- 338 BC Macedonian army led by Philip II defeats combined forces of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea, securing Macedonian hegemony in Greece and the Aegean
- 216 BC Second Punic War: Battle of Cannae - Carthaginian army lead by Hannibal defeats numerically superior Roman army under command consuls Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro
- 257 St Stephen I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
- 1057 Frederik van Lotharingen elected as 1st Belgium Pope Stephen IX [X]
- 1100 King William II of England (William Rufus) is killed by an arrow shot by Sir Walter Tyrell while hunting in the New Forest
- 1542 French troops leave Flanders
Event of Interest
1610 Henry Hudson enters the bay later named after him, the Hudson Bay
Henry Hudson
- 1665 French expedition against Barbarians in Tunis/Algiers
- 1695 Daniel Quare receives a British patent for his portable barometer
- 1701 Great Peace of Montreal signed between New France and North American Indian nations at urging of Huron chief Kondiaronk
- 1718 Austrian joins Triple Alliance
- 1738 France offers emperor Karel VI mediation in war against Turkey
United States Declaration of Independence
1776 Formal signing of the US Declaration of Independence by 56 people (date most accepted by modern historians)
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Event of Interest
1782 George Washington creates Honorary Badge of Distinction
George Washington
Victory in Battle
1798 Battle of the Nile: British Royal Navy under Admiral Horatio Nelson further decimates the French fleet
Horatio Nelson
Napoléon Bonaparte
- 1819 1st parachute jump in US
- 1830 Charles X of France abdicates in favour of his grandson the Duc de Bordeaux
- 1831 Ten day campaign begins, Dutch army occupies Belgium
- 1832 Battle of Bad Axe, Wisconsin: 1,300 Illinois militia defeat Sauk & Fox Native Americans ending the Black Hawk War in the US
- 1858 1st mailboxes installed in Boston and NYC streets
- 1858 Government of India transferred from East India Company to the British Crown
- 1861 Skirmish at Dug Springs, Missouri
Historic Publication
1865 Lewis Carroll publishes "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"
Lewis Carroll
- 1865 Trans Atlantic Cable being laid by SS Great Eastern snaps and is lost
- 1870 Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London
- 1873 1st trial run of San Francisco cable car, Clay Street between Kearny and Jones
- 1875 1st roller skating rink opens (London)
- 1877 San Francisco Public Library opens with 5,000 volumes
- 1880 British Parliament officially adopts Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
- 1884 Dutch Queen Emma appointed regent
- 1887 Rowell Hodge patents barbed wire
- 1892 Charles A Wheeler patents a prototype of the escalator
- 1894 Death duties 1st introduced in Britain
- 1894 Dutch Society for Women Suffrage gets royal charter
- 1903 Unsuccessful uprising of Macedonians against Turkey
- 1909 1st Lincoln head pennies minted
- 1909 Army Air Corps formed as Army takes 1st delivery from Wright Brothers
- 1909 US issues 1st Lincoln penny
- 1911 Haiti's dictator Simon flees on US warship near Jamaica
- 1914 Belgian government receives German ultimatum
- 1914 German press falsely reports that French bombed Nuremberg
- 1914 German troops overthrows Luxembourg
- 1914 Germany and Turkey sign secret treaty of alliance
- 1914 Great Britain mobilizes
- 1914 Postdam Conference ends
- 1914 Russian troops invade Eastern Prussia
- 1914 Sherlock Holmes Adventure "His Last Bow" takes place
- 1916 World War I: Austrian sabotage causes the sinking of the Italian battleship Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto
- 1918 Japan announces that it is deploying troops to Siberia in the aftermath of World War I
- 1920 Marcus Garvey presents his "Back To Africa" program in NYC
- 1921 Chicago jury brings in not guilty verdict against the Black Sox
- 1922 China is hit by a typhoon; about 60,000 die
Treaty of Interest
1928 Benito Mussolini signs peace treaty with Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
Benito Mussolini
- 1931 Spanish Catalonia agrees (99+%) for autonomous status
Famous Photo
1932 Carl David Anderson discovers and photographs a positron, the first known antiparticle
Carl David Anderson
- 1934 1st airplane train, plane tows 3 mail gliders behind it
Event of Interest
1934 Adolf Hitler becomes commander-in-chief of German armed forces
Adolf Hitler
Event of Interest
1940 Clermont-Ferrand sentences General Charles de Gaulle to death
Charles de Gaulle
- 1940 KL-House of saxon & commandos focus on Gross Rosen, Silesia
- 1941 German 11st Army surrounds 20 Soviet divisions at Oeman
- 1941 Jews are expelled from Hungarian Ruthenia
- 1942 250 Dutch Catholic Jews arrested, transported to Amersfoort camp
- 1942 Colonel general Hermann Hoth's Panzer army reaches Kotelnikovo
- 1943 Armed revolt breaks out in Treblinka
Event of Interest
1943 Lt John F. Kennedy's PT-boat 109 sinks at Solomon islands
John F. Kennedy
Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
1945 After 3½ days suffering exhaustion, lack of water and shark attacks in the Philippine Sea, the surviving crew of USS Indianapolis are spotted by Wilbur “Chuck” Gwinn, a PV-1 Ventura pilot on a routine sector search. 316 had survived.
