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 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 24

• August 24, 79
  The eruption of Mount Vesuvius buries the Roman settlements of Pompeii and Herculaneum under 4 to 6 meters of ash and kills 33,000 inhabitants of the town-cities
• August 24, 410
  Rome is occupied and sacked by Alaric I, King of the Visigoths, for the first time since 390 BC
• August 24, 1109
  In the Battle of Hundsfeld, Boleslaus III Wrymouth Prince of Poland defeats Emperor Henry V, incited by Bolesław's half-brother Zbigniew
• August 24, 1215
  Pope Innocent III, following a request from King John, declares the Magna Carta annulled
• August 24, 1217
  Eustace the Monk, a French mercenary and pirate, is executed by English troops
• August 24, 1516
  The Ottomans under Selim I with the support of artillery defeat the Mamluks at Battle of Marj Dabiq and gain control of Egypt, Arabia, and the Levant
• August 24, 1572
  Catherine de' Medici instigates Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre in Paris in which French protestant leader Gaspard de Coligny and thousands of Calvinist Huguenots are killed throughout France by Roman Catholic mob
• August 24, 1662
  An Act of Uniformity, a part of the Clarendon Code, is passed by the English Parliament and required that England's college fellows and clergymen accept the newly published Book of Common Prayer
• August 24, 1690
  Job Charnock, a servant and administrator of the English East India Company, founds the city of Kolkata in East India, after the Mughal emperor transfer taxation rights to the East India Company
• August 24, 1751
  Thomas Colley, an English chimney sweep, is executed in England for drowning a supposed witch
• August 24, 1780
  King Louis XVI abolish torture as a means to get suspects to confess, as part of his reforms in France in accordance with Enlightenment ideas
• August 24, 1814
  The United States Capitol and White House in Washington D.C. are burned and sacked by British General Robert Ross and Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn during War of 1812
• August 24, 1821
  Mexico gains independence from Spain with the Treaty of Córdoba and becomes a constitutional monarchy after 11 years of war
• August 24, 1824
  Simon Bolivar's army beat the Spanish in Peru in the Battle of Junín
• August 24, 1853
  First potato chips prepared by Chef George Crum in Saratoga Springs, New York
• August 24, 1857
  The New York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company fails, sparking the Panic of 1857, the first world-wide economic crisis
• August 24, 1936
  Australian Antarctic Territory is created
• August 24, 1940
  Edward R. Murrow, an American broadcast journalist, starts a series of radio news broadcasts from London during the Blitz, which follow by millions of listeners in the United States
• August 24, 1991
  Ukraine declares independence from the USSR
• August 24, 2006
  The International Astronomical Union defines 'planet' at its 26th General Assembly, demoting Pluto to the status of 'dwarf planet' more than 70 years after its discovery

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

August 22

• August 22, 634
  Abu Bakr, successor of Mohammed and first Caliph, dies; Umar, a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, becomes the second Caliph
• August 22, 1138
  The english defeat Scots at the battle of the Standard
• August 22, 1236
  Volkwin, the Master of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, is defeated and killed by the Samogitians at the Battle of Saule which causes merging the order into the Teutonic Order
• August 22, 1350
  Philip VI of Valois, King of France, dies; John II of France succeeds
• August 22, 1485
  England's King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenet kings, is killed at the Battle of Bosworth Field, that ends the War of the Roses and establishes the Tudor dynasty in England
• August 22, 1614
  Trades people under Vincent Fettmilch chase and plunder Jews out of ghetto in Frankfurt
• August 22, 1642
  Civil war in England, resulted in the establishment of the supremacy of Parliament over the king, begins as King Charles I declared war on the Puritan Parliament at Nottingham
• August 22, 1676
  Ole Rømer, a Danish astronomer, publishes the first measurement of the speed of light based on the times of the eclipses of Io, the moon of Jupiter
• August 22, 1717
  The Austrian army under Eugene of Savoy force the Turkish army out of Belgrade, ending the Turkish revival in the Balkans
• August 22, 1787
  Inventor John Fitch demonstrates his steamboat, the Perseverance, on the Delaware River to delegates of the Continental Congress
• August 22, 1791
  Haitian Revolution, the only slave revolt which led to the founding of a state, begins in the French colony of Saint-Domingue
• August 22, 1831
  Nat Turner's Rebellion, a slave rebellion in Virginia, which claimed from 55 to 65 people, is suppressed by white militias
• August 22, 1849
  Earliest recorded air raid occurs, as Austria employs 200 balloons to deliver ordinance against Venice
• February 12, 1851
  Gold fields are discovered by gold prospector Edward Hargraves in New South Wales, Australia, starting Victorian gold rush
• August 22, 1864
  In Geneva, Switzerland, representatives of 12 nations agreed to sign the First Geneva Convention "for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded in Armies in the Field"
• August 22, 1875
  Russia recognizes Japan's control over the 4 southernmost Kuril Islands and by the Treaty of Saint Petersburg and gets all rights over Sakhalin in exchange
• August 22, 1910
  Imperial Japan annexes Korea bringing to a close the Joseon Dynasty and starting the modernization and industrialization in the peninsula
• August 22, 1932
  The British Broadcasting Corporation begins experimental regular TV broadcasts
• August 22, 1942
  Brazil declares war on Germany
• August 22, 1969
  Hurricane Camille strikes U.S. Gulf Coast and kills 255
• August 22, 2006
  The International Congress of Mathematicians awards Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman the Fields Medal for proving the Poincare conjecture, one of seven Millennium Prize Problems, but Perelman refuses the medal
• August 22, 2007
  Myanmar government arrests thirteen dissidents who led protests against huge rises in fuel prices
• August 22, 2008
  Pirates hijack German, Iranian, and Japanese cargo ships off the coast of Somalia, in seven such attacks since June 20

