1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide
0002 – Venus and Jupiter in conjunction – possible astrological explanation for Star of Bethlehem
0636 – 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
0917 – Battle of Anchialus: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria invades Thrace and drives the Byzantines out.
1000 – The foundation of the Hungarian state, Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.
1191 – Crusader King Richard I kills 3,000 muslim prisoners in Akko
1566 – Iconoclasm reaches Antwerp, Belgium; the Cathedral’s interior is torn apart by Protestants
1593 – ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’: In Timbuktu prominent citizens rounded up and some killed by invading Moroccan forces who then pillage the city, ending its golden age
1620 – Hudson’s Bay Company employee Henry Kelsey sees buffalo on the Prairies, southwest of The Pas; the first white man to describe them
1672 – Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis were brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.
1741 – Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering discovered Alaska.
1781 – George Washington begins to move his troops south to fight Cornwallis
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.
1866 – The National Labor Union in the U.S. advocated an eight-hour workday.
1866 – It was formally declared by U.S. President Andrew Johnson that the American Civil War was over. The fighting had stopped months earlier.
1882 – Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” debuted in Moscow.
1908 – Congo Free State becomes the Belgian Congo 1912 Plant Quarantine Act goes into effect
1914 – German forces occupied Brussels, Belgium, during World War I.
1918 – The British opened its Western Front offensive during World War I.
1935 – Military coup by General Pons & President Ibarra in Ecuador
1939 – Russian offensive under General Zjoekov against Japanese invasion in Mongolia
1940 – British PM Churchill says of Royal Air Force, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”
1940 – Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded in Mexico City by an assassin’s ice axe. He dies the next day.
1940 – France fell to the Germans during World War II.
1944 – 127 Flying Fortress Bombers drop high-explosives on the factory areas at Auschwitz, less than five miles east of the gas-chambers
1945 – Tommy Brown (Brooklyn Dodgers) became the youngest player to hit a home run in a major league ball game. Brown was 17 years, 8 months and 14 days old.
1953 – It was announced by the Soviet Union that they had detonated a hydrogen bomb.
1955 – In Morocco and Algeria hundreds of people were killed in anti-French rioting.
1955 – Colonel Horace A. Hanes, a U.S. Air Force pilot, flew to an altitude of 40,000 feet. Hanes reached a speed of 822.135 miles per hour in a Super Sabrejet.
1960 – Senegal breaks from the Mali federation, declaring independence.
1964 – A $1 billion anti-poverty measure was signed by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
1967 – The New York Times reported about a noise reduction system for album and tape recording developed by technicians R. and D.W. Dolby. Elektra Record’s subsidiary, Checkmate Records became the first label to use the new Dolby process in its recordings.
1968 – The Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations began invading Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring” liberalization.
1974 – Congress votes to reduce aid to South Vietnam from $1 Billion to $700 Million. Majority of the cuts were for military supplies.
1975 – Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
1977 – Voyager 2 was launched by the United States. The spacecraft was carrying a 12 inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature.
1978 – Gunmen open fire on an Israeli El Al Airline bus in London
1980 – UN Security Council condemns (14-0, US abstains) Israeli declaration that all of Jersualem is its capital
1982 – Lebanese Civil War: A multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon.
1982 – Mexican Treasury Secretary Jesus Silva Herzog tells foreign bankers that Mexico cannot repay her $60 billion foreign debt, the first Third World country to default”
1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-21-mn-17529-story.html
1987 – The Canadian federal government slaps a total ban on smoking in public service offices, starting Jan. 1, 1988. Smoking by government employees at all public service counters ends immediately
1988 – Iran-Iraq War: A cease-fire is agreed to after almost eight years of war. The deadly conventional war between the two Middle Eastern countries began when Iraq invaded Iran on September 22, 1980.
1990 – Iraq moves Western hostages to military installations (human shields)
1991 – A rally of more than 100,000 people occurred outside the Russian parliament building to protest the coup that removed Gorbachev from power.
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
1997 – Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people killed, 15 kidnapped.
1997 – NATO troops seized six police stations in Banja Luka that had been held by troops controlled by former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic.
1998 – Canada’s Supreme Court announced that Quebec could not secede without the federal government’s consent.
1998 – U.S. military forces attacked a terrorist camp in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Sudan. Both targets were chosen for cruise missile strikes due to their connection with Osama bin Laden.
1999 – Falun Gong is officially banned and defined as an “”evil cult”” by China A large sale persecution of ths practitioners is launched
2002 – A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein took over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin for five hours before releasing their hostages and giving up.
2003 – Sixteen people are injured after two bombs explode outside a tax office in France
2005 – Canada becomes the fourth country in the world to legalize same sex marriages
2010 – The last American combat brigade exited Iraq after more than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion began.
2012 – 20 people are killed in a riot in Caracas, Venezuela
2015 – 30 students at West Point Military Academy are injured in a mass pillow fight
2016 – Suicide bombing in Turkish city Gaziantep during a wedding party kills at least 51
2018 – Measles cases reach record high in Europe with 41,000 infected first six months of 2018 with 37 deaths according to WHO
2018 – Polish immigrant and former volunteer Nazi guard Jakiw Palij (95) is deported from the US in New York to Germany
2018 – Pope Francis releases letter to all Catholics condemning sexual abuse atrocities and clerical cover-ups “We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them”
2019 – Computer systems in 22 small Texas towns hacked and held to ransom in coordinated attack prompts FBI investigation
2020 – Former adviser to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon arrested and charged with fraud over a fundraising campaign to build a wall on the Mexican border
2020 – Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny falls into a coma after a suspected poisoning (later confirmed to be Novichok poisoning)
2022 – Misuzulu ka Zwelithini crowned Zulu King at KwaKhangelamankengane Palace in KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
