flash fire killed 50 people at a leisure centre in Douglas, Isle of Man.

August 3

Krishnamurti in the 1920s

• 1057 – Pope Stephen IX was crowned as pope.
• 1929 – Jiddu Krishnamurti (pictured), believed by some Theosophists to be a likely candidate for the messianic "World Teacher", dissolved the Order of the Star, the organisation established to support him.
• 1940 – World War II: Italian forces began a conquest of British Somaliland, capturing the region in 16 days.
• 1977 – Tandy Corporation announced the TRS-80, one of the world's first mass-produced personal computers.
• 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.

August 4

Mount Asama

• 1356 – Hundred Years' War: A large-scale mounted raid by Anglo-Gascon forces began under the command of Edward the Black Prince.
• 1783 – Mount Asama (pictured) in Japan began a climactic eruption, which exacerbated the Great Tenmei famine and led to thousands of deaths.
• 1892 – Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother were found murdered in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts; Borden was later tried and acquitted for the murders.
• 1972 – President Idi Amin announced the expulsion of Asians from Uganda.
• 1983 – Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, the president of Upper Volta, was ousted in a coup d'état led by Thomas Sankara.

August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day in Croatia (1995)

Henry I of England

• AD 25 – Liu Xiu proclaimed himself the monarch of the Han dynasty as Emperor Guangwu.
• 1100 – Henry I (pictured) was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey.
• 1689 – Beaver Wars: Aggravated by increased French incursions into their territory, a large force of Mohawk warriors substantially destroyed the settlement of Lachine in present-day Quebec.
• 1969 – Police raided a screening of the film Lonesome Cowboys in Atlanta, Georgia, leading to the creation of the Gay Liberation Front.
• 1993 – Wizards of the Coast released Magic: The Gathering, the first trading card game.

August 6

ALH84001

• 686 – Second Fitna: Pro-Alid forces defeated the Umayyad Caliphate in the Battle of Khazir, allowing them to take control of Mosul in present-day Iraq.
• 1892 – The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company was founded in Antwerp to exploit natural rubber in the Congo Free State.
• 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.
• 2013 – A gas leak caused an explosion that collapsed a building and led to the deaths of 22 people in Rosario, Argentina.

August 7: Assyrian Martyrs Day (1933)

Badge of Military Merit

• 1461 – Ming Chinese general Cao Qin staged a failed coup against the Tianshun Emperor.
• 1782 – The Badge of Military Merit (pictured), the precursor to the U.S. Purple Heart, was established as a military decoration of the Continental Army.
• 1897 – Mahdist War: Anglo-Egyptian soldiers clashed with Mahdist Sudanese rebels in the Battle of Abu Hamed.
• 1955 – Hurricane Diane, the first Atlantic hurricane to cause more than $1 billion in damages, formed between the Lesser Antilles and Cape Verde.
• 1987 – Lynne Cox became the first person to swim between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, crossing from Little Diomede to Big Diomede in the Bering Strait in 2 hours and 5 minutes.

August 8

Abbey Road in 2007

• 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.
• 1576 – The cornerstone of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's observatory Uraniborg was laid on the island of Hven.
• 1914 – The Endurance departed Plymouth, England, on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
• 1969 – At a zebra crossing (pictured) on Abbey Road in London, Iain Macmillan took the photograph that was used for the cover of the Beatles' album Abbey Road.
• 1988 – Tropical Storm Beryl formed over southeastern Louisiana, making it one of the few tropical cyclones to form over land.

August 9: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples; National Women's Day in South Africa (1956)

Sharon Tate

• 1897 – The first meeting of the International Congress of Mathematicians was held in Zürich, Switzerland.
• 1942 – Shostakovich's Symphony No. 7 was premiered in Leningrad while the city was under siege by Nazi forces.
• 1956 – About 20,000 women marched on Pretoria, South Africa, to protest the introduction of pass laws for black women under apartheid.
• 1960 – Led by Albert Kalonji, South Kasai declared its unilateral secession from the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville).
• 1969 – Members of the Manson Family invaded a house and murdered American actress Sharon Tate (pictured) and four guests in Los Angeles, before killing two more people the following night.

August 10: Qixi Festival in China (2024)

Louvre Pyramid

• 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.
• 1793 – The Louvre (pyramid pictured) in Paris, today the world's most-visited museum, opened with an exhibition of 537 paintings and 184 objets d'art.
• 1953 – First Indochina War: The French Union withdrew its forces from Operation Camargue against the Việt Minh in central modern-day Vietnam.
• 1988 – The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 became law, authorizing reparations to surviving Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
• 2019 – Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York.

