- 708 Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
- 1178 Anti-Pope Callistus III gives pope title to Alexander III
- 1261 Jacques Pantaleon elected as Pope Urban IV
Victory in Battle
1350 Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships
- 1484 Giovanni Battista Cibo elected as Pope Innocent VIII
Victory in Battle
1526 Battle of Mohács: In a decisive battle the Hungarian Empire is conquered by the Ottoman Empire led by Suleiman the Magnificent
How 200 Conquistadors Conquered an Empire of 10 Million
1533 Atahualpa, last Sapa Inca Emperor is suspected to have been buried in Northern Peru or in Ecuador
Historic Event
1696 King Louis XIV of France and Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy sign Peace of Turin, a turning point in the War of the League of Augsburg
- 1708 British troops occupy Menorca & Sardinia
- 1708 Haverhill, Massachusetts destroyed by French & Indians
- 1742 Edmond Hoyle published his "Short Treatise" on the card game whist
- 1756 England & France meet in war
- 1756 Prussian Libya occupies Saxson: beginning 7 years War
- 1758 New Jersey Legislature forms 1st Indian reservation
- 1776 Americans withdraw from Manhattan to Westchester
- 1786 Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising in Springfield and Worcester, Massachusetts, by citizens in opposition to the government's increased efforts to collect taxes on both individuals and their businesses
- 1792 British man o'war HMS Royal George capsizes at Spithead; more than 800 killed
- 1793 Slaves in French colony of St Domingue (Haiti) freed
- 1825 Portugal recognizes the Independence of Brazil
Historic Event
1831 Michael Faraday demonstrates 1st electric transformer
Fighting The Scourge of Child Labour
1833 Britain’s 1st Factory Act becomes law "to regulate the Labour of Children and young Persons in the Mills and Factories of the United Kingdom"
- 1842 Great Britain and China sign Treaty of Nanking, ending the Opium war
- 1844 1st white-indian lacrosse game in Montreal, Indians win
- 1854 Self-governing windmill patented (Daniel Halladay)
- 1861 American Civil War: US Navy squadron captures forts at Hatteras Inlet, North Carolina.
- 1862 Battle of Aspromonte; Italian royal forces defeat rebels
Second Battle of Bull Run
1862 Second Battle of Bull Run, fought in Manassas, Virginia begins, Confederate victory (US Civil War)
Historic Event
1883 First Carnegie library financed by industrialist Andrew Carnegie opens in Dunfermline, Scotland, the 1st of 2,509 libraries built around the world
Krakatoa: The World’s Mightiest Explosion
1883 Seismic sea waves created by Krakatoa eruption create a rise in English Channel 32 hrs after explosion
Historic Invention
1885 Gottlieb Daimler receives German patent for a motorcycle
- 1896 Chop suey invented in NYC by chef of visiting Chinese Ambassador
- 1898 The Goodyear tire company founded
- 1900 Gaetano Bresci, the assassin of King Umberto I of Italy, is tried and sentenced to life imprisonment; he will commit suicide in jail on 22 May 1901
- 1903 The Finance Minister, Count Witte, is dismissed in what is seen as a victory for those in Russia who want their country to expand into Manchuria and Korea in defiance of the Japanese
- 1905 Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza leaves Brazzaville
- 1907 The Quebec Bridge over St Lawrence River collapses during construction, killing 75 workers
- 1908 NY gives a ticker tape parade to returning US Olympians from London
- 1909 AH Latham of France sets world airplane altitude record of 155 m
- 1909 World's 1st air race held in Rheims France. Glenn Curtiss (USA) wins
- 1910 Japan changes Korea's name to Chōsen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony
- 1911 Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
- 1913 Pieter Cort Van de Linden forms Dutch government
Battle of Interest
1914 4th day of Battle of Tannenberg (WWI): Russian Second Army panics, General Martos caught
- 1914 Arizonian is 1st vessel to arrive in San Francisco via Panama Canal
- 1914 Battle of St Quentin: French counter attack under General Lanrezac
- 1914 New Zealand forces capture German Samoa
- 1916 Congress creates US Naval Reserve
Historic Event
1916 General Paul von Hindenburg replaces Von Falkenhayn as German chief of staff
- 1916 Transport ship Hsin-Yu & cruiser Hai-Yung collide; 1,000 die
- 1916 US Congress accepts Jones Act: Philippines independence
- 1918 Bapaume taken by Australian Corps and Canadian Corps in the Hundred Days Offensive
- 1924 Germany's Reichstag approves the Dawes Plan, which sought to solve the WWI reparations problem
Historic Event
1929 Aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh makes her first solo flight
The Age of Zeppelins
1929 German airship Graf Zeppelin ends a round-the-world flight
Historic Event
1939 Chaim Weizmann informs England that Palestine Jews will fight in WW II
Appointment of Interest
1947 B.R. Ambedkar is appointed chairman of the drafting committee for the Indian constitution
Historic Event
1957 Strom Thurmond (Sen-D-SC) ends 24 hr filibuster against civil rights
- 1958 US Air Force Academy's permanent site opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado
