August 20 is the 232nd day of the year (233rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 133 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Christian feast day:
- Feast of Asmá’ (Bahá’í Faith, only if Bahá’í Naw-Rúz falls on March 21)
- Indian Akshay Urja Day (India)
- Restoration of Independence Day, re-declaration of the independence of Estonia from the Soviet Union in 1991.
- Revolution of the King and People (Morocco)
- Saint Stephen’s Day (Hungary)
- World Mosquito Day
History
In 2 A.D., Venus-Jupiter in conjunction-Star of Bethlehem(?).
In 14 A.D., Agrippa Postumus, adopted son of the late Roman Emperor Augustus, is executed by his guards while in exile under mysterious circumstances.
In 636, Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-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.
In 917, Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army.
In 1000, The foundation of the Hungarian state by Saint Stephen, celebrated as a National Day in Hungary.
In 1083, Canonization of the first King of Hungary, Saint Stephen and his son Saint Emeric.
In 1191, Richard I of England initiates the Massacre at Ayyadieh, leaving 2,600–3,000 Muslim hostages dead.
In 1308, Pope Clement V pardons Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, absolving him of charges of heresy.
In 1391, Konrad von Wallenrode becomes the 24th Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order.
In 1467, The Second Battle of Olmedo takes places as part of a succession conflict between Henry IV of Castile and his half-brother Alfonso, Prince of Asturias.
In 1519, Philosopher and general Wang Yangming defeats Zhu Chenhao, ending the Prince of Ning rebellion against the reign of the Ming Dynasty emperor Zhengde.
In 1619, First Black slaves brought by Dutch to colony of Jamestown Virginia.
In 1636, Roger Williams draws up covenant for Providence Plantations
In 1667, John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.
In 1672, Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.
In 1707, The first Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida.
In 1710, War of the Spanish Succession: a multinational army led by the Austrian commander Guido Starhemberg defeats the Spanish-Bourbon army commanded by Alexandre Maître, Marquis de Bay in the Battle of Saragossa.
In 1775, The Spanish establish the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.
In 1781, George Washington begins to move his troops south to fight Cornwallis.
In 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.
In 1833, After initially accepting re-nomination, President James Tyler withdraws his candidacy three months before the election, becoming the first chief executive in history not to seek reelection. The Democrats nominate Martin Van Buren in his place, who will be defeated in November by James K. Polk.
In 1856, Wilberforce University established in Ohio.
In 1858, Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace‘s same theory.
In 1861, General George B. McClellan took command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan would later run for president against Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Fate had Lincoln defeat McClellan. And then fate had Lincoln.
In 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.
In 1866, The National Labor Union advocated an eight hour workday. Industry, however, did not heed the request. Workers commonly worked 10 or 12 hour days — or more. Later on, as workers demanded better wages and less working time, working 1/3-day eventually became the norm as more workers want better working conditions and demanded “Eight is Enough!”
In 1882, Tchaikovsky‘s 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia.
In 1895, Start of Sherlock Holmes “Adventure of Norwood Builder” (BG).
In 1896, Dial telephone patented.
In 1910, The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the “Big Blowup” or the “Big Burn”) occurs in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana, burning approximately 3 million acres (12,000 km2).
In 1910, The first U.S. pilot to fire a gun from an airplane is J. E. Fickel of Sheepshead Bay, New York.
In 1912, William Booth, English preacher, co-founded The Salvation Army (b. 1829) dies at his home in Hadley Wood, London at 83. He was a British Methodist preacher who founded The Salvation Army and became its first General (1878–1912). The Christian movement with a quasi-military structure and government founded in 1865 has spread from London, England to many parts of the world and is known for being one of the largest distributors of humanitarian aid.
In 1913, 1st pilot to parachute from an aircraft (Adolphe Pegoud-France).
In 1914, World War I: German forces occupy Brussels.
In 1920, The first commercial radio station, 8MK (now WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan.
In 1926, Japan‘s public broadcasting company, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) is established.
In 1938, Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam – a record that stood for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.
In 1940, In Mexico City, Mexico exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramón Mercader. He dies the next day.
In 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line “Never was so much owed by so many to so few“.
In 1941, Adolf Hitler authorizes the development of the V-2 missile.
In 1942, scientists at the University of Chicago led by Glenn Seaborg successfully weighed plutonium, the first of human-made elements.
In 1944, World War II: 168 captured allied airmen, including Phil Lamason, accused by the Gestapo of being “terror fliers”, arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.
In 1944, World War II: the Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet Union offensive.
In 1944, U.S. and British forces destroyed the German Seventh Army at Falaise-Argentan Gap, west of Paris, capturing 50,000 Germans.
In 1947, Turner Caldwell in D-558-I sets aircraft speed record, 1131 mph.