August 11: Independence Day in Chad (1960)

DJ Kool Herc

• 1492 – The first papal conclave to be held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Innocent VIII.
• 1929 – The first Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic, the oldest and largest African-American parade in the United States, was held in Chicago.
• 1945 – Amid rumors of kidnappings of children by Jews in Kraków, a crowd of Poles took part in a pogrom, resulting in at least one death.
• 1973 – At a party in New York City, Jamaican musician DJ Kool Herc (pictured) began rapping during an extended break, laying the foundation for hip hop music.

August 12

Sue, the most complete T. rex skeleton found

• 1099 – Crusades: Fatimid forces under al-Afdal Shahanshah began retreating to Egypt after the Battle of Ascalon, concluding the First Crusade.
• 1952 – Thirteen Jewish poets were executed in Moscow for espionage based on false confessions.
• 1969 – The Troubles: Riots erupted in the neighbourhood of Bogside in Derry, and spread across much of Northern Ireland.
• 1985 – Japan Air Lines Flight 123 crashed into Mount Takamagahara in Gunma Prefecture, killing 520 of 524 people on board in the world's worst single-aircraft aviation disaster.
• 1990 – Near Faith, South Dakota, American paleontologist Sue Hendrickson found one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons, nicknamed Sue (pictured).

August 13

Soldier of the Coldstream Guards

• 1650 – General George Monck founded the predecessor to the Coldstream Guards (soldier pictured), the oldest regular regiment of the British Army in continuous active service.
• 1868 – A major earthquake near Arica, Peru (now in Chile), caused an estimated 25,000 casualties; the subsequent tsunami caused considerable damage as far away as Hawaii and New Zealand.
• 1876 – The first Bayreuth Festival, created by Richard Wagner and his wife Cosima to showcase his stage works, was opened with Das Rheingold.
• 1906 – Members of the U.S. Army's all-black 25th Infantry Regiment were accused of killing a white bartender and wounding a white police officer in Brownsville, Texas, despite exculpatory evidence.
• 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.

August 14: Independence Day in Pakistan (1947)

Roosevelt and Churchill

• 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.
• 1941 – After a secret meeting in Newfoundland, British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (both pictured) issued the Atlantic Charter, establishing a vision for a post–World War II world.
• 1975 – The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in London, the first in its record-breaking run in cinemas, which continues in limited release.
• 2013 – Security forces raided two camps of supporters of the ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in Cairo, leading to the deaths of at least 595 civilians.

August 15: Independence Day in India (1947); National Liberation Day of Korea (1945)

Syngman Rhee

• 1261 – Michael VIII Palaiologos was crowned Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.
• 1812 – War of 1812: Potawatomi warriors ambushed a United States Army convoy after it had evacuated Fort Dearborn, in present-day Chicago, and razed the fort.
• 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 (pictured) 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.

August 16

Skookum Jim Mason

• 1513 – War of the League of Cambrai: English and Imperial forces defeated French cavalry, forcing them to retreat.
• 1896 – A group including George Carmack and Skookum Jim Mason (pictured) discovered gold near Dawson City, Canada, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.
• 1906 – An earthquake registering approximately 8.2 M_w struck Valparaíso, Chile, killing 3,882 people.
• 1946 – Widespread riots between Hindus and Muslims took place in Calcutta following the All-India Muslim League's call for an independent Pakistan.
• 2009 – At the World Championships in Athletics in Berlin, Usain Bolt ran the 100 metres in 9.58 seconds, breaking his own record set a year earlier.

August 17

Roosevelt and Churchill in Quebec, with Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King

• 1676 – Scanian War: Swedish forces defeated Danish troops at the Battle of Halmstad.
• 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 (pictured) held in Quebec City.
• 1945 – Animal Farm, George Orwell's satirical allegory of Soviet totalitarianism, was first published.
• 1959 – American musician Miles Davis released Kind of Blue, which became one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed jazz recordings of all time.

August 18: Ghost Festival in China (2024)

White's discovery of the abandoned Roanoke Colony

• 1590 – John White, governor of the Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in North America (located in present-day North Carolina), returned after a three-year absence to find it deserted (depicted).
• 1877 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, six days after discovering Deimos, the smaller one.
• 1919 – Russian Civil War: British motor torpedo boats raided the Bolshevik Baltic Fleet's home base of Kronstadt, sinking a depot ship and damaging a battleship.
• 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage in the country.
• 1964 – East German Communist Party member Hildegard Trabant was killed while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall.