August 19

• August 19, 1099
  Crusaders led by Frankish knight Godfrey of Bouillon beat Fatimid forces at Battle of Ascalon
• August 19, 1399
  King Richard II of England surrenders to his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who returns to England to claim his inherited lands
• August 19, 1493
  Maximilian I succeeds his father Frederick III, who bleeds to death after the amputation of his left leg, as Holy Roman Emperor
• August 19, 1524
  Emperor Charles V's troops besiege Marseille
• August 19, 1692
  Five women are hanged in Salem, Massachusetts after being convicted of the crime of witchcraft
• August 19, 1700
  Russia declares war on Sweden
• August 19, 1772
  Gustav III of Sweden eliminates the rule of parties, becoming almost an absolute monarch
• August 19, 1779
  Americans under Major Henry Lee take the British garrison at Paulus Hook, New Jersey
• August 19, 1821
  Navarino Massacre, a massacre of Turkish civilian population during Greek War of Independence, occurs
• August 19, 1871
  Orville Wright, aviation pioneer, is born in Dayton, Ohio
• August 19, 1934
  One day before the death of Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg, Chancellor of Germany Hitler and his cabinet issue a decree, that dissolves the office of the president and make Hitler Führer of Germany
• August 19, 1942
  United States Marines land on Guadalcanal, Solomon Island starting the first American offensive in Pacific in World War II
• August 19, 1953
  Mohammad Mosaddegh, Prime Minister of Iran and the leading champion of secular democracy, is deposed in Iran by the British MI6 and the American CIA
• August 19, 1988
  Iran and Iraq begin a cease-fire after eight years of war
• August 19, 1991
  Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is put under house arrest while vacationing in the Crimea during a coup, during the failed coup attempt, led by Vice President Gennady Yanayev and seven hard-liners, and collapsed in less than 72 hours

August 18

• August 18, 1227
  Genghis Khan, a Mongol conqueror, dies, which triggers subsequent division of Mongol empire among his sons
• August 18, 1459
  City of Smederevo falls under the Turks after three-months siege completing the Ottoman conquest of Serbia
• August 18, 1588
  A storm strikes the remaining 60 ships of the Spanish Armada under the Duke Alonso Pérez de Guzmán after which only 11 are left. Many of the ships go to Ireland where most of the Spaniards are killed by the English
• August 18, 1759
  The French fleet is destroyed by the British under Admiral Edward Boscawen, at the battle of Lagos Bay in southern Portugal
• August 18, 1807
  Robert Stevenson begins work on the 35-meters Bell Rock lighthouse at the mouth of Scotland's Firth of Forth, the world's oldest surviving sea-washed lighthouse
• August 18, 1838
  United States Exploring Expedition, an exploring and surveying expedition of the Pacific Ocean and surrounding lands, led by Charles Wilkes, departs from Hampton Roads
• August 18, 1846
  General Stephen W. Kearny proclaims all of New Mexico a territory of the United States and declares himself the military governor of the New Mexico Territory shortly after Capture of Santa Fe
• August 18, 1851
  The Platine War for the hegemony over South America begins between the Argentine Confederation and Empire of Brazil and its alliance
• August 18, 1862
  Dakota War of 1862 begins in Minnesota four young Sioux murder five white settlers at Acton Township, Minnesota
• August 18, 1870
  Prussian forces defeat the French at the Battle of Gravelotte, the largest battle during the Franco–Prussian War
• August 18, 1920
  Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women right to vote, is ratified
• August 18, 1920
  Serbian geophysicist and astronomer Milutin Milanković links Earth's periodic long-term climate changes with orbital eccentricity and full cycles of Earth's axis precession, later called Milankovitch cycles
• August 18, 1955
  First Sudanese Civil War begins between the northern part of Sudan and the southern Sudan region

