August 31

• August 31, 1422
  Henry V, King of England and France, dies
• August 31, 1707
  The Treaty of Altranstädt, which settle the rights of Protestants in Silesia, is signed between Charles XII of Sweden and Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor
• August 31, 1756
  The British at Fort William Henry, New England, surrender to Louis-Joseph de Montcalm of France
• August 31, 1907
  England, Russia and France form the Triple Entente as a counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy
• August 31, 1946
  At the Nuremberg Tribunal, defendants make closing statements before the court: Hermann Goring denies all, Joachim von Ribbentrop hopes America and Great Britain are more successful versus Bolshevism
• August 31, 1957
  Malaysia gains independence from Britain
• August 31, 1962
  Trinidad and Tobago gain independence from Britain
• August 31, 1991
  Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan declare independence from the Soviet Union
• August 31, 1997
  Diana, Princess of Wales, is pronounced dead at 4:00 a.m. after a car crash at midnight in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris

August 30

• August 30, 526
  Theoderic the Great, King of Ostrogoths, dies of dysentery and is succeeded by his grandson Athalaric
• August 30, 1483
  Louis XI, King of France, dies at age 60
• August 30, 1721
  The Peace of Nystad ends the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia, giving Russia considerably more power in the Baltic region
• August 30, 1862
  Union forces are defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, the culmination of an offensive campaign waged by Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia
• August 30, 1869
  U.S. soldier John Wesley Powell completes exploratory river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers, in which becomes the first Europeans to pass through the Grand Canyon
• August 30, 1909
  Burgess Shale, one of the world's most celebrated fossil fields and the earliest fossil beds containing soft-part imprints, is found by palaeontologist Charles Walcott
• August 30, 1963
  Hot Line communications link between Washington DC and Moscow begins in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis
• August 30, 1981
  Mohammad Ali Rajai, president of Iran, and Mohammad Javad Bahonar, prime minister of Iran, are assassinated by a bomb
• August 30, 1991
  American athlete Mike Powell set new world record in long jump, 8.95 m, World Championships in Athletics
• August 30, 1995
  The NATO bombing campaign against Serb artillery positions begins in Bosnia, continuing into October, simultaneously with an ARBiH offensive against the Serb Army around Sarajevo, central Bosnia and Bosnian Krajina

August 29

• August 29, 29
  John the Baptist, an itinerant preacher at the Jordan River, is beheaded by order of Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee and Perea
• August 29, 70
  Jerusalem is sacked and the Temple of Jerusalem, except Western Wall of Herod's complex, is burned after a nine-month Roman siege under Titus during First Jewish-Roman War
• August 29, 284
  Diocletian becomes emperor of Rome beginning a method of numbering years known as Diocletian era
• August 29, 1526
  Turkish forces of Suleiman the Magnificent defeat the Hungarian forces and kill Hungarian King Louis II at the Battle of Mohács, which leads to the partition of Hungary for several centuries
• August 29, 1533
  Francisco Pizarro captures Cusco and completes his conquest of Peru
• August 29, 1632
  English philosopher John Locke is born in Wrington, England
• August 29, 1637
  The Dutch attack and capture Elmina in Ghana, which up to that point was the center of Portuguese activity in West Africa and was mostly used for the slave trade
• August 29, 1655
  Swedish king Charles X Gustav of Sweden occupies Warsaw
• August 29, 1742
  Edmond Hoyle publishes his "Short Treatise" on classic English trick-taking card game whist
• August 29, 1786
  Shay's Rebellion lead by American farmer Daniel Shay in Springfield, Massachusetts begins in order to protest the seizure of property for the non-payment of debt
• August 29, 1791
  The Pandora under Captain Edward Edwards sinks in Endeavour Strait between Australia and New Guinea; 33 crewmen and 4 prisoners die
• August 29, 1842
  Britain and China sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which ends the First Opium War, opens the port of Shanghai to foreigners and cedes Hong Kong to the British
• August 29, 1864
  William Huggins, an English astronomer, discovers chemical composition of nebulae using astronomical spectroscopy
• August 29, 1885
  Gottlieb Daimler receives German patent for a motorcycle
• August 29, 1893
  The "clasp locker", a clumsy slide fastener and forerunner to the zipper is first patented by Whitcomb L. Judson
• August 29, 1897
  First Zionist Congress, opened by Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in Basel, Switzerland, starts program to resettle Jewish people in Palestine
• August 29, 1949
  The Soviet Union successfully detonates an atomic weapon
• August 29, 1966
  The Beatles' give their last public concert, Candlestick Park, San Francisco, California
• August 29, 2005
  Nearly 2000 people are killed, and severe damage is caused along the U.S. Gulf Coast, as Hurricane Katrina strikes coastal areas from Louisiana to Alabama, and travels up the entire state of Mississippi, affecting most of eastern North America

