- 1181 Supernova SN 1181 in the constellation Cassiopeia observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers, lasting until August 6
- 1265 Battle of Evesham: English prince Edward beats Simon de Montfort the younger
- 1347 English troops conquer Fort Calais
- 1351 Sea battle at Zwartewaal: Willem V beats Hoeksen and English
- 1558 1st printing of Zohar (Jewish Kabbalah)
- 1578 Battle of Alcazarquivir, Moroccans defeat Portuguese, 10,000 killed
- 1598 London's head office of Hanze closed
- 1636 Johan Mauritius appointed governor of Dutch Brazil
- 1666 Hurricane hits Guadeloupe, Martinique and St Christopher; thousands die
- 1666 Sea battle between Netherlands and England
- 1693 Date traditionally ascribed to Dom Pérignon's invention of Champagne
- 1704 War of Spanish Succession, English and Dutch troops occupy Gibraltar
- 1730 Crown prince Frederick of Prussia escapes to England
- 1735 Jury acquits John Zenger (NY Weekly Journal) charged with seditious libel by royal governor of NY (victory for Freedom of press)
Event of Interest
1753 George Washington becomes a master mason
George Washington
Event of Interest
1772 English poet and artist William Blake aged 14 is first apprenticed to engraver James Basire in London
William Blake
- 1789 French Revolution: The National Constituent Assembly meets and issues the first decrees that abolish centuries of feudalism in France
- 1790 United States Revenue Cutter Service is established to serve as an armed customs enforcement service (becoming the US Coast Guard in 1915)
- 1791 The Treaty of Sistova is signed, ending the Ottoman-Habsburg wars
- 1821 1st edition of American magazine "The Saturday Evening Post"
Russian Antarctic Expedition
1821 Russian Antarctic expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen returns to Kronshtadt after becoming the 1st to circumnavigate Antarctica
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- 1824 Battle of Kos is fought between Turks and Greeks
- 1830 Plans for city of Chicago laid out
- 1845 Emigrant ship Cataraqui wrecks in Bass Strait with the loss of 400 lives, only nine survive, Australia's deadliest maritime civil disaster [1]
- 1854 The Hinomaru is established as the official flag to be flown from Japanese ships
- 1855 John Bartlett publishes "Familiar Quotations"
- 1862 US government collects its 1st income tax
- 1864 Land & naval action new Brazos Santiago, Texas
- 1870 British Red Cross Society forms
Event of Interest
1873 Indian Wars: whilst protecting a railroad survey party in Montana, US 7th Cavalry, under Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, clashes for the 1st time with the Sioux near the Tongue River. 1 man killed on each side.
George Armstrong Custer
Event of Interest
1892 Queen Wilhelmina and Emma open Merwede Canal between Amsterdam and the Rhine
Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
Murder of Interest
1892 Sunday school teacher Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother are murdered with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts; Borden is later arrested, tried and acquitted
Lizzie Borden
- 1897 Henry A Rucker appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for Georgia
- 1900 An allied expeditionary force, made up of Japanese, Russian, British, French and American troops, sets off from Tientsin for Peking, China, to put down Boxer rebellion
- 1902 The Greenwich foot tunnel under the River Thames opens
- 1903 Giuseppe Sarto elected Pope Pius X, known as the 'pope of the poor and humble'
- 1903 Cardinal Giuseppe Sarto of Venice elected Pope Pius X
- 1914 WWI: German army shoots Belgian priests and burns down village of Battice
- 1914 German fleet under admiral Souchon fire on Algerian coast
- 1914 WWI: Germany declares war on Belgium; Britain declares war on Germany
- 1914 WWI: King Albert I becomes Supreme Commander of Belgian army after German declaration of war
Declaration of War
1914 WWI: Field Marshal Lord Kitchener becomes British Minister of War after British declaration of war on Germany
Horatio Kitchener
- 1914 US declares neutrality on the outbreak of WWI
- 1916 Denmark and the United States sign a treaty whereby the Danish West Indies, including the Virgin Islands, are to be ceded to the US in 1917 for $25 million
- 1916 The Turks attack the British line at Romani in the northern Sinai (WWI)
- 1917 Pravda calls for the killing of all capitalists, priests and officers
Event of Interest
1918 Adolf Hitler receives the Iron Cross first class for bravery on the recommendation of his Jewish superior, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann
Adolf Hitler
Event of Interest
1919 Rodin Museum opens in Paris in The hôtel Biron containing works left to the state by the sculptor Auguste Rodin
Auguste Rodin
- 1919 Hungarian communist leader Béla Kun flees to Vienna after the Hungarian Soviet Republic is overthrown by the Romanian Army
- 1925 1st Dutch Colijn government forms
- 1925 US marines leave Nicaragua after 13-year occupation
- 1929 60,000 SA'ers/SS'ers march by Munich
- 1929 Jones Beach in NY opens
- 1930 Child labor laws established in Belgium
- 1934 II British Empire Games open at London's White City Stadium
- 1936 Ioannis Metaxas names himself dictator of Greece
Event of Interest
1941 Winston Churchill departs on Prince of Wales to US
Winston Churchill
- 1942 1st train with Jews departs Mechelen Belgium to Auschwitz
- 1942 British premier Winston Churchill arrives in Cairo
Event of Interest
1942 Colonel general Jeremenko arrives in Stalingrad and welcomed by Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Khrushchev
- 1942 German occupier orders all Dutch homing pigeons killed
- 1943 British premier Winston Churchill travels on the Queen Mary to Canada
- 1943 Soviet units reach suburbs of Orel