August 15

• August 15, 636
  At the Battle at Yarmuk Islamic forces under Khalid ibn al-Walid beat a Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius and gain control of Syria and Palestine
• August 15, 718
  The combined Byzantine–Bulgarian forces decisively defeat Umayyad navy using Greek fire after thirteen months of siege of Constantinople, stopping the Arab threat in Eastern Europe
• August 15, 778
  The Basques, an ethnic group from western end of the Pyrenees, beat forces of Charlemagne and Roland, prefect of the Breton March, at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass
• August 15, 1040
  Macbeth kills Duncan I at Pitgaveny and becomes the King of the Scots
• August 15, 1057
  Macbeth, the King of Scotland, is mortally wounded at the Battle of Lumphanan, by Malcolm Canmore, the eldest son of King Duncan I, who was killed by Macbeth 17 years earlier
• August 15, 1261
  Constantinople falls to Michael VIII Palaiologos who transforms the Empire of Nicaea into a restored Byzantine Empire
• August 15, 1511
  Malacca, the capital of the Sultanate of Malacca and center of East Indian spice trade, is captured by Portuguese general Afonso de Albuquerque
• August 15, 1519
  Panama City is founded
• August 15, 1549
  Francis Xavier, a co-founder of the Society of Jesus, lands in Kagoshima with the first Portuguese Jesuit missionary to rich Japan
• August 15, 1598
  Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, leads an Irish force to victory over the British at Battle of Yellow Ford
• August 15, 1649
  Oliver Cromwell lands in Ireland beginning the conquest of Ireland
• August 15, 1760
  Frederick II, king of Prussia, defeats the Austrians at the Battle of Liegnitz
• August 15, 1769
  Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France and continental Europe, is born on the island of Corsica
• August 15, 1799
  Combined army of Austrians and Imperial Russians under Field Marshal Alexander Suvorov beat French Revolutionary Army at Novi Ligure, Italy, recapturing lands taken by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1796
• August 15, 1806
  Construction of Arc de Triomphe, a triumphal arch in Paris, starts by order of Napoleon in honor of the victory at Austerlitz
• August 15, 1865
  Sir Joseph Lister discovers the antiseptic process while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, which led to a reduction in post-operative infections
• August 15, 1867
  Second Reform Bill extends suffrage in England giving the vote to the working classes
• August 15, 1914
  Panama Canal, one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects, officially opens in Panama, connecting the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean
• August 15, 1935
  Famed American aviator Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers are killed in plane crash in Alaska
• August 15, 1944
  The Allies launch Operation Anvil, as a second Allied invasion force under Lieutenant-General Jacob Devers lands on the Mediterranean coast of France between Cannes and Toulon
• August 15, 1947
  The greater Indian subcontinent formed by the Partition of India gain independence from the British Empire as Dominion of India, with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru as the first Prime Minister
• August 15, 1948
  Republic of Korea, South Korea, is proclaimed by an anti-Communist Syngman Rhee, who has been backed and appointed by the United States as head of the provisional government
• August 15, 1969
  Woodstock Music and Art Fair, widely regarded as a pivotal moment in popular music history, opens in New York State
• August 15, 1971
  US President Richard Nixon's administration refuses to settle foreign debts in gold at $35 per ounce, dropping the gold standard, and allowing the dollar to float in foreign exchanges, also imposes a 90-day wage and price freeze