August 19

Painting of the Battle of Lagos

• 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 (depicted) in violation of Portuguese neutrality.
• 1897 – The Bersey Electric Cab entered service as the first electric taxi in London.
• 1950 – The 766th Independent Infantry Regiment of North Korea was disbanded after fighting for less than two months in the Korean War.
• 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.

August 20

Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory

• 1707 – The first Siege of Pensacola came to an end with the British and Creek abandoning their attempt to capture Pensacola in Spanish Florida.
• 1910 – Hurricane-force winds combined hundreds of small fires in the U.S. states of Washington and Idaho into the Devil's Broom fire, which burned about 4,700 square miles (12,100 km²), the largest fire in recorded U.S. history.
• 1920 – The American Professional Football Association, a predecessor of the National Football League, was founded.
• 1998 – The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory (pictured) in Sudan was destroyed by a missile attack launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 U.S. embassy bombings.
• 2008 – Spanair Flight 5022 crashed just after take-off from Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 154 people.

August 21

Rocket launcher from the Ghouta chemical attack

• 1716 – Seventh Ottoman–Venetian War: Ottoman forces suddenly abandoned their siege of Corfu, allowing the Republic of Venice to preserve its rule over the Ionian Islands.
• 1945 – American physicist Harry Daghlian accidentally dropped a tungsten carbide brick onto a plutonium bomb core, exposing himself to neutron radiation and later becoming the first Manhattan Project fatality due to a criticality accident.
• 1971 – Six people were killed during an escape attempt and riot at San Quentin State Prison in California; the subsequent trial of six inmates was the longest in state history at the time.
• 1986 – A limnic eruption of Lake Nyos in Cameroon released a cloud of carbon dioxide, suffocating 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock.
• 2013 – Syrian civil war: Areas controlled by the Syrian opposition in Ghouta, Damascus, were attacked by rockets (launcher pictured) containing sarin, killing at least 281 people.

August 22: Madras Day in Chennai, India (1639)

Photograph of famine in Calcutta published in The Statesman

• 1639 – The Vijayanagara Empire leased a small strip of land in present-day Chennai, the capital of the present-day Indian state of Tamil Nadu, to the East India Company.
• 1642 – King Charles I raised the royal standard at Nottingham, marking the beginning of the First English Civil War.
• 1914 – First World War: A squadron of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards attacked a German scout party, the first engagement of British forces on the Western Front.
• 1943 – Ian Stephens, editor of The Statesman, defied British censorship to publish pictures of death and misery (example pictured) on Calcutta's streets, informing the world of the Bengal famine of 1943.
• 1984 – The constitution of Singapore was amended to apportion seats to defeated opposition candidates in Parliament, which had hitherto entirely comprised members of the People's Action Party.

August 23: Black Ribbon Day

Proclamation of Rebellion

• 1775 – King George III issued a proclamation (copy pictured) that declared elements of the American colonies of Great Britain to be in a state of "open and avowed rebellion".
• 1873 – The Albert Bridge, spanning the River Thames in London, opened to traffic.
• 1933 – The Chesapeake–Potomac hurricane made landfall in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and went on to cause at least 47 deaths in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region.
• 1943 – Second World War: A decisive Soviet victory against German forces at the Battle of Kursk gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war.

August 24: Feast day of Saint Bartholomew the Apostle (Western Christianity); Independence Day in Ukraine (1991)

Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.

• 49 BC – Caesar's Civil War: Forces loyal to Julius Caesar led by Gaius Scribonius Curio were defeated by Pompeian Republicans under Publius Attius Varus and King Juba I of Numidia.
• 1643 – A Dutch expedition arrived at the mouth of the Valdivia River, in present-day Chile, to establish a new colony in the ruins of the abandoned Spanish settlement of Valdivia.
• 1662 – The 1662 Book of Common Prayer was legally enforced as the liturgy of the Church of England, precipitating the Great Ejection of Dissenter ministers from their benefices.
• 1963 – Buddhist crisis: The U.S. State Department ordered Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (pictured) to encourage South Vietnamese Army officers to oust Ngo Dinh Diem if he did not willingly remove Ngo Dinh Nhu from his unofficial position of power.
• 2006 – The International Astronomical Union passed a resolution redefining the term planet and classifying Pluto as a dwarf planet.