- 1943 USAAF bombs Germans in Troina
Event of Interest
1944 Anne Frank arrested in Amsterdam by German Security Police (Grüne Polizei) following a tip-off from an informer who was never identified
Anne Frank
Murder of Interest
1952 Gambling boss Theodore Roe is murdered by the crew of Sam Giancana
Sam Giancana
Event of Interest
1955 Eisenhower authorizes $46 million for construction of CIA headquarters
Dwight D. Eisenhower
- 1956 German Wilhelm Herz becomes first to ride motorcycle at 200mph (210mph/338kph) at the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah
- 1956 Indonesia says it will not pay debts to the Netherlands
- 1960 Rocket propelled USAF research aircraft sets record at 2,150 MPH
- 1961 Spokane, Washington reaches August record 108°F
Event of Interest
1962 Nelson Mandela captured by South African police
Nelson Mandela
- 1964 Bodies of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James E. Chaney discovered in an earthen Mississippi dam
- 1964 North Vietnam torpedoes US ships in the Gulf of Tonkin
- 1965 Cook Islands enters into free association with New Zealand
- 1966 8th British Empire Games & Commonwealth Games open in Kingston, Jamaica; first Games held outside 'White Dominions'
- 1967 British pirate radio station Radio 355 resigns air
- 1967 Shortwave group ANARC's 1st convention (Chicago)
- 1967 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1967 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1971 US launches 1st satellite into lunar orbit from manned spacecraft
- 1972 Arthur Bremer jailed for 63 years for shooting Alabama Governor Wallace
- 1974 Crawford-Butler Act allows Puerto Ricans to elect own governor
- 1976 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1977 US President Carter establishes Department of Energy
- 1977 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1979 Italian government of Cossiga begins
- 1979 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1980 -11] Hurricane Aline, kills 272 in Texas & Caribbean
- 1981 Columbia mated with SRBs and external tank for STS-2 mission
Event of Interest
1981 Oliver North is assigned to White House duty
Oliver North
Historic Publication
1983 Danielle Steel’s romance novel “Thurston House” is published
Danielle Steel
- 1984 Republic of Upper Volta becomes Burkina Faso (National Day)
- 1986 Reports of probable OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) agreement on output quotas sends oil prices higher
- 1988 Congress votes $20,000 to each Japanese-American interned in WW II
- 1988 Hertz car rental will pay out $23 million in consumer fraud case
- 1990 95.5°F (35.3°C) in De Bilt Netherlands (highest Aug temperature in Netherlands)
- 1990 European community proposes a boycott of Iraq
- 1991 The Greek cruise ship Oceanos sinks off the Wild Coast of South Africa
- 1993 Angolan air force bombs Huambo
- 1993 Rwandian Hutus and Tutsis sign peace treaty in Arusha, Tanzania
- 1994 Dwingeloo 1, near milky way system, discovered
Event of Interest
1994 Howard Stern drops out of NY gubernatorial race
Howard Stern
- 1994 Truck carrying millions of bees overturns on NY parkway
Battle of Interest
1995 Operation Storm begins in Croatia, the Croatian army attacks territory under the Republic of Serbian Krajina in the largest land battle since WWII
Franjo Tuđman
- 1997 185,000 Teamsters union United Parcel Service drivers walk off the job.
- 1997 In Colombia, international oil company Occidental Petroleum declare force majeure on all oil exports from the Cano Limon field after a series of attacks knocked out a major oil pipeline
- 2002 Soham murders: 10 year old school girls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells go missing from the town of Soham, Cambridgeshire.
Event of Interest
2005 Prime Minister Paul Martin announces that Michaëlle Jean will be Canada's 27th and first black Governor General
Paul Martin
Meeting of Interest
2009 Kim Jong-il meets former president Bill Clinton. He pardons and releases captured American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling who were found guilty of entering the country illegally.
Kim Jong-il
Bill Clinton
Event of Interest
2013 Hassan Rouhani is inaugurated as the President of Iran
Hassan Rouhani
- 2014 Hamas and Israel agree to another 72 hour ceasefire
- 2015 A plague of locusts in Southern Russia prompts a state of emergency to be declared
- 2015 31 people are killed and 100 are injured after floods partially sweep two passenger trains off a bridge in Madhya Pradesh, India
- 2017 Rwandan President Paul Kagame wins a third term with 98.63% of the vote
- 2017 Aldi supermarket withdraws all eggs from sale after chemical fipronil found in eggs from The Netherlands
Assassination Attempt
2018 President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela survives an assassination attempt by drone, live on TV
Nicolás Maduro
- 2019 Gunman kills nine and injures 27 at a bar in Dayton, Ohio, in 2nd mass shooting in 24 hours in the US
- 2019 Frank Zapata is the first person to cross the English Channel by flyboard in 22 minutes
- 2019 China's central bank allows its currency to weaken under usual 7-1 ratio to the US dollar for first time in a decade in response to further US trade tariffs
- 2019 Car explosion kills 20 with 47 injured in Cairo, Egypt, in terrorist-related incident
- 2020 UN says COVID-19 pandemic has created biggest educational disruption in history affecting nearly 1.6 million students in 190 countries, 94% worldwide [1]
- 2020 COVID-19 infection spike forces a return to lockdown in Manila and surrounding provinces in the Philippines, affecting 27 million people as cases pass 100,000
- 2020 Huge explosions at the port of Beirut, Lebanon, kill more than 200 and leaves over 6,000 thousand people injured