August 13

• August 13, 604
  Chinese emperor Wen is murdered by Yang, his son, who succeeds the throne
• August 13, 1415
  King Henry V of England takes his army across the English Channel and lays siege on Port Harfleur in Normandy
• August 13, 1521
  Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortez conquers the Mexican city of Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City, after an 85-day battle and completes conquest of Aztec Empire
• August 13, 1624
  French King Louis XIII names Cardinal Richelieu his first minister who becomes the world's first Prime Minister and begins to transform France into a centralized state
• August 13, 1630
  Emperor Frederick II fires Albrecht von Wallenstein, his best military commander
• August 13, 1642
  Christiaan Huygens, a prominent Dutch mathematician, discovers the Martian south polar cap
• August 13, 1645
  At Brömsebro peace is signed between Sweden and Denmark. Sweden gains the islands of Gotland and Halland from Denmark, Norway cedes to Sweden the northern provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen
• August 13, 1704
  The Battle of Blenheim, the turning point of the War of the Spanish Succession, results in decisive English and Austrian forces victory under Prince Eugene of Savoy and Duke of Marlborough over the Franco-Bavarian army
• August 13, 1787
  The Russian ambassador to the Ottomans, Yakov Bulgakov, is thrown into prison and the Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia starting the Russo–Turkish War of 1787–1792
• August 13, 1792
  Louis XVI of France is declared an enemy of the people and imprisoned with the French royal family, including Marie Antoinette, by revolutionaries
• August 13, 1814
  Netherland is signed to stop the transport of slaves and returns its colonial possessions before the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars by Treaty of London
• August 13, 1826
  Alexander Gordon Laing, British Army Major, crosses on camel the Sahara Desert from Tripoli and becomes the first European to enter the fabled city of Timbuktu in Mali
• August 13, 1849
  Hungary's General Artúr Görgey surrender to the Russian forces, who invaded Hungary to help Austrian Empire in struggle against Hungarian rebellions
• August 13, 1868
  In Arica, Peru, a magnitude 8.5-9.0 earthquake occurs, with catastrophic tsunamis killing 25,000 in South America
• August 13, 1876
  Richard Wagner's monumental epic, "Der Ring des Nibelungen" is first performed in its entirety at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Bavaria, Germany
• August 13, 1898
  Manila, the capital of the Philippines, falls to the United States Army under Admiral George Dewey
• August 13, 1913
  Harry Brearley, an English metallurgist, produces the first stainless steel
• August 13, 1918
  Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is established as a public company for aircraft-engine production in Germany
• August 13, 1923
  Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is elected president of the newly established Republic of Turkey
• August 13, 1960
  Central African Republic proclaims independence from France
• August 13, 1961
  The units of the East German army close the border and begin building of the Berlin Wall

August 12

• August 12, 30 BC
  Cleopatra, the most famous queen and the last active pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, kills herself by inducing an Egyptian cobra to bite her after her beloved Mark Antony's suicide
• August 12, 1093
  In England the foundation stone for Durham Cathedral is laid down
• August 12, 1332
  Rebels supporting the Balliol beat forces of the infant David II, the son of Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Dupplin Moor in Scotland
• August 12, 1399
  Battle of the Vorskla River, a major battle between joint armies of Tokhtamysh and Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania, and the Tatars, under Edigu and Temur Qutlugh, ends in a decisive Tatar victory
• August 12, 1508
  Juan Ponce de León, a Spanish explorer, arrives to New World to conquer the Puerto Rico
• August 12, 1648
  Seven-year-old Mehmed IV succeeds Ibrahim in the Ottoman House of Osman
• August 12, 1687
  At the Battle of Mohács, Hungary, the forces of Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, commanded by Charles of Lorraine defeated the Turks
• August 12, 1759
  Forces of Frederick the Great are defeated by combined army of Russians and Austrians under Pyotr Saltykov at Kunersdorf, which gives the victors the opportunity to march against Berlin
• August 12, 1812
  British commander the Duke of Wellington occupies Madrid, Spain, forcing out Joseph Bonaparte
• August 12, 1851
  Isaac Singer, the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company, is granted a patent for his sewing machine
• August 12, 1883
  The last quagga, subspecies of the plains zebra, dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam
• August 12, 1896
  Gold is discovered at Dawson on the Klondike River in Alaska, triggering Klondike Gold Rush in Canada
• August 12, 1981
  At the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, and in Boca Raton, Florida, IBM announces the model 5150, called IBM Personal Computer, a progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform
• August 12, 1982
  Mexico announces it is unable to pay its large foreign debt, triggering a debt crisis that quickly spreads throughout Latin America
• August 12, 1985
  Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes in Japan, killing 520 people becoming the worst single-aircraft disaster in history
• August 12, 1990
  The largest and most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex, called "Sue", is discovered near Faith, South Dakota
• August 12, 2000
  The Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea, resulting in the deaths of all 118 men on board

