On August 23rd...

Links will open in a new window.

1305 Scottish patriot William Wallace was executed.

1553 Bishop Stephen Gardiner was appointed Lord Chancellor of England.

1555 Calvinists were granted rights in the Netherlands.

1614 The University of Groningen opened.

1617 London, England, established the world's first one-way streets.

1708 Meidingnu Pamheiba was crowned King of Manipur.

1723 Puritan leader Increase Mather died.

1754 King Louis XVI of France was born.

1769 Naturalist Georges Cuvier was born.

1784 The State of Franklin was proclaimed in what is now eastern Tennessee.

1785 American naval hero Oliver Hazard Perry was born.

1789 The French National Assembly proclaimed freedom of religious opinions.

1793 The French National Convention adopted the Levée en Masse, conscripting all able-bodied men between 18 and 25 years of age for military service.

1796 The African Methodist Episcopal Church was incorporated.

1806 Physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb died.

1813 Ornithologist Alexander Wilson died.

1838 Mount Holyoke Feminary Seminary graduated its first class.

1839 The British captured Hong Kong from China.

1850 The first U. S. National Women's Rights Convention convened in Worcester, Massachusetts.

1866 The Treaty of Prague ended the Austro-Prussian War.

1869 Poet and biographer Edgar Lee Masters was born.

1873 The Albert Bridge across the River Thames in London, England, opened.

1889 The first ship-to-shore wireless message in the United States was received in San Francisco, California.

1900 The National Negro Business League was organized in Boston, Massachusetts.

1904 The automobile tire chain was patented.

1912 Actor Gene Kelly was born.

1914 Japan declared war on Germany.

1919 The comic strip "Gasoline Alley" premiered in the Chicago Tribune.

1923 Captain Lowell Smith and Lieutenant John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling, on a De Havilland DH-4B, and set an endurance flight record of 37 hours.

1926 Molla Bjurstedt Mallory defeated Elizabeth Ryan in the U. S. Women's National Tennis Championship.
1926 Silent film star Rudolph Valentino died.

1929 Actress Vera Miles was born.

1930 Betty Nuthall Shoemaker defeated Anna McCune Harper in the U. S. Women's National Tennis Championship.

1931 Count Gyula Károlyi became Premier of Hungary.

1932 Algerian President Houari Boumédienne was born.
1932 Political satirist Mark Russell was born.

1934 Actress Barbara Eden was born.
1934 Football player Sonny Jurgensen was born.

1939 The Soviet Union and Germany signed a non-aggression pact.

1940 The German Luftwaffe began bombing London, England, at night.
1940 Actor Richard Sanders was born.

1942 The last cavalry charge in history took place at Izbushensky, Russia.

1944 Romania was liberated from the Nazis.
1944 Allied troops captured Marseille, France.
1944 A U. S. B-24 crashed into a school in Freckelton, England, killing 76 persons.

1946 Drummer Keith Moon was born.

1948 The World Council of Churches was formed by 147 churches from 44 countries.

1949 Actress Shelley Long was born.
1949 Musician Rick Springfield was born.

1951 Queen Noor of Jordan was born.

1954 Getulio Vargas resigned as President of Brazil.

1960 Lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II died.

1961 The United States launched Ranger I into orbit.

1962 A Colombian Airlines DC-3 crashed on take-off from Barrancabermeja, Colombia, killing 18 of the 31 persons aboard.
1962 Actor Hoot Gibson died.

1966 Lunar Orbiter I took the first ever photograph of Earth from the Moon.
1966 Actor Francis X. Bushman died.

1969 Audrey McElmory won the World Cycling Championship.

1970 Actor River Phoenix was born.

1978 Basketball player Kobe Bryant was born.

1981 Beth Daniel won the LPGA World Championship.

1990 Armenia declared its independence.

1995 Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt died.

2000 A Gulf Air Airbus A320 crashed into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143 persons.

2001 Author Peter Maas died.

2005 TANS Peru Flight 204 crashed near Pucallpa, Peru, killing 41 persons.

2006 Jazz musician Maynard Ferguson died.

2007 Raymond Barre, former Prime Minister of France, died.

2011 Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi was overthrown.
2011 A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck Mineral, Virginia.

2012 Four persons were killed and 28 injured in a hot air balloon accident in Slovenia.

2013 Fifty persons were killed in mosque bombings in Tripoli, Lebanon.
2013 A suicide bombing killed 26 persons and injured 55 in Baghdad, Iraq.

2015 Indycar driver Justin Wilson suffered a head injury during a racecrash at Pocono Raceway in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.

2016 Actor Steven Hill died.

2017 Rain fell in the Atacama Desert in Chile.

Questions or comments about this page?

This page was last updated on August 23, 2018.