August 20
is the 232nd day of the year (233rd in
leap years) in the
Gregorian Calendar. There are 133 days remaining.
*
636 -
Battle of Yarmuk:
Arab forces led by
Khalid bin Walid take control of
Syria and
Palestine away from the
Byzantine Empire, marking the first great wave of
Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of
Islam outside
Arabia.
*
917 -
Battle of Anchialus: Tsar
Simeon I of Bulgaria invades
Thrace and drives the
Byzantines out.
*
1391 -
Konrad IV von Wallenrode becomes the 24th
Grand Master of the
Teutonic Order.
*
1794 -
Battle of Fallen Timbers -
American troops force a confederacy of
Shawnee,
Mingo,
Delaware,
Wyandot,
Miami,
Ottawa,
Chippewa, and
Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat.
*
1804 -
Lewis and Clark Expedition: The "Corps of Discovery", exploring the
Louisiana Purchase, suffers its only death when Sergeant
Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute
appendicitis.
*
1833 -
Nat Turner leads his
revolt against the Southern plantation owners of Southampton County,
Virginia*
1882 -
Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's
1812 Overture debuts in
Moscow.
*
1888 - Mutineers imprison
Emin Pasha at
Dufile.
*
1900 -
Japan's primary school law is amended to provide for four years of mandatory schooling.
*
1914 -
World War I:
German forces occupy
Brussels.
*
1920 - The first commercial
radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in
Detroit, Michigan.
*
1926 -
Japan's public broadcasting company, is established.
*
1938 -
Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam--a record that still stands.
*
1940 - Exiled
Russian revolutionary
Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded in
Mexico City by an assassin's ice axe. He will die the next day.
*
1944 - The
Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet offensive.
*
1955 - In
Morocco, a force of
Berbers from the
Atlas Mountains region of
Algeria, raid two rural settlements and kill 77
French nationals.
*
1960 -
Senegal breaks from the
Mali federation, declaring independence.
* 1965 -
Ilias Tsirimokos becomes
Prime Minister of Greece.
*
1968 - 200,000
Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000
tanks invade
Czechoslovakia to end the "
Prague Spring" of political liberalization.
*
1975 -
Viking program:
NASA launches the
Viking 1 planetary probe toward
Mars.
*
1977 -
Voyager program: The
United States launches the
Voyager 2 spacecraft.
*
1982 -
Lebanese Civil War: A multinational force lands in
Beirut to oversee the
PLO withdrawal from
Lebanon.
*
1986 - In
Edmond, Oklahoma,
US Postal employee
Patrick Henry Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits
suicide.
*
1988 -
Peru becomes a member of the
Berne Convention copyright treaty.
*
1989 - In
Beverly Hills, California,
Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot and kill their wealthy parents.
*
1991 -
Collapse of the Soviet Union: More than 100,000 people rally outside the
Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the
coup aiming to depose President
Mikhail Gorbachev.
Estonia reclaimed its independence and seceded from the
Soviet Union. Estonia had been occupied by the Soviets for more than 50 years.
*
1993 - After rounds of secret negotiations in
Norway, the
Oslo Peace Accords were signed, followed by a public ceremony in
Washington, D.C. the next month.
*
1994 - Circus elephant trainer
Allen Campbell is crushed to death in Honolulu, Hawaii, by the performing elephant "
Tyke".
*
1995 -
Blur's
Country House beats
Oasis' song
Roll with It to win
The Battle of Britpop.
*
1997 -
Souhane massacre in
Algeria; over 60 people killed, 15 kidnapped.
*
1998 - The
Supreme Court of Canada states
Quebec cannot legally secede from
Canada without the federal government's approval.
* 1998 -
U.S. embassy bombings: The
United States military launches
cruise missile attacks against alleged
al-Qaida camps in
Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in
Sudan in retaliation for the
August 7 bombings of American embassies in
Kenya and
Tanzania. The
al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in
Khartoum is destroyed in the attack.
*
1517 -
Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, French church leader (d.
1586)
*
1561 -
Jacopo Peri, Italian composer (d.
1633)
*
1601 -
Pierre de Fermat, French mathematician (d.
1665)
*
1625 -
Thomas Corneille, French dramatist (d.
1709)
*
1632 -
Louis Bourdaloue, French Jesuit preacher (d.
1704)
*
1710 -
Thomas Simpson, British mathematician (d.
1761)
*
1719 -
Christian Mayer, Czech astronomer (d.
1783)
* 1719 -
Charles-François de Broglie, marquis de Ruffec, French soldier and diplomat (d.
1791)
*
1779 -
Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (d.
1848)
*
1833 -
Benjamin Harrison, 23rd
President of the United States (d.
1901)
*
1845 -
St. Albert Chmielowski, Polish Catholic Saint (d.
1916)
*
1847 -
Bolesław Prus, Polish writer (d.
1912)
*
1860 -
Raymond Poincaré, French statesman (d.
1934)
*
1881 -
Edgar Guest, English poet (d.
1959)
*
1897 -
Tarjei Vesaas, Norwegian writer (d.
1970)
*
1890 -
H. P. Lovecraft, American writer (d.
1937)
*
1901 -
Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian writer,
Nobel Prize laureate (d.
1968)
*
1905 -
Jean Gebser, German-born author, linguist, and poet (d.
1973)
* 1905 -
Jack Teagarden, American musician (d.
1964)
*
1908 -
Al Lopez, baseball player and manager (d.
2005)
*
1910 -
Eero Saarinen, Finnish architect (d.
1961)
*
1913 -
Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d.
1994)
*
1918 -
Jacqueline Susann, American novelist (d.