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Potsdam Conference
1945 Potsdam Conference between Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill ends
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- 1954 Tahar Ben Ammar appointed premier of Tunisia
- 1955 USSR performs nuclear test
- 1958 Jordan and Iraq dissolve their Arab Federation, after 3 months
- 1961 Cyrille Adula becomes premier of Congo
- 1963 30th Chicago College All-Star Game: All-Stars 20, Green Bay 17, 65,000 at Soldier Field
- 1964 Dutch government gives Indonesia export guarantees
- 1964 North Vietnam fires on a US destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin incident which would eventually escalate US involvement in the Vietnam War
- 1964 Race riot in Jersey City, New Jersey
- 1965 Morley Safer's sends 1st Vietnam report indicating the US is losing
- 1966 Radio Vila (New Hebrides) begins transmitting
- 1967 US's Lunar Orbiter 5 launched; enters lunar orbit Aug 5
- 1967 The second Blackwall Tunnel opens in Greenwich, London
- 1968 35th Chicago College All-Star Game: Green Bay 34, All-Stars 17, 69,917 at Soldier Field
Event of Interest
1969 US President Richard Nixon visits Romania
Richard Nixon
- 1970 France performs nuclear test at Fangataufa Island
- 1970 Rubber bullets used for the first time in Northern Ireland during 'The Troubles'
- 1972 Gold hits record $70 an ounce in London
- 1975 104°F (40°C) at Providence, Rhode Island (state record)
- 1975 107°F (42°C) at Chester/New Bedford, Massachusetts (state record)
- 1980 Fascist bomb attack on Bologna Italy train station, 86 killed
- 1983 STS-8 vehicle moves to launch pad
- 1983 US District Court begins trying Yonkers accused of race discrimination
- 1984 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1985 5 die in a train crash in Westminster Colo
- 1985 Delta Lockheed L-1011 crashes at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport, 137 die
- 1986 TODAY/PC born today
Event of Interest
1986 Saddam Hussein offers peace in open letter to Iran
Saddam Hussein
- 1987 Don Brown sets flight record for handbow (1,336 yds 1'3")
- 1987 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1988 Raymond Acevedo is retired from singing group Menudo
- 1988 System Enhancement Association settles case with PKware (ARC vs PKARC)
- 1989 NASA confirmed Voyager 2's discovery of 3 more moons of Neptune designated temporarily 1989 N2, 1989 N3 & 1989 N24
- 1990 Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait, Emir flees to Saudi Arabia
Event of Interest
1990 US President George H. W. Bush orders troops to Saudi Arabia
George H. W. Bush
- 1991 Hedy Lamaar is arrested for shoplifting in LA
- 1991 Space shuttle STS 43 (Atlantis 9) launched
- 1991 Pan Am games open in Havana
- 1993 NYC radio (WFAN) personality Don Imus' lung collapes
- 1993 Train crash in tunnel at Vega de Anzo Spain, 12 killed
- 1994 Congressional hearings begin on White Water
- 1994 Explosion in lead/zinc mine in Guangxi China, 120+ killed
Event of Interest
1994 NY Supreme Court refuses Howard Stern's non financial disclosure
Howard Stern
- 1994 Noureddine Morceli runs world record 3000m (7:25.11)
- 1995 Saudi Arabia's King Fahd issues a decree replacing all members of the Council of Ministers who do not have blood ties to the royal Family
- 2005 MESSENGER spacecraft performs an Earth flyby
- 2005 The largest trade in NBA history is completed as 5 teams combine to swap 13 players; deal brings Antoine Walker & Jason Williams to Miami, leads to Heat's 1st ever championship that season
Historic Publication
2008 "Breaking Dawn", 4th book in Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight Saga" is published by Little Brown at midnight with a print run of 3.7 million copies
Stephenie Meyer
Event of Interest
2013 Carl Icahn sues computer giant Dell in an attempt to derail a buyout bid by the CEO, Michael Dell
Carl Icahn
Michael Dell
- 2017 First successful gene editing in human embryos to repair disease-causing mutation reported by scientists in "Nature"
Event of Interest
2017 US President Donald Trump signs legislation imposing sanctions on Russia, limiting his ability to ever lift them
Donald Trump
Event of Interest
2017 Great Britain's Prince Philip aged 96 makes his final solo public appearance before retiring from public engagements
Prince Philip
- 2017 New larger crypto-currency Bitcoin Cash created
- 2017 First footage of white giraffes posted by Hirola Conservation Program in north eastern Kenya
- 2017 More than a billion people around the world need glasses and 36 million are blind, according to new study published in "The Lancet"
- 2018 Apple becomes the first American public listed company to reach $1 trillion in value
- 2018 Fields Medal for mathematics awarded to Caucher Birkar (his stolen minutes later), Alessio Figalli, Peter Scholze and Akshay Venkatesh
- 2018 Pope Frances declares the death penalty unacceptable in all cases, reversing church teachings and adding to Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church
- 2018 Oldest library in Germany confirmed unearthed in Cologne dating to 2AD, possibly held 20,000 scolls
- 2018 Tokyo Medical University revealed to have been tampering with female entrance exams to ensure under 30% accepted, by Japanese newspaper "Yomiuri Shimbun"
August in History
![The Strange, Mysterious Story of the Balloon Expedition to the North Pole]()
The Strange, Mysterious Story of the Balloon Expedition to the North Pole
The discovery of Swedish engineer S. A. Andrée's tragic, long-lost polar expedition in 1930 led to more questions than answers.
August 5, 1930![A Pill to Cure All Ills]()
A Pill to Cure All Ills
Not well? Take a Beecham’s Pill was often the advice. So popular was it that nobody doubted it’s extravagant claim in the world’s first advertising slogan.
August 6, 1859![Why Mata Hari Was Not the Spy You Thought She Was]()
Why Mata Hari Was Not the Spy You Thought She Was
The controversial life and death of Mata Hari, the glamorous WWI double agent, executed in 1917, has recently been reassessed in the light of new evidence.
August 7, 1876![Ship Of Gold Sails Into Oblivion]()
Ship Of Gold Sails Into Oblivion
A frigate with more than 150 souls on board, as well as nearly three tons of gold, sailed out of Melbourne on this day – never to be seen again.
August 12, 1853