August 25:

Aaliyah

• 1270 – Philip III became King of France following the death of his father Louis IX during the Eighth Crusade.
• 1537 – The Honourable Artillery Company, now the oldest surviving regiment in the British Army, was granted a royal charter by Henry VIII.
• 1875 – Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel, doing so in approximately 21 hours 40 minutes.
• 2001 – American singer Aaliyah (pictured) and several members of her record company were killed when their overloaded aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from Marsh Harbour Airport in the Bahamas.
• 2012 – The NASA space probe Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to enter interstellar space.

August 26: Heroes' Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Day in the United States

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

• 1071 – Byzantine–Seljuk wars: Seljuk Turks led by Alp Arslan captured Byzantine emperor Romanos IV at the Battle of Manzikert.
• 1789 – French Revolution: The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (pictured), defining a set of individual and collective rights of the people, was approved by the National Constituent Assembly.
• 1940 – The 1940 New England hurricane formed over the Atlantic Ocean; it would go on to cause widespread damage despite never making landfall in the United States.
• 1968 – The Beatles released "Hey Jude", which became the then-longest single to top the UK charts.
• 1980 – A bomb was planted at Harvey's Resort Hotel in Stateline, Nevada, which the FBI later described as the most complex improvised explosive device ever created.

August 27: Independence Day in Moldova (1991)

Destroyed buildings after the attack in the Anglo-Zanzibar War

• 410 – The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ended after three days.
• 1896 – In the shortest recorded war in history (pictured), the Sultanate of Zanzibar surrendered to the United Kingdom after less than an hour of conflict.
• 1955 – The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records was published.
• 1964 – South Vietnamese junta leader Nguyễn Khánh entered into a triumvirate power-sharing arrangement with rival generals Trần Thiện Khiêm and Dương Văn Minh, both of whom had been involved in plots to unseat Khánh.
• 2003 – The planet Mars made its closest approach to Earth in almost 60,000 years.

August 28

Ryugyong Hotel

• 1619 – Ferdinand II, King of Bohemia and Hungary, was unanimously elected Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1789 – William Herschel discovered Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, during the first use of his new telescope which was then the largest in the world.
• 1909 – The 1909 Monterrey hurricane dissipated; one of the deadliest Atlantic tropical cyclones on record, it killed an estimated 4,000 people throughout Mexico.
• 1963 – American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. delivered the speech "I Have a Dream" during the March on Washington, calling for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States.
• 1987 – Construction began on the Ryugyong Hotel (pictured) in Pyongyang, the tallest building in North Korea.

August 29: Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (Catholicism, Anglicanism)

Michael Faraday

• 1350 – Hundred Years' War: Led by King Edward III, a fleet of 50 English ships captured at least 14 Castilian vessels and sank several more at the Battle of Winchelsea.
• 1786 – Farmers in western Massachusetts angered by high tax burdens and disfranchisement began an armed uprising led by Daniel Shays against the U.S. federal government.
• 1831 – Michael Faraday (pictured) first experimentally demonstrated electromagnetic induction, leading to the formulation of the law of induction named after him.
• 1960 – Air France Flight 343 crashed while attempting to land at Yoff Airport, Dakar, killing all 63 occupants.
• 2016 – Chen Quanguo became the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, later overseeing the creation of the Xinjiang internment camps.

August 30: Victory Day in Turkey (1922)

Guru Ram Das

• AD 70 – First Jewish–Roman War: Roman forces led by Titus set fire to the Second Temple during the Siege of Jerusalem.
• 1574 – Guru Ram Das (pictured) became the fourth of the Sikh gurus, the spiritual masters of Sikhism.
• 1594 – James VI of Scotland held a masque at the baptism of Prince Henry, his first child.
• 1959 – South Vietnamese opposition figure Phan Quang Đán was elected to the National Assembly, despite soldiers being bussed in to vote multiple times for President Ngô Đình Diệm's candidate.
• 2007 – A heavy bomber plane that had been unintentionally loaded with nuclear missiles transported them from North Dakota to Louisiana before they were recognized.

August 31: Independence Day in Malaysia (1957); Romanian Language Day in Moldova and Romania

Cartoon depicting Jack the Ripper as a phantom stalking Whitechapel

• 1218 – Al-Kamil became the fourth sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt.
• 1888 – The body of Mary Ann Nichols, the alleged first victim of an unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper (depicted), was found in Buck's Row, London.
• 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.
• 1969 – On the final day of the Isle of Wight Festival 1969, an event attended by approximately 150,000 people over three days, Bob Dylan appeared in his first gig in three years.
• 2019 – A sightseeing helicopter crashed in the mountains of Skoddevarre in Alta, Norway, killing all six people on board.