August 20

• August 20, 1191
  Crusader King Richard I executes some 2,700 Muslim prisoners in Acre
• August 20, 1530
  Hayreddin Barbarossa, a Barbary pirate, unites Algeria and Tunisia as military states under the Ottoman caliphate and becomes admiral of the Ottoman fleet
• August 20, 1619
  The first African slaves arrive to North America aboard a Dutch privateer and dock in Jamestown, Virginia, with twenty human captives among its cargo
• August 20, 1672
  Johan de Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland and key figure in Dutch politics, is assassinated by a carefully organized lynch mob by a shot in the neck, and his naked body is hanged and mutilated beside body of his brother Cornelis de Witt
• August 20, 1745
  Bonnie Prince Charlie occupies Blair Castle, Scotland
• August 20, 1847
  General Winfield Scott wins the Battle of Churubusco, only 8 kilometers away from Mexico City
• August 20, 1860
  Robert O'Hara Burke leads a group of 15 men, 27 camels and 23 horses out of Melbourne on an expedition to cross Australia
• August 20, 1913
  Adolphe Pégoud becomes the first pilot to parachute from an aircraft
• August 20, 1939
  Soviet forces under Lieutenant General Georgi Zhukov successfully counterattack Japanese invaders at Nomanhan in the Mongolian People's Republic on the border with Manchukuo
• August 20, 1940
  Ramón Mercader, agent of Josef Stalin, fatally stabs Leon Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico City
• August 20, 1956
  The Calder Hall atomic power station begins operation in Cumberland, Great Britain, generating up to 90,000 kilowatts of power and manufacturing plutonium becoming the world's first power station to generate electricity on an industrial scale
• August 20, 2011
  In the Battle of Tripoli, Libyan rebels take control the nation's capital, effectively overthrowing the government of Muammar Gaddafi

August 6

• August 6, 258
  Pope Sixtus II, bishop of Rome, is beheaded upon orders of Emperor Valerian
• August 6, 1517
  Francysk Skaryna, a Belarusian humanist and one of the first book printers in Eastern Europe, releases in Prague The Psalter, his first edition in the Old Belarusian language
• August 6, 1753
  Georg Richmann, German physicist, dies of electrocution in St. Petersburg, Russia, during an attempt to duplicate Benjamin Franklin's "sentry box" experiment becoming the first person in history to die while conducting electrical experiments
• August 6, 1774
  Mother Ann Lee, founder of the Shaker Movement, arrives in New York
• August 6, 1806
  The Holy Roman Empire goes out of existence after the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II abdicates as a consequence of the Treaty of Pressburg and reorganizing Germany under a Napoleon
• August 6, 1825
  Bolivia gains independence from Peru with Latin America political leader Simón Bolívar as the first president after 15 years of war
• August 6, 1870
  Prussia beat France in the Battle of Spicheren
• August 6, 1888
  Martha Tabram, an English prostitute, is murdered by an unknown assailant, believed to be Jack the Ripper, a serial killer, who murdered from 5 to 11 women between August and November in London's Whitechapel district
• August 6, 1890
  Convicted murderer William Kemmler, senteced to death at Auburn State Prison in New York for murdering his lover, Matilda Ziegler, with an axe, becomes the first person to be executed in the electric chair
• August 6, 1926
  Warner Bros premieres Vitaphone sound-on-disc movie system in New York, Don Juan with John Barrymore shown
• August 6, 1945
  American airmen drop atomic bomb, developed by the Manhattan Project, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing from 90,000 to 166,000 people, which becomes together with bomb dropped on another Japanese city, Nagasaki, the only use of nuclear weapons in war
• August 6, 1962
  Jamaica gains independence from Britain
• August 6, 1978
  Pope Paul VI dies at age 80 of heart attack at summer residence in Castelgandolfo
• August 6, 1990
  United Nations Security Council votes 13-0 to place economic sanctions against Iraq in response to its invasion of Kuwait
• August 6, 1996
  NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite, found in Allan Hills, Antarctica, and thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms

July 13

• July 13, 432 BC
  The Greek astronomer Meton of Athens invents the Metonic cycle for astronomy and calendar studies
• July 13, 1260
  Lithuanians defeat the joint forces of the Teutonic Knights from Prussia and Livonian Order from Livonia at the Battle of Durbe during the Livonian Crusade
• July 13, 1573
  After heavy losses on both sides the Siege of Haarlem ends in a Spanish victory
• July 13, 1585
  A group of 108 English colonists, led by Sir Richard Grenville, reach Roanoke Island in North Carolina and establish the first England's foothold in the New World
• July 13, 1643
  In England, Parliamentarians, led by Sir William Waller, are defeated by royalist troops under Lord Wilmot in the Battle of Roundway Down
• July 13, 1791
  The bones of the greatest French satirist, philosopher, and writer, Voltaire are enshrined in the Panthéon in Paris
• July 13, 1793
  French revolutionary writer Jean Paul Marat is stabbed to death in his bath by a young woman Charlotte Corday
• July 13, 1794
  Robespierre boycotts the Committee of Public Safety and the National convention after being denounced as a dictator
• July 13, 1832
  Henry Schoolcraft, an American geographer and geologist, discovers the source of the Mississippi River in Minnesota
• July 13, 1863
  Antiabolitionist Irish longshoremen rampage against blacks in the deadly Draft Riots, during which mobs lynched a black man and torched the Colored Orphan Asylum, in New York City in response to President Lincoln's announcement of military conscription
• July 13, 1878
  The Treaty of Berlin amended the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, which has ended the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 and divides the Balkans among European powers
• July 13, 1985
  Live Aid rock concert is staged in London, Philadelphia, Moscow and Sydney to raise for famine relief in Ethiopia
• July 13, 1995
  Srebrenica massacre, the genocidal killing of more than 8,000 Bosniaks during the Bosnian War, ends
• July 13, 2014
  The 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil is won by Germany