1974)
*
1923 -
Jim Reeves, American singer (d.
1964)
*
1931 -
Don King, American boxing promoter
*
1932 -
Anthony Ainley, British actor (d.
2004)
* 1932 -
Vasily Aksyonov, Russian novelist
*
1934 -
Armi Kuusela, Finnish beauty queen
*
1935 -
Ron Paul, American politician
*
1936 -
Hideki Shirakawa, Japanese chemist,
Nobel Prize laureate
*
1937 -
Andrei Konchalovsky, Russian film director
*
1939 -
Fernando Poe Jr., Filipino actor and presidential candidate
*
1940 -
Rubén Hinojosa, American politician
*
1941 -
Slobodan Milošević,
President of Serbia (d.
2006)
* 1941 -
Robin Oakley, British journalist
*
1942 -
Isaac Hayes, American singer, songwriter, and actor
* 1942 -
Fred Norman, baseball player
*
1943 -
Sylvester McCoy, Scottish actor
*
1944 -
Rajiv Gandhi,
Prime Minister of India (d.
1991)
*
1946 -
Connie Chung, American journalist
* 1946 -
N.R. Narayana Murthy, Indian businessman
*
1948 -
Robert Plant, English singer (
Led Zeppelin)
*
1948 -
John Noble, Australian Actor
*
1949 -
Phil Lynott, Irish musician (d.
1986)
*
1951 -
Greg Bear, American author
*
1952 -
John Hiatt, American musician
*
1954 -
Al Roker, American television broadcaster
*
1955 -
Agnes Chan, Hong Kong singer and writer
*
1956 -
Joan Allen, American actress
*
1961 -
Greg Egan, Australian author
*
1962 -
Sophie Aldred, English actress
* 1962 -
James Marsters, American actor
*
1965 -
KRS-One, American rapper
*
1966 -
Dimebag Darrell, American guitarist (
Pantera and
Damageplan) (d.
2004)
*
1967 -
Andy Benes, Baseball player
*
1968 -
Yuri Shiratori, Japanese voice actress and singer
*
1969 -
Duke Droese, American Professional Wrestler
*
1970 -
John Carmack, American computer game programmer
* 1970 -
Fred Durst, American singer (
Limp Bizkit)
*
1971 -
Steve Stone, English footballer
*
1973 -
Todd Helton, baseball player
*
1974 -
Maxim Vengerov, Russian violinist
*
1976 -
Chris Drury, American hockey player
*
1977 -
Mayra Veronica, Cuban model and actress
*
1979 -
Cory Sullivan, baseball player
*
1981 -
Bernard Mendy, French footballer
*
1982 -
Joshua Kennedy, Australian footballer
*
1984 -
Mirai Moriyama, Japanese actor
*
1986 -
Robert Clark, Canadian actor
*
1987 -
Cătălina Ponor, Romanian gymnast
*
984 -
Pope John XIV*
1384 -
Geert Groote, Dutch founder of the Brethren of the Common Life (b.
1340)
*
1572 -
Miguel López de Legazpi, Spanish conquistador (b.
1502)
*
1580 -
Jeronymo Osorio, Portuguese historian (b.
1506)
*
1611 -
Tomás Luis de Victoria, Spanish composer (b.
1548)
*
1639 -
Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet (b.
1597)
*
1643 -
Anne Hutchinson, English Puritan preacher (b.
1591)
*
1648 -
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, English diplomat, poet, and philosopher (b.
1583)
*
1672 -
Johan de Witt, Dutch politician (b.
1625)
* 1672 -
Cornelis de Witt, Dutch politician (b.
1623)
*
1680 -
William Bedloe, English informer (b.
1650)
*
1701 -
Charles Sedley, English playwright (b.
1639)
*
1707 -
Nicolas Gigault, French organist and composer (b.
1627)
*
1773 -
Enrique Florez, Spanish historian (b.
1701)
*
1811 -
Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French explorer (b.
1729)
*
1823 -
Pope Pius VII (b.
1740)
*
1825 -
William Waldegrave, 1st Baron Radstock, Governor of Newfoundland (b.
1753)
*
1887 -
Jules Laforgue, French poet (b.
1860)
*
1904 -
René Waldeck-Rousseau, French statesman (b.
1846)
*
1912 -
William Booth, English founder of the Salvation Army (b.
1829)
*
1914 -
Pope Pius X (b.
1835)
*
1915 -
Paul Ehrlich, German scientist, recipient of the
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b.
1854)
*
1917 -
Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist,
Nobel Prize laureate (b.
1835)
*
1961 -
Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist,
Nobel Prize laureate (b.
1882)
*
1971 -
Rashid Minhas, Pakistani Air Force pilot (b.
1951)
*
1986 -
Milton Acorn, Canadian poet (b.
1923)
*
1998 -
Raquel Rastenni, Danish singer (b.
1915)
*
2001 - Sir
Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and science fiction writer (b.
1915)
*
2005 -
Thomas Herrion, American football player (heart disease) (b.
1981)
* 2005 -
Krzysztof Raczkowski, Polish drummer (b.
1970)
*
Roman Catholic saints - Saint
Bernard of Clairvaux*
Bahá'í Faith - Feast of Asmá (Names) - First day of the ninth month of the Bahá'í Calendar
*
Estonia - Restoration Day
*
Hungary -
St. Stephen's day, the main national holiday in Hungary
*
Morocco - Revolution of the King and the People Day
*
BBC: On This Day*
New York Times: On This DayAugust 19 -
August 21 -
July 20 -
September 20 --
listing of all days
