August 20 - Events

Events

• 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 Islamoutside Arabia.
• 917 – Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army.
• 1000 – The foundation of the Hungarian state by Saint Stephen. Today celebrated as a National Day inHungary.
• 1083 – Canonization of the first King of Hungary, Saint Stephen and his son Saint Emeric.
• 1391 – Konrad von Wallenrode becomes the 24th Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order.
• 1672 – Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.
• 1775 – The Spanish establish a presidio (fort) in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.
• 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.
• 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.
• 1866 – President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.
• 1882 – Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow.
• 1888 – Mutineers imprison Emin Pasha at Dufile.
• 1910 – The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup or the Big Burn) occurred in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana, burning approximately 3 million acres (12,000 km²).
• 1914 – World War I: German forces occupy Brussels.
• 1920 – The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan.
• 1920 – The National Football League, (NFL), is founded in the United States.
• 1926 – Japan's public broadcasting company, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) is established.
• 1938 – Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam – a record that still stands.
• 1940 – In Mexico City exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramon Mercader. He dies the next day.
• 1944 – WWII: 168 captured allied airmen, including Phil Lamason, accused by the Gestapo of being "terror fliers", arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.
• 1944 – WWII: the Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet offensive.
• 1953 – The Soviet Union publicly acknowledges that it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
• 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 its independence.
• 1975 – Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
• 1977 – Voyager Program: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
• 1979 – The East Coast Main Line rail route between England and Scotland is restored when the Penmanshiel Diversion opens.
• 1982 – Lebanese Civil War: a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the Palestine Liberation Organization's withdrawal fromLebanon.
• 1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
• 1988 – "Black Saturday" of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park
• 1988 – Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
• 1988 – Iran–Iraq War: a cease-fire is agreed after almost eight years of war.
• 1988 – The Troubles: Eight British Army soldiers are killed and 28 wounded when their bus is hit by a Provisional Irish Republican Armyroadside bomb in Northern Ireland (see Ballygawley bus bombing).
• 1989 – The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision, 51 people are killed.
• 1989 – The O-Bahn in Adelaide, the world's longest guided busway, opens.
• 1991 – Collapse 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.
• 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 her pre-World War II statehood.
• 1993 – After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Peace Accords are signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month.
• 1997 – Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped.
• 1998 – The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.
• 1998 – U.S. embassy bombings: the United States 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.
• 2002 – A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin for five hours before releasing their hostages and surrendering.
• 2008 – Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid 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.