August 28

• August 28, 388
  Magnus Maximus, West Roman Emperor, is executed
• August 28, 476
  The western Roman Empire formally ends as the barbarian general Odoacer deposes the last of the Roman emperors, the young boy Romulus Augustus, marking the end of ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages in Europe
• August 28, 1533
  Atahualpa, last of the Inca rulers, is strangled at the orders of Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro in spite of the chief has already paid his ransom
• August 28, 1664
  Four English warships under Colonel Richard Nicolls sails into New Amsterdam to take control of Brooklyn, a village of mostly English settlers
• August 12, 1676
  Indian chief King Philip, also known as Metacom, is killed by English soldiers, marking the end of the King Philip's War between Indians and colonists
• August 28, 1789
  William Herschel discovers Enceladus, a moon of Saturn
• August 28, 1789
  Sir William Herschel discovers Saturn's moon Enceladus
• August 28, 1830
  Tom Thumb, the first American-built steam locomotive, loses the competition with horse-drawn car bearing passengers during test on Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
• August 28, 1867
  United States occupy Midway Islands in the Pacific
• August 28, 1879
  Cetshwayo kaMpande, last of the great Zulu kings, is captured by the British at the end of the Zulu wars
• August 28, 1923
  The August Uprising in Georgia against Soviet rule begins
• August 28, 1937
  Toyota Motors becomes an independent company
• August 28, 1963
  Martin Luther King Jr, an American leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, gives his I have a dream speech at Lincoln Memorial before 250,000 civil rights supporters
• August 28, 1968
  152 police officers are wounded and about 101 civilians injuried during anti-war protests in Chicago
• August 28, 1996
  Their Royal Highnesses, the Prince and Princess of Wales, are formally divorced at the High Court of Justice in London

August 27

• August 27, 1626
  Danish forces and allies are soundly defeated at Lutter-am-Barenberg by an army of the Catholic League under Czech leader Wallenstein, marking the end of Danish intervention in European wars
• August 27, 1689
  Peter the Great takes power from his half-sister Sophia and assumes Russian throne, starting politics of modernization and westernization of traditionalist social systems
• August 27, 1776
  The Americans are defeated by the British at the Battle of Long Island, New York
• August 27, 1783
  The first unmanned hydrogen balloon flight, made by Jacques Charles, successfully completes its flight in Paris reaching 900 meter altitude
• August 27, 1813
  Napoleon defeat The Allies at the Battle of Dresden
• August 27, 1849
  Venice, under Daniele Manin, surrender to Austrians under Field Marshal Radetzky, following a siege since July 20 after proclaiming independence
• August 27, 1883
  Explosion of volcano with a force of 1,300 megatons on the island Krakatoa causes the tidal waves in Indonesia's Sunda Strait, which claims some 36,417 lives in Java and Sumatra
• August 27, 1896
  Zanzibar loses to England in a 38-minute war, the shortest war in history, which begins after the death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini and the succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash
• August 27, 1913
  Lieutenant Peter Nestrov, of Imperial Russian Air Service, performs a loop in a monoplane at Kiev, the first aerobatic maneuver in an airplane
• August 27, 1928
  Kellogg–Briand Pact is signed by the USA, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Poland, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy in relations with one another
• August 27, 1939
  Heinkel He 178, the world's first aircraft to fly under turbojet power, makes the first flight, piloted by Erich Warsit

