Events in History
Presidential Medal of Freedom
Aug 3 Chilean-born author Isabel Allende receives the US Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama
- Aug 3 The Athens Stock Exchange re-opens after a month and falls by 22%
Event of Interest
Aug 3 US President Obama unveils his Clean Power Plan to cut greenhouse gases
- Aug 4 31 people are killed and 100 are injured after floods partially sweep two passenger trains off a bridge in Madhya Pradesh, India
- Aug 4 A plague of locusts in Southern Russia prompts a state of emergency to be declared
- Aug 5 Fishing boat carrying around 600 migrants sinks of the coast of Libya, 373 rescued
- Aug 5 Torrential rains and flooding leave at least 178 people dead in India, in the wake of Cyclone Komen
- Aug 6 Eqyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi inaugurates the Suez Canal Expansion at a ceremony in Ismaïlia
- Aug 6 Republican Presidential nomination race begins with debate between 7 lesser ranked candidates in Cleveland, Ohio
- Aug 6 World's largest ever Pinball tournament Pinburgh with 700 machines held in Pittsburgh
- Aug 10 110°F (43°C), Apalachicola, Florida (breaking state record of 109°F, set in 1931)
Agreement of Interest
Aug 11 Greek debt crisis: European Commission announces a bailout with Greece and its creditors has been agreed "in principle"
- Aug 11 Japan's Sendai Nuclear Power Plant restarts the first nuclear reactor since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
- Aug 11 Largest ever outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in New York - 12 dead, with over 100 cases in the South Bronx
- Aug 11 Spain's top matador Francisco Rivera Ordóñez Jr. is gored and injured by a bull in Huesca
- Aug 12 China cuts its currency the yuan for the 2nd day in a row to boast exports
Event of Interest
Aug 12 Former US President Jimmy Carter reveals that he has cancer
- Aug 12 In London archaeologists discover a mass grave of 30 bodies from the 1665 plague
- Aug 12 Large series of explosions in Tianjin, China leave at least 50 dead and 700 injured in an industrial accident
- Aug 13 76 people are killed & 212 are wounded by an ISIL truck bomb in Baghdad, Iraq
Event of Interest
Aug 13 Swedish Prosecutors announce they are dropping allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange of sexual molestation and coercion
- Aug 14 Most extensive face transplant surgery ever performed on Patrick Hardison by Dr. Eduardo Rodriguez at New York University Langone Medical Center
- Aug 15 North Korea creates its own time zone -moving its clocks back half an hour to GMT+8.5
- Aug 16 'Batman' samaritan Lenny B. Robinson is killed in a car accident in Maryland
- Aug 17 Bomb blast in Bangkok at Erawan Shrine kills at least 19, injures over 100
- Aug 17 Discovery of 7,000 year old mass grave in Schöneck-Kilianstädten, Central Germany, published in PNAS Journal. 26 bodies bear evidence of violent conflict
- Aug 17 World's first flower could be underwater plant Montsechia Vidalii claim US botanists (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
- Aug 19 US Food and Drug administration approves Female Viagra libido pill Addyi
- Aug 20 30 students at West Point Military Academy are injured in a mass pillow fight
- Aug 21 1st British unmanned drone hit on a UK citizen outside a conflict - ISIS fighter Reyaad Khan in Raqqa, Syria
- Aug 21 After 108 years a "message in a bottle" put in the sea by UK Marine Biological Association is announced found on a beach in Amrum, Germany
- Aug 21 European Refugee Crisis: Germany makes it easier for Syrian refugees to claim asylum by suspending their Dublin Regulations
- Aug 21 Terrorist attack on train between Amsterdam and Paris thwarted by 4 passengers overpowering gunman
- Aug 22 A vintage Hawker Hunter plane crashes onto the A27 dual carriageway road during the Shoreham airshow in Britain killing at least 11
- Aug 23 12 year old boy trips and rips 17th-century painting "Flowers" by Paolo Porpora worth $1.5m at exhibition in Taiwan
- Aug 23 Destruction by IS of the 1st century AD temple of Baalshamin in ancient ruins of Palmyra confirmed by Syrian officials
- Aug 24 China stock market's "Black Monday", Shanghai Composite loses 8.5%, sending other international markets lower
Event of Interest
Aug 24 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announces that for the 1st time 1 billion people logged into Facebook
Event of Interest
Aug 24 Physicist Stephen Hawking presents a new theory on black holes at a lecture at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
- Aug 26 WDBJ TV reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward are fatally shot live on TV by an ex-colleague in Moneta, Virginia
Historic Publication
Aug 27 "The Shepherd's Crown" by Terry Pratchett published by Doubleday, 5 months after the author's death, last book in the Discworld series
- Aug 27 Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos names top Supreme Court judge, Vassiliki Thanou caretaker Prime Minister - Greece's 1st female Prime Minister
- Aug 30 English author Frederick Forsyth (The Day of the Jackal) reveals that he worked for MI6 for more than 20 years
Event of Interest
Aug 30 Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad calls for the removal of then Prime Minister Najib Razak during the second day of street protests
- Aug 31 President Obama officially re-designates Alaska’s Mt. McKinley as Denali, its native American name
- Aug 31 US President Barack Obama arrives in Alaska on a 3 day tour highlighting climate change
- Aug 31 Violent protests in Kiev after Ukraine parliament vote leave 1 national guard dead, 100 injured
Deaths in History
- Aug 2 Forrest Bird, American aviator and inventor (1st respirators and ventilators), dies at 94
- Aug 3 Les Munro, New Zealand WWII pilot (Dambusters), dies at 96
- Aug 3 Robert Conquest, English historian and poet (The Great Terror), dies at 98
- Aug 7 Frances Oldham Kelsey, Canadian-American FDA Director (stopped thalidomide use in the US), dies at 101
- Aug 9 David Nobbs, English comedic writer (The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin), dies at 80
- Aug 11 Serge Collot, French violist (Paris Opera, 1957-86; Le Trio à Cordes Français, 1960-92), and music educator (Conservatoire de Paris, 1969-89), dies at 91
- Aug 15 Julian Bond, American civil rights leader and politician (D-Ga), dies at 75
- Aug 16 Jacob Bekenstein, American-Israeli theoretical physicist (Bekenstein-Hawking radiation), dies of a heart attack at 68
- Aug 18 Louis Stokes, American politician (Rep-D-OH, 1969-99), dies at 90
- Aug 20 Egon Bahr, German journalist and politician (Ostpolitik policy), dies at 93
- Aug 21 Bob Hepple, South African-born academic and Nelson Mandela's lawyer, dies at 81
- Aug 22 Charles Tomlinson, British poet and translator, dies at 88
- Aug 25 Frank E. Petersen Jr, American soldier and 1st African American Marine aviator & General, dies at 83
- Aug 29 Wayne Dyer, American psychologist and author (Universe Within You), dies at 75
- Aug 30 Brad Anderson, American cartoonist (Marmaduke), dies at 91
- Aug 30 Oliver Sacks, English Neurologist and author (Awakenings), dies at 82
- Aug 31 Colin Hope, British Industrialist (Turner and Newall), dies at 83
Authors
Civil Rights Activists
Inventors
Kings
Revolutionaries
Scientists