1867 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him when he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
0003 – Venus-Jupiter in conjunction-Star of Bethlehem
1099 – Battle of Ascalon won by Crusader army led by Godfrey of Bouillon against Fatimid force, last action of the First Crusade
1164 – Battle of Harim: Nur ad-Din defeats the Crusader armies of the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch
1480 – Battle of Otranto – Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam
1553 – Pope Julius III orders confiscation & burning of Jewish Talmud
1676 – “King Phillip’s War” came to an end with the killing of Indian chief King Phillip. The war between the Indians and the Europeans lasted for two years.
1861 – Skirmish at Texas – rebels are attacked by Apache Indians
1862 – Gen John Hunt Morgan & his raiders capture Gallatin, TX
1865 – Disinfectant was used for the first time during surgery by Joseph Lister.
1867 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson sparked a move to impeach him when he defied Congress by suspending Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
1869 – Self-proclaimed Emperor Joshua Abraham Norton of the USA issues edict abolishing the Democratic and Republican parties
1877 – Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and made the first sound recording.
1883 – The last quagga dies in captivity at the Natura Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam, A native of South Africa, quaggas were a kind of zebra that had stripes only in the front part of their bodies. They were driven into extinction through human activity and excessive hunting for their skin and meat.
1898 – The Spanish-American War was ended with the signing of the peace protocol. The U.S. acquired Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Hawaii was also annexed.
1908 – Henry Ford’s company builds the first Model T car
1915 – “Of Human Bondage” by William Somerset Maugham was first published.
1939 – “The Wizard of Oz” premiered in Oconomowoc, WI. Judy Garland became famous for the movie’s song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” The movie premiered in Hollywood on August 15th.
1941 – French Marshal Philippe Pétain gives full support to Nazi Germany
1943 – Alleged date of the first Philadelphia Experiment test on United States Navy ship USS Eldridge.
1953 – The Soviet Union secretly tested its first hydrogen bomb.
1955 – US President Eisenhower raises minimum wage from 75 cents to $1 an hour
1960 – The balloon satellite Echo One was launched by the U.S. from Cape Canaveral, FL. It was the first communications satellite.
1962 – The Soviet Union launched Pavel Popovich into orbit. Popovich and Andrian Nikolayev, who was launch a day before, both landed on August 15.
1976 – About 3000 refugees are killed during a massacre at a Palestinian refugee camp, The UN-run Tel al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp in the outskirts of Beirut, Lebanon had been sieged by members of a right-wing extremist group called the Phalange during the Lebanese civil war.
1977 – The space shuttle Enterprise passed its first solo flight test.
1979 – Iranian press censors start massive book burnings
1981 – The IBM Personal Computer is stocked in stores for the first time, Known as the IBM PC or the IBM 5150, the computer had no disk drives and sold for about $1500.
1986 – It was announced by NASA that they had selected a new rocket design for the space shuttle. The move was made in an effort at correcting the flaws that were believed to have been responsible for the Challenger disaster.
1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein says he is ready to resolve Gulf crisis if Israel withdraws from occupied territories
1990 – The largest dinosaur fossil is found, American palaeontologist Sue Hendrickson found the fossilised remains of a Tyrannosaurus rex in the state of South Dakota. Sue, as the dinosaur are now informally called after its discoverer, is thought to have been 14 feet tall when alive.
1992 – The U.S., Canada, and Mexico announced that the North American Free Trade Agreement had been created after 14 months of negotiations.
1993 – U.S. President Clinton lifted the ban on rehiring air traffic controllers that had been fired for going on strike in 1981.
1994 – Major league baseball players went on strike rather than allow team owners to limit their salaries. The strike lasted for 232 days. As a result, the World Series was wiped out for the first time in 90 years.
1998 – Swiss banks agreed to pay $1.25 billion as restitution to World War II Holocaust victims.
2000 – The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sank and its 118-man crew died during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.
2004 – The California Supreme Court voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages that had been sanctioned in San Francisco earlier in the year.
2008 – Russia halted its five-day assault on Georgia.
2013 – Whitey Bulger, American organized crime boss is found guilty on 31 of 32 racketeering and firearms counts, and is found to have been involved in 11 murders
2015 – In London archaeologists discover a mass grave of 30 bodies from the 1665 plague
2017 – “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia turns violent when car rams protesters killing 1, injuring 19
2017 – US President Donald Trump at a press conference at Trump Tower says “there is blame on both sides” in reference to violence in Charlottesville, provoking widespread condemnation
2018 – More than 200 Afghan soldiers reported killed after 3 days of attacks by taliban insurgents over multiple fronts including Ghazni city
2019 – Beginning of the ‘glitter revolution’ in Mexico City when security chief showered with pink glitter in protest of violence against women after teenager raped by police
2021 – Bennu Asteroid, size of the Empire State Building, now has 1-in-1,750 chance of hitting Earth in 2182, according to data from NASA’s OSIRIS-REX spacecraft
2021 – US Census reveal country grown more diverse, growth in Hispanic (+23%) and Asian (+36%) populations, 1st ever decline in white population (-2.6%)
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