In 1948, The first uniform birth registration system for numbering U.S. birth certificates goes into effect.
In 1948, the United States ordered the expulsion of the Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob Lomakin, accusing him of attempting to return two consular employees to the Soviet union against their will.
In 1950, Korean War: United Nations repel an offensive by North Korean divisions attempting to cross the Naktong River and assault the city of Taegu.
In 1953, the Soviet Union publicly acknowledged it had conducted a test detonation of a hydrogen bomb.
In 1955, In Morocco, a force of Berbers from the Atlas Mountains region of Algeria raid two rural settlements and kill 77 French nationals.
In 1955, Col. 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.
In 1957, USAAF ballon breaks an altitude record at 102,000′ (310,896 m).
In 1960, USSR recovered 2 dogs; first living organisms to return from space.
In 1960, Senegal breaks from the Mali Federation, declaring its independence.
In 1962, The NS Savannah, the world’s first nuclear-powered civilian ship, embarks on its maiden voyage.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a nearly $1 billion anti-poverty measure, the Economic Opportunity Act.
In 1968, Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring.
In 1968, The last imperial pheasant in a U.S. zoo dies at the Bronx Zoo, New York.
In 1971, FBI begins covert investigation of journalist Daniel Schorr. Apparently, after a dispute with White House aides, Schorr’s friends, neighbors, and co-workers were questioned by the FBI about his habits. They were told that Schorr was under consideration for a high-level position in the environmental area. Schorr knew nothing about it. Later, during the Watergate hearings, it was revealed that Nixon aides had drawn up what became known as Nixon’s Enemies List, and Daniel Schorr was on that list. Famously, Schorr read the list aloud on live TV, surprised to be reading his own name in that context. Schorr won Emmys for news reporting in 1972, 1973, and 1974.
In 1974, Buford Pusser, American police officer (b. 1937) dies on August 21, 1974 from injuries sustained in a one-car automobile accident. Earlier in the day, Pusser had contracted with Bing Crosby Productions in Memphis to portray himself in the sequel to Walking Tall. That evening, returning home alone from the McNairy County Fair in his specially modified Corvette, Pusser struck an embankment at high speed that ejected him from the vehicle. The car caught fire and burned. He was the Sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, from 1964 to 1970. Pusser is known for his virtual one-man war on moonshining, prostitution, gambling, and other vices along the Mississippi–Tennessee state line. His efforts have inspired several books, songs, movies, and a TV series. He was a wrestler known as “Buford the Bull” in the Mid-South.
The Buford Pusser Museum was established at his home he lived in at the time of his death in 1974. A Buford Pusser Festival is held each May in his hometown of Adamsville, Tennessee.
In 1974, President Gerald Ford, nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his vice-president.
In 1975, Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
In 1977, Voyager Program: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature; it will pass Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus & Neptune.
In 1978, Governor Ronald Reagan speaks out against Proposition 6– “The Briggs Amendment,” which would ban gays from teaching positions in California schools. Says the Gipper, “I don’t approve of teaching so-called gay lifestyles in our schools but there is already adequate legal machinery to deal with such problems, if and when they arise.”
In 1986, In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
In 1986, The U.S. Census Bureau reported the nation’s population at 240,468,000 and the median age had reached an all-time high of 31 1/2 years.
In 1987, An argument by Lt. Col. Oliver North was rejected by a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. North stated that the independent counsel investigating the Iran-Contra affair was operating under an invalid Justice Department regulation.
In 1988, “Black Saturday” of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park
In 1988, Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
In 1988, Iran–Iraq War: a ceasefire is agreed after almost eight years of war.
In 1988, The Troubles: Eight British Army soldiers are killed and 28 wounded when their bus is hit by a Provisional Irish Republican Army roadside bomb in Northern Ireland, United Kingdom (see Ballygawley bus bombing).
In 1989, The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision. 51 people are killed.
In 1989, The O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, the world’s longest guided busway, opens.
In 1990, Three former Northwest Airlines pilots were convicted in Minneapolis of flying while intoxicated.
In 1991, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: more than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union’s parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 1991, Estonia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, issues a decision on the re-establishment of independence on the basis of historical continuity of its pre-World War II statehood.
In 1992, President Bush and Vice President Quayle were re-nominated at the Republican national convention in Houston. Bush delivered a hard-hitting speech in which he attacked Democrats and promised to seek tax cuts. Shannon Doherty of 90210 gave the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the day’s convention.
In 1992, Ross Perot rushed his book “United We Stand: How We Can Take Back Out Country” to bookstands on the final day of the Republican convention.
In 1993, After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Accords are signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month.
In 1993, Conjoined twins Angela and Amy Lakeberg were separated at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in an operation that sacrificed Amy, since the sisters shared a common heart and liver tissue. (Although the separation appeared to be successful, Angela died in June 1994.)
