August 17

• August 17, 1743
  By the Treaty of Åbo, Sweden cedes southeast Finland to Russia, ending Sweden's failed war with Russia
• August 17, 1786
  Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, dies, and his nephew Frederick William II succeeds
• August 17, 1807
  Robert Fulton's North River Steamboat, popularly known as the Clermont, begin heading up New York's Hudson River on its successful round-trip to Albany and becomes the first commercially successful steamboat
• August 17, 1812
  Napoleon Bonaparte's army defeats the Russians at the Battle of Smolensk during the Russian retreat to Moscow
• August 17, 1869
  Oxford beats Harvard on the Thames River in the first international boat race
• August 17, 1877
  Asaph Hall, an American astronomer, discovered the Mars moon Phobos
• August 17, 1945
  Indonesia declares independence from Netherlands
• August 17, 1960
  Gabon gains independence from France
• August 17, 1970
  Venera 7, the first man-made spacecraft to land successfully on another planet, and to transmit data from there back to Earth, is launched by USSR
• August 17, 1982
  The first commercially available compact discs are released to the public in Germany
• August 17, 1987
  Rudolf Hess, a prominent politician in Nazi Germany, commits suicide by hanging himself with an electrical flex in his cell at age 93 in Spandau Prison in Berlin, Germany, where he served 46 years
• August 17, 1998
  Decline in commodity prices triggers financial crisis in Russia and discredits the government of President Boris Yeltsin
• August 17, 2008
  Michael Phelps wins his record eighth gold medal of the Beijing Games, in the 4x100 medley relay, in record time of 3:29.34 and holds the record for most gold medals at an Olympics event

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

July 5

• July 5, 1811
  The congress of Venezuela declares the nation's independence from Spain making Venezuela the first to declare independence during Latin American wars of independence when most of the Latin American colonies free themselves from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires
• July 5, 1830
  France starts a 40 year conquest of Algeria with a naval bombardment by a fleet under Admiral Duperré, and a landing by troops
• July 5, 1841
  Thomas Cook, an English entrepreneur, opens the first travel agency as he arranged for the rail company to charge one shilling per person for rail tickets and food for a group of 540 temperance campaigners from Leicester to a rally in Loughborough
• July 5, 1865
  William Booth, a British Methodist preacher, founds the Salvation Army in east London to serve the poor and homeless
• July 5, 1932
  António de Oliveira Salazar, a Portuguese professor and politician, becomes dictator of fascist Portugal
• July 5, 1943
  German Central Army Group and Southern Army Group, about 900,000 troops, begin Operation Citadel, an attack around the Kursk salient in the Ukraine
• July 5, 1945
  Winston Churchill is defeated in United Kingdom general election by Labour party, so Clement Attlee becomes the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• July 5, 1946
  Louis Reard's bikini swimsuit design debuts at a Paris fashion show, modelled by Micheline Bernardi
• July 5, 1962
  Algeria declare independence after end of Algerian war
• July 5, 1975
  Cape Verde Island gains independence after 500 years of Portuguese rule
• July 5, 1996
  Dolly the sheep, the first mammal to have been successfully cloned, is born at the Roslin Institute in Scotland
• July 5, 2001
  Hannelore Kohl, the wife of the former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, commits suicide after she stayed in a completely darkened room in their home for 15 months due to a rare, incurable and increasingly painful allergy to light

April 8

• April 8, 217
  Roman emperor Caracalla is murdered by army officer after stopping to urinate during a travel to temple near Carrhae; Macrinus becomes the 24th Emperor of the Roman Empire
• April 8, 451
  Attila's Huns plunder city of Metz and continue moving south along the Moselle River
• April 8, 1195
  Alexios III Angelos drives out brother Isaac II Angelos as Byzantine emperor
• April 8, 1341
  Francesco Petrarch, Italian scholar and poet, is crowned poet laureate on the Capitol in Rome
• April 8, 1364
  King Jean II the Good of France dies in prison at the Savoy Palace, London and is given lavish funeral, thus his son Charles V begins his rule of France
• April 8, 1492
  Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of Florence, dies
• April 8, 1820
  The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos by a peasant Yorgos Kentrotas
• April 8, 1898
  British General Horatio Kitchener with Anglo-Egyptian forces defeats 15,000 Sudanese Abdallahi ibn Muhammad, the leader of the dervishes in Sudan, at the Battle of Atbara, the turning point in the conquest of Sudan by a British and Egyptian coalition
• April 8, 1902
  Dmitry Sipyagin, Russian minister of interior and headed Secret Service, is assassinated in the Mariinsky Palace by Socialist-Revolutionary Stepan Balmashov
• April 8, 1904
  Great Britain and France sign Cordial Entente concerning colonial matter, marking the start of the alliance against Germany that fought the First World War
• April 8, 1911
  Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, a Dutch physicist, finds that at 4.2 K the resistance in a solid mercury wire immersed in liquid helium suddenly vanish, thus discovers superconductivity
• April 8, 1912
  Frederick Gowland Hopkins, an English biochemist, after series of animal feeding experiments, suggests the existence in normal diets of tiny quantities of substances that are essential for animal growth and survival, later called vitamins
• April 8, 1913
  Opening of China's first parliament takes place in Beijing
• April 8, 1946
  The assembly of the League of Nations meets for last time, voting that "from this day the League of Nations shall cease to exist"
• April 8, 1962
  Evian Accords, comprise a treaty signed by France and the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic, which sought Algeria's independence from France, is accepted by referendum in France
• April 8, 1973
  Pablo Picasso, a Spanish painter, sculptor, dies
• April 8, 1994
  Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, is found dead in Seattle, Washington, where he committed a suicide by gunshot

April 2

• April 2, 568
  The Kingdom of the Lombards in Italy is founded by king of the Lombards Alboin
• April 2, 742
  Charlemagne, King of the Franks, is born
• April 2, 1453
  Mahmed II begins the siege of Constantinople
• April 2, 1513
  Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon lands in Florida and claims it for Spain
• April 2, 1801
  The British navy defeats the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen
• April 2, 1872
  George Brayton, an American engineer, invents the constant pressure engine, the basis for the gas turbine
• April 2, 1905
  Railway from Cairo in Egypt to Capetown, South Africa, opens
• April 2, 1941
  Hungarian Prime Minister Pal Teleki kills himself, rather than agree to Adolf Hitler's demand to allow passage of German troops to Yugoslavia, however, the Hungarian Chief of General Staff accedes to the demand
• April 2, 1979
  A Soviet biowarfare laboratory at Sverdlovsk accidentally releases airborne anthrax spores, killing 66 plus an unknown amount of livestock
• April 2, 2005
  Pope John Paul II dies at his home in the Vatican, following complications from the flu