June 19

• June 19, 1821
  The Ottomans defeat the Greeks at the Battle of Dragasani
• June 19, 1862
  Congress prohibits slavery in all current and future United States territories
• June 19, 1867
  Mexican Emperor Maximilian is executed on the orders of Benito Juárez by a firing squad in Queretaro
• June 19, 1953
  Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets, are executed by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York
• June 19, 1961
  Kuwait regains complete independence from Britain
• June 19, 2014
  King Juan Carlos I of Spain abdicates in favor of his son, who ascends the Spanish throne as King Felipe VI

June 16

• June 16, 1487
  Henry VII beat John de la Pole at the Battle at Stoke, the last battle of the Wars of the Roses
• June 16, 1671
  Stenka Razin, Cossack rebel leader, is tortured and executed in Moscow
• June 16, 1755
  British capture Fort Beauséjour during French and Indian War and expel the Acadians, who move to destinations like Maine and Louisiana
• June 16, 1779
  Spain, in support of the US, declares war on England
• June 16, 1815
  Napoleon defeat the Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Ligny, Belgium
• June 16, 1824
  The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is formed at Old Slaughter's Coffee House in London under the direction of Arthur Broome
• June 16, 1875
  In Paris, France, the first stone is laid for the Sacré-Cœur basilica in Montmartre, dedicated in honor of casualties during the Franco-Prussian War
• June 16, 1903
  Ford Motor Company, an American automaker, incorporates in Detroit
• June 16, 1940
  Marshal Philippe Pétain takes over the government, and immediately calls for a ceasefire after Paul Reynaud resigns as Prime Minister of France
• June 16, 1960
  Psycho, a psychological thriller-horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, considered one of the greatest films of all time, is released
• June 16, 1963
  Valentina Tereshkova from Soviet Union becomes the first woman in space
• June 16, 1976
  Student uprisings begin in Soweto, South Africa, in response to the introduction of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in local schools
• June 16, 1977
  Leonid Brezhnev is named president of USSR
• June 16, 1989
  A crowd of 250,000 gathers at Heroes Square in Budapest for the historic reburial of Imre Nagy, the former Hungarian prime minister who had been executed in 1958
• June 16, 2009
  The first summit of BRICS economic bloc, an international association of emerging national economies created by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, begins

March 25

• March 25, 1420
  Jan Zizka, Czech general and Hussite leader, defeats the Catholic forces at the Battle of Sudom in southern Bohemia, the first battle of the Hussite wars
• March 25, 1537
  The Fifth Lithuanian war with Russia ends with a peace treaty wherein Gomel is granted to Lithuania, while Muscovy kept Sebezh and Velizh
• March 25, 1655
  Christiaan Huygens, Dutch inventor and astronomer, uses a 50 power refracting telescope, designed himself, to study Rings of Saturn and discover Titan, the Saturn's largest satellite
• March 25, 1753
  Voltaire leaves the court of Frederik II of Prussia
• March 25, 1807
  William Wilberforce, an English politician and philanthropist, pilots a slave-trade abolition bill through the British House of Commons, making the slave trade illegal anywhere in the Empire
• March 25, 1821
  Greek War of Independence, which made Greece the first country to break away from the Ottoman Empire, begins raising of the banner with the cross in the Monastery of Agia Lavra
• March 25, 1843
  Thames Tunnel, the first tunnel underneath a navigable river, is opened 18 years after construction began
• March 25, 1895
  Italian troops invade Abyssinia, starting First Italo-Ethiopian War
• March 25, 1911
  The Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burns down, killing 145 workers and becoming the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city
• March 25, 1918
  Belarusian National Council, an assembly of different Belarusian political powers, issues a Third Constituent Charter declaring the independence of Belarus under German occupation
• March 25, 1949
  Hanns Albin Rauter, German SS-commandant in Netherlands, is executed at age 54 according with sentence of Dutch court
• March 25, 1957
  Treaty of Rome establishes European Economic Community, with West Germany, Italy, France, and the Benelux as the founding members, which would eventually lead to the European Union
• March 25, 1988
  The Candle Demonstration in Bratislava, Slovakia is the first mass demonstration of the 1980s against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia
• March 25, 2008
  Iraqi forces begin the first major operation to be planned by the Iraqi Army since the invasion of 2003 and crack down on Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi forces in Basra and Sadr City, which results in more than 1,000 casualties in six days of heavy fighting
• March 25, 2013
  The European Union agrees to a 10 billion economic bailout for Cyprus, equally split between the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism, the European Financial Stability Facility, and the International Monetary Fund, ending Cypriot financial crisis