- 1960 Jordan premier Hazza-el-Madjali deadly injured at bomb attack
- 1962 Some provisions of Kuwaiti constitution are suspended
- 1962 US U-2 flight sees SAM launch pads in Cuba
- 1965 Astronauts Cooper & Conrad complete 120 Earth orbits in Gemini 5
- 1966 Dutch Internal minister Smallenbroek resigns after driving drunk
- 1968 Democrats nominate Hubert H Humphrey for US President (Chicago)
- 1970 Black Panthers confront cops in Philadelphia (1 cop killed)
- 1974 USSR performs underground nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya USSR
- 1975 Star in Cygnus goes nova becoming 4th brightest in sky
- 1978 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1979 Great Britain performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1979 Sheridan Broadcasting Corp purchases Mutual Black Network
- 1982 38°F lowest temperature ever recorded in Cleveland in August
- 1982 The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
- 1985 Atlantis moves to launch pad for 51-J mission
- 1986 Heike Drechsler of East Germany ties world women's 200 m mark (21.71s)
- 1986 Moroccan King Hassan II signs unity treaty with Libya
- 1988 Macy's Tap-o-Mania sets a Guinness record for tap dancing
- 1988 USSR launches 3 cosmonauts (Valery Polyakav, 1 Afghan) to station Mir
- 1990 C-5 transport plane crashes at Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany, killing 13
Historic Event
1990 Saddam Hussein declares America can't beat Iraq
- 1991 JFK Jr wins his 1st battle as an attorney
Historic Event
1991 Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev signs decree to close Semipalatinsk test site (site of 456 Soviet nuclear tests 1949-89) after protests by Nevada-Semipalatinsk anti-nuclear movement [1]
- 1991 USSR suspends Communist Party activities
- 1992 Brave's Charlie Leibrandt 1,000th strikeout. He decides to keep the ball by rolling it to the dugout, allowing Ricky Jordan to take second base on error.
- 1992 Randy Myers blows his 6th save of the season & it marks the 5th time he's blown a potential win for Greg Harris
- 1995 NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
- 1996 Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Vnukovo Airlines Tupolev Tu-154, crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
- 1997 At least 98 villagers are killed by the GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.
- 2003 Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
Hurricane Katrina
2005 Hurricane Katrina makes 2nd and 3rd landfall as a category 3 hurricane, devastating much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida Panhandle. Kills more than 1,836, causes over $115 billion in damage.
- 2007 A United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident takes place at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base.
- 2011 "Tha Carter IV" 9th studio album by Lil Wayne is released
- 2012 Banana Spider venom is found to be effective in relieving erectile dysfunction
- 2012 Georgian hostage crisis results in 3 police officers and 10 militants being killed
- 2012 Operation Eagle, undertaken by the Egyptian Army, results in the deaths of 11 suspected terrorists and the arrest of another 23
- 2013 41 people are killed and 33 are injured in a bus accident in Kenya
- 2014 Riots break out in Guinea following rumours that health workers are deliberately transmitting the Ebola virus to locals
- 2014 Senegal is 5th country hit by Ebola
- 2016 Italian coastguard says 6,500 migrants rescued at sea in 40 separate incidents in 1 day off coast of Sabratha, Libya
- 2017 Hurricane Harvey sets rainfall record (51.88 inches in Cedar Bayou) from a tropical cyclone in continental US, according to US National Weather Service
- 2017 Monsoon rains in Mumbai cause chaos closing schools and airports
Historic Event
2017 US President Donald Trump visits flood affected Texas
- 2018 Former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond resigns from the Scottish National Party amid sexual abuse allegations
- 2018 Germany hands back human remains of Namibian Herero and Nama people murdered during 1904-08 genocide at church service in Berlin
Historic Event
2018 John McCain is only the third person to lie in state at the Arizona state capital rotunda in Phoenix
Historic Event
2018 Russian President Vladimir Putin announces new retirement ages, 60 for women, 65 for men in TV address, amid protests
- 2019 Discovery of world's largest child sacrifice site announced by archaeologists with 227 victims from Chimú culture in Huanchaco, Peru
- 2019 Scientists announce there is no single 'gay' gene with genetics accounting for at most 25% of same-sex behavior, in study published in "Science"
- 2021 Hurricane Ida makes landfall as a Category 4 storm near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina
- 2021 Missile and drone attack on al-Anad airbase in south Yemen kills at least 30 soldiers, one of the deadliest attacks in recent years [1]
- 2022 Worst violence in Iraqi capital Baghdad in years with 30 killed and 700 injured after Shia leader Muqtada al-Sadr announces he is withdrawing from politics [1]