August 23

• August 23, 406
  The Roman army under Stilicho beat the Barbarians and executes his Gothic king Radagaisus
• August 23, 1305
  William Wallace, one of the main leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence, is hanged, drawn and quartered in London
• August 23, 1514
  The Ottoman Empire under Selim I gains decisive victory against a Persian army in the Battle of Chaldiran and wrests Eastern Anatolia from the Safavids
• August 23, 1617
  The first one-way street is opened in alleys near the River Thames in London
• August 23, 1689
  French cross the Rhine, destroying Baden-Baden by fire during Nine Years' War
• August 23, 1775
  Britain's King George III refuses the American colonies' offer of peace and proclaims the American colonies in a state of "open and avowed rebellion"
• August 23, 1833
  Slavery Abolition Act bans slavery throughout the British Empire and frees some 700,000 slaves, including those in the West Indies
• August 23, 1866
  Peace of Prague, lenient toward the Austrian Empire, ends the Austro-Prussian war and leads to the creation of the North German Confederation with Prussia as the only major power
• August 23, 1903
  In Russia the Bolsheviks, who ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Mensheviks form from the breakup of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party as a result of a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Juliy Martov
• August 23, 1939
  Germany and the Soviet Union sign Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with secret protocol, which defines eastern Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, and the Romanian province of Bessarabia as Soviet domains of influence and western Poland and Lithuania as Germany's one
• August 23, 1942
  German forces attack Stalingrad in Soviet Union, starting 5-month-long battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, with combined casualties amounting to nearly two million
• August 23, 1943
  Soviet forces recapture Kharkiv, the last stage of the Battle of Kursk, an important engagement between German and Soviet forces after which Red Army gains the initiative against the German Wehrmacht
• August 23, 1944
  Romania is liberated and King Michael unconditionally surrenders to the Allies
• August 23, 1962
  Mariner 2, an American space probe to Venus, and the first robotic space probe to conduct a successful planetary encounter, is launched
• August 23, 1996
  Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, allegedly writes "The Declaration of Jihad on the Americans Occupying the Country of the Two Sacred Places," his first open call for war
• August 23, 2005
  Israel's unilateral disengagement from 25 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and West Bank ends
• August 23, 2006
  In Austria, Natascha Kampusch manages to escape after being kidnapped eight years ago by Wolfgang Priklopil who locked her up in his cellar; Priklopil commits suicide by throwing himself in front of a train