August 26

• August 26, 55 BC
  Roman forces under the command of Julius Caesar invade Britain
• August 26, 1071
  The Seljuks under Alp Arslan defeat the Byzantine army under Emperor Romanus IV, who is taken prisoner, at Manzikert in Eastern Turkey and conquer parts of Anatolia and Syria
• August 26, 1346
  King Edward III's 10,000-man English army actively using the English longbow annihilate a French force of 25,000 under King Philip VI at the Battle of Crecy in Normandy
• August 26, 1429
  Joan of Arc makes a triumphant entry into Paris after assault which ends siege of Paris by French army
• August 26, 1648
  The Fronde, a series of civil wars in France between 1648 and 1653, begins when the Parliament of Paris opposes the centralizing policies of Cardinal Mazarin, Louis XIV's chief minister
• August 26, 1768
  The first voyage of James Cook to the south Pacific ocean aboard HMS Endeavour starts to observe the transit of Venus across the Sun and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis from Plymouth
• August 26, 1789
  French National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a fundamental document in the history of human and civil rights
• August 26, 1843
  Charles Thurber patents a typewriter, making some important innovations
• August 26, 1879
  Little War against Spanish rule in Cuba follows the Ten Years' War
• August 26, 1896
  The Philippines' revolutionary secret society Kataastaasan Kagalanggalang Katipunan begins armed conflict with Spanish troops, which eventually ends declaring Philippines free from Spanish rule
• August 26, 1907
  Harry Houdini, a Hungarian-American illusionist, escapes from chains underwater at Aquatic Park in 57 seconds
• August 26, 1914
  Germans defeat Russians in Battle of Tannenberg, resulted in the almost complete destruction of the Russian Second Army, and the suicide of its commanding general, Alexander Samsonov
• August 26, 1976
  First outbreak of the Ebola virus occurs in Yambuku, Zaire
• August 26, 1988
  Mehran Karimi Nasseri, "The terminal man", is stuck in the De Gaulle Airport in Paris, France, where he will continue to reside until August 1, 2006

August 25

• August 25, 325
  First Council of Nicaea ends with condemnation of Arian Christianity and establishing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity
• August 25, 357
  Julian, Augustus in the Roman Empire, beats the Alamanni tribal confederation under paramount king Chnodomar in the Battle of Strasbourg
• August 25, 383
  Gratian, Emperor of Rome, is murdered
• August 25, 1270
  Louis IX, King of France, dies on The Eighth Crusade, which is decimated by the Plague
• August 25, 1499
  Ottoman fleet defeats Venetians at the Battle of Zonchio
• August 25, 1515
  Spanish conquistadors under Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar founds Havana in island of Cuba
• August 25, 1530
  Ivan the Terrible, the first tsar of Russia, is born
• August 25, 1543
  Portuguese ships land on the Japanese Island of Tanegashima and introduce the arquebus to Japan beginning the Nanban trade period between Portugal and Japan
• August 25, 1580
  Spain defeat Portugal in the Battle of Alcântara, the decisive battle of the Spanish King Philip II for the Portuguese throne
• August 25, 1609
  Galileo demonstrated his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers
• August 25, 1689
  English–allied Iroquois takes Montreal
• August 25, 1758
  The Prussians lose 12,800 men and the Russians lose 18,000 men during Battle of Zorndorf, which ends with inconclusive results
• August 25, 1765
  In protest over the stamp tax, American colonists sack and burn the home of Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson
• August 25, 1776
  David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian, dies
• August 25, 1819
  James Watt, a Scottish inventor, dies
• August 25, 1825
  Uruguay, supported by the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, declares independence from Brazil
• August 25, 1830
  Theatergoers who have just watched a nationalistic opera in Brussels start Belgium revolts against Netherlands
• August 25, 1835
  New York Sun publishes Moon hoax story, a series of six articles about the supposed discovery of life and even civilization on the Moon
• August 25, 1875
  Matthew Webb becomes the first person to swim across the English Channel, traveling from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 21 hours and 45 min
• August 25, 1900
  Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, dies
• August 25, 1944
  French General Charles de Gaulle enters liberated Paris
• August 25, 1981
  Voyager 2 makes the closest approach to Saturn
• August 25, 1989
  First close up pictures of Neptune are taken by spacecraft Voyager 2
• August 25, 1991
  Belarus declares independence from Soviet Union and changes the name to the Republic of Belarus