In 1994, Al Gore underwent surgery for a torn Achilles tendon incurred during a basketball game
In 1994, President Clinton slapped new sanctions on Cuba that included prohibiting payments by Cuban-Americans to their relatives in Cuba.
In 1994, Benjamin Chavis Junior was fired as head of the NAACP after a turbulent 16-month tenure.
In 1996, President Clinton approved the first minimum-wage increase in five years, raising the hourly minimum by 90 cents to $5.15 per hour over 13 months.
In 1996, Susan McDougal was sentenced in Little Rock, Ark., to two years in prison in a Whitewater fraud case. She is one of the few people who served prison time as a result of the Whitewater controversy although fifteen individuals were convicted of various federal charges. Her refusal to answer “three questions” for a grand jury about whether President Bill Clinton lied in his testimony during her Whitewater trial led her to receive a jail sentence of 18 months for contempt of court. This comprised most of the total 22 months she spent in incarceration. McDougal received a full Presidential pardon from outgoing President Clinton in the final hours of his presidency in 2001.
In 1997, Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped.
In 1997, United Parcel Service drivers put away their picket signs, put on their brown shirts and shorts, and called on customers again as the delivery giant began to sluggishly recover from its costly strike.
In 1998, Monica Lewinsky went before a grand jury for a second round of explicit testimony about her White House trysts with President Clinton.
In 1998, The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government’s approval.
In 1998 – U.S. embassy bombings: the United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
In 2002, A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin, Germany for five hours before releasing their hostages and surrendering.
In 2006, Bryan Budd, Irish soldier, Victoria Cross recipient (b. 1977) in killed in action. He was a Northern Irish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. Budd was a corporal in the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (3 PARA) of the British Army. He was killed while on active service during Operation Herrick in Afghanistan. Budd died of injuries sustained during a fire fight with Taliban forces in Sangin, Helmand Province, from a bullet probably fired from a NATO weapon. The incident occurred whilst he was on a routine patrol close to the District Centre. He was the 20th UK serviceman to die in Afghanistan since the start of operations in November 2001. On 14 December 2006, it was announced by the Ministry of Defence that Budd would be posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, only the 13th award of the medal since the end of the Second World War.
In 2006, Joe Rosenthal, American photographer (b. 1911) died of natural causes in his sleep at a center for assisted living in Novato, located in the North Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area at 94. He was an American photographer who received the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic World War II photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima. His picture became one of the best-known photographs of the war.
On Friday, February 23, 1945 at around 1:00 PM, five days after the Marines landed at Iwo Jima, Rosenthal was making his daily visit to the island on a Marine landing craft when he heard that a flag was being raised atop Mount Suribachi, a volcano at the southern tip of the island. Upon landing, Rosenthal hurried toward Suribachi, lugging along his bulky Speed Graphic camera, the standard for press photographers at the time. When he got about halfway up, he was told that a flag had already been raised on the summit. He continued up anyway to photograph the flag flying. On the summit, Rosenthal discovered a group of Marines attaching a larger flag to a length of pipe. Nearby, another group of Marines stood ready to lower the smaller flag at the same instant the larger was raised. Rosenthal briefly contemplated attempting to photograph both flags, but decided against it, so he focused his attention on the group of Marines preparing to raise the second flag. Rosenthal piled stones and a sandbag so he had something on which to stand, as he was only 5 feet and 5 inches (1.65 m) tall. He set his camera for a lens setting between f/8 and f/11 and put the speed at 1/400th second. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the group of Marines start to raise the second flag. He swung his camera around toward the action and pushed the shutter. To make sure he had a worthwhile photo to send to the AP, he took another photograph showing four Marines steadying the flag, then he gathered all the Marines on the summit for a posed shot under the flag. The camera used by Rosenthal to take the photograph is on display at the International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, New York. In later years, when asked about the photo, he would say “I took the picture, the Marines took Iwo Jima
In 2008, Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid, Spain to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. 146 people are killed in the crash, and 8 more die later. Only 18 people survive.
In 2008, Gene Upshaw, American football player (b. 1945) died of pancreatic cancer with Terri and his sons Eugene III, Justin, and Daniel by his side, five days after his 63rd birthday. He also known as “Uptown Gene”, was an American football player for the Oakland Raiders of the American Football League and later the NFL. He later served as the executive director of the National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA). In 1987, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is also the only player in NFL history to reach the Super Bowl in three different decades with the same team.
In 2012, A prison riot in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, kills at least 20 people.
In 2014, Seventy-two people are killed in Japan’s Hiroshima Prefecture by a series of landslides caused by a month’s worth of rain that fell in one day.
In 2016, 54 people are killed when a suicide bomber detonates himself at a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep, Turkey.