August 11

• August 11, 3114 BC
  The Mayan calendar, a system of calendars consisting of several counts of different lengths, begins in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica
• August 11, 117
  The Roman army of Syria hail its legate, Hadrian, as emperor, which made the senate's formal acceptance an almost meaningless event
• August 11, 991
  Danes under Olaf Tryggvason defeat Anglo-Saxons forces at Battle of Maldon and kill Ealdorman of Essex Byrhtnoth
• August 11, 1804
  Austrian Empire is proclaimed by Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, who assumes the title of the first Emperor of Austria, as a reaction to Napoleon making himself an emperor
• August 11, 1918
  Battle of Amiens, the opening phase of the Allied offensive against Germany, known as the Hundred Days Offensive, ends with Allied victory
• August 11, 1960
  Chad declares independence from France and becomes one of seventeen nations in Africa to gain independence in 1960, what became known as Year of Africa
• August 11, 1966
  Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation ends after Indonesian General Suharto sign peace agreement with Malaysia
• August 11, 1984
  United States President Ronald Reagan, during a voice check for a radio broadcast remarks "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes"
• August 11, 2003
  A heat wave in Paris causes temperatures up to 44 degrees C
• August 11, 2009
  The Perseid meteor showers peak at 200 observations per hour

August 10

• August 10, 843
  Sons of Louis the Pious divide Charlemagne's Empire by Treaty of Verdun, so Charles the Bald receives the western portion, which later became France, Louis the German get eastern lands, later the medieval kingdom of Germany, and Lothair I receives the central part
• August 10, 1497
  John Cabot told King Henry VII of his trip to "Asia" after his return from his first successful journey to the Labrador coast
• August 10, 1500
  Portuguese explorer Diogo Dias discovers Madagascar
• August 10, 1539
  King Francis I of France signs edict known as Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts, declaring that all official documents are to be written in French, not Latin
• August 10, 1557
  Spanish and English troops in alliance defeat the French at the Battle of St. Quentin (San Quintino)
• August 10, 1582
  Russia ends its 25-year war with Poland and cedes Livonia and Estonia to Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth losing access to the Baltic
• August 10, 1627
  Cardinal Richelieu begins a siege to Protestant La Rochelle, a Huguenot stronghold
• August 10, 1628
  The Swedish 69-meter warship Vasa capsizes and sinks in Stockholm harbor on her maiden voyage because the ballast is insufficient to counterweight the 64 guns and ballast
• August 10, 1675
  King of England Charles II lays the foundation stone of Royal Observatory in Greenwich, an important institution in the history of astronomy and navigation
• August 10, 1678
  The Treaty of Nijmegen ends the hostilities with France and gives to France control over the region of the Franche-Comté
• August 10, 1680
  In New Mexico Popé, a Tewa religious leader, leads rebellion of Pueblo Indians against Spaniads
• August 10, 1755
  The Great Upheaval, forced population transfer of the French Acadian population from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, begins
• August 10, 1779
  Louis XVI of France frees the last remaining serfs on royal land
• August 10, 1787
  Mozart completes his composition Eine Kleine Nachtmusik
• August 10, 1792
  Some 20,000 Parisians attack the Tuileries palace of Louis XVI at the instigation of Georges Jacques Danton and massacre some 600 guardsmen after Louis orders his Swiss guard to stop firing on the people
• August 10, 1809
  Quito, the seat of a real audiencia of Spain in modern-day Ecuador, declares independence from Spain
• August 10, 1861
  Union general Nathaniel Lyon the first Union general to be killed in the American Civil War, at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri, which ends with a Confederate victory
• August 10, 1913
  Second Balkan War ends with Treaty of Bucharest, which confirms territorial acquisitions of Serbia, Greece, and Bulgaria at the expense of Ottoman Empire during the First and Second Balkan Wars
• August 10, 1927
  United States President Calvin Coolidge formally dedicates the Mount Rushmore site
• August 10, 2010
  The World Health Organization declares the H1N1 influenza pandemic over, saying worldwide flu activity has returned to typical seasonal patterns