August 23 - Events

Events

• 79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
• 1305 – William Wallace, Scottish patriot, is executed for high treason by Edward I of England.
• 1328 – Battle of Cassel: French troops stop an uprising of Flemish farmers.
• 1514 – Battle of Chaldiran ended with a decisive victory for the Sultan Selim I, Ottoman Empire, over theShah Ismail I, Safavids founder.
• 1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.
• 1555 – Calvinists are granted rights in the Netherlands.
• 1572 – Mob violence against Huguenots in Paris – St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
• 1595 – Michael the Brave confronts the Ottoman army in the Battle of Calugareni.
• 1708 – Meidingnu Pamheiba is crowned King of Manipur.
• 1775 – King George III declares that the American colonies exist in a state of open and avowed rebellion.
• 1784 – Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it wasn’t accepted into the United States, and only lasted for four years.
• 1793 – French Revolution: a levée en masse is decreed by the National Convention.
• 1799 – Napoleon leaves Egypt for France en route to seize power.
• 1813 – At the Battle of Grossbeeren, the Prussians under Von Bülow repulse the French army.
• 1839 – The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
• 1858 – The Round Oak rail accident occurs in Brierley Hill in the Black Country, England. It is 'Arguably the worst disaster ever to occur on British railways'.
• 1864 – The Union Navy captures Fort Morgan, Alabama, thus breaking Confederate dominance of all ports on the Gulf of Mexico.
• 1866 – Austro-Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague.
• 1873 – Albert Bridge in Chelsea, London opened.
• 1896 – First Cry of the Philippine Revolution is made in Pugad Lawin (Quezon City), in the province of Manila.
• 1904 – The automobile tire chain is patented.
• 1914 – World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.
• 1914 – World War I: the Battle of Mons; the British Army begins withdrawal.
• 1921 – British airship R-38 experiences structural failure over Hull in England and crashes in the Humber estuary. Of her 49 British and American training crew, only 4 survive.
• 1923 – Capt. Lowell Smith and Lt. John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.
• 1927 – Sacco and Vanzetti are executed.
• 1929 – Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
• 1938 – English cricketer Len Hutton sets a world record for the highest individual Test innings of 364, during a Test match againstAustralia.
• 1939 – World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.
• 1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.
• 1943 – World War II: Kharkov liberated.
• 1944 – World War II: Marseille liberated.
• 1944 – World War II King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of General Antonescu, who is arrested. Romaniaswitches sides from the Axis to the Allies.
• 1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster – A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, Englandkilling 61 people.
• 1946 – Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Land (state) of Schleswig-Holstein.
• 1948 – World Council of Churches is formed.
• 1954 – First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
• 1958 – Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.
• 1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
• 1975 – Successful Communist coup in Laos.
• 1977 – The Gossamer Condor wins the Kremer prize for human powered flight.
• 1979 – Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defects to the United States.
• 1982 – Bachir Gemayel is elected Lebanese President amidst the raging civil war.
• 1985 – Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.
• 1989 – Hungary: the last communist government opens the Iron curtain and causes the exodus of thousands of Eastern Germans to West Germany via Hungary (September 11).
• 1989 – Singing Revolution: two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands (Baltic Way).
• 1989 – 1,645 Australian domestic airline pilots resign after the airlines threaten to fire them and sue them over a dispute.
• 1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.
• 1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1990 – West Germany and East Germany announce that they will unite on October 3.
• 1994 – Eugene Bullard, The only black pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.
• 1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled 'A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.'
• 2000 – Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143.
• 2006 – Natascha Kampusch, who is abducted at the age of 10, managed to escape from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil, after 8 years of captivity.
• 2010 – Manila hostage crisis, which occurred at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila, where a dismissed police officer took hostage a tour bus full of Chinese nationals.