1945 – V-J Day, Japan surrenders unconditionally to end WW II (also August 15 depending on time zone)
1040 – King Duncan I of Scotland killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth (not murdered in his sleep as in Shakespeare’s play). The latter does succeed him as King.
1248 – The rebuilding of the Cologne Cathedral in Cologne, Germany, began after being destroyed by fire.
1281 – During Kublai Khan’s second Mongol invasion of Japan his invading Chinese fleet of 3,500 vessels disappears in a typhoon near Japan
1498 – Christopher Columbus landed at the mouth of the Orinoco River in what is now Venezuela
1756 – French capture Fort Oswego, NY
1765 – Massachusetts colonists challenge British rule by an Elm (Liberty Tree)
1782 – Suriname forbids selling slave mothers without their babies
1805 – A peace treaty between the U.S. and Tunis was signed on board the USS Constitution.
1842 – Second Seminole War declared over by US Army Colonel Worth, after nearly 7 years; more than 3000 Seminole Nation survivors re-located from Florida to Oklahoma, only about 300 allowed to remain
1846 – Henry David Thoreau jailed for refusing to pay taxes
1848 – The Oregon Territory was established.
1861 – Martial Law is declared at St Louis, Missouri, due to pro-secession sentiment which surged throughout Missouri after the Battle of Wilson’s Creek
1880 – The Cologne Cathedral in Cologne, Germany was completed after 632 years of rebuilding.
1896 – Gold was discovered in Canada’s Yukon Territory. Within the next year more than 30,000 people rushed to the area to look for gold.
1900 – An international force, consisting of eight nations, lifted the siege of Peking. It was the end to the Boxer Rebellion, which was aimed at purging China of foreigners.
1911 – United States Senate leaders begin to rotate the office of President pro tempore (for the time being) of the Senate among leading candidates to fill the vacancy left by William P. Frye’s death.
1917 – China declared war on Germany and Austria during World War I.
1935 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. The act created unemployment insurance and pension plans for the elderly.
1936 – Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last public execution in the United States
1941 – The U.S. Congress appropriated the funds to construct the Pentagon (approximately $83 million). The building was the new home of the U.S. War Department.
1944 – The federal government allowed the manufacture of certain domestic appliances to resume on a limited basis.
1945 – Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh movement launch a coordinated uprising against French rule across Vietnam following the Japanese surrender
1945 – It was announced by U.S. President Truman that Japan had surrendered unconditionally. The surrender ended World War II.
1945 – V-J Day, Japan surrenders unconditionally to end WW II (also August 15 depending on time zone)
1947 – Pakistan became independent from British rule.
1962 – A U.S. mail truck was held up in Plymouth, MA. The robbers got away with more that $1.5 million dollars.
1969 – The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens its doors to participants and spectators
1969 – British troops arrived in Northern Ireland to intervene in sectarian violence between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
1973 – US involvement in Vietnam ends, The Case–Church Amendment passed by the US Congress set August 15 as the deadline for the end of the US military involvement in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Because of this, the US ended all military offensives in Vietnam on this day.
1975 – Pakistani military coup against Bangladeshi President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
1980 – 17,000 workers go on strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, marking the beginning of the Solidarity movement
1980 – People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was incorporated.
1985 – Political violence by the youth begins after funeral of assassinated Victoria Mxenge, a civil rights lawyer, who was respected and liked by the Congress of South African Students
1986 – U.S. officials announced that a U.S. Drug Enforcement agent had been abducted, interrogated and tortured by Mexican police.
1992 – The U.S. announced that emergency airlifts of food to Somalia would begin. The action was being taken to stop mass deaths due to starvation.
1994 – Space telescope Hubble photographs Uranus with rings
1995 – Shannon Faulkner became the first female cadet in the history of The Citadel, South Carolina’s state military college. She quit the school less than a week later.
1995 – Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, reports that Iran has been unable to sell 200 million barrels per day of crude oil since the imposition of a unilateral oil embargo by the US
1998 – A U.S. federal appeals court in Richmond, VA, ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had no authority to regulate tobacco. The FDA had established rules to make it harder for minors to buy cigarettes.
2007 – Coordinated bombings in Yazidi communities in Iraq kill at least 500 people, the second-deadliest terror attack of all time
2013 – 638 people are killed in violent clashes between police and protesters across Egypt
2015 – In Havana, Cuba, the U.S. Embassy was re-opened after being closed 54 years earlier.
2015 – North Korea Introduces Pyongyang Time, The East Asian country introduced the time change to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Japanese occupation of Korea. Before the change, North Korea was UTC+09:00. Since this day, the time in the country is UTC+08:30.
2017 – Parliamentary citizenship scandal deepens in Australia after Barnaby Joyce, Deputy PM revealed to be a New Zealand citizen
2018 – Pennsylvania grand jury alleges 300 “predator priests” abused over 1000 children over 30 years and Catholic leaders covered it, up after 2-year investigation
2019 – Iowa congressman Steve King says without rape and incest ““Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” in video for “The Des Moines Register”
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
