August 12



Events

Up to 1900 
 30 BC  Cleopatra VII, Queen of Egypt, commits suicide.
 1099  First Crusade: Battle of Ascalon - Crusaders defeat Saracens and the Kingdom of Jerusalem is established under Godfrey of Bouillon.
 1121  Battle of Didgori: The Georgian army under David IV of Georgia wins a decisive victory over the famous Seljuk commander Ilghazi.
 1164  Battle of Harim: Nur ad-Din Zangi defeats the Crusader armies of the County of Tripoli and the Principality of Antioch.
 1323  Treaty of Nöteborg - Sweden and Novgorod (Russia) regulates the border for the first time
 1332  Battle of Dupplin Moor - Scots under the Earl of Mar are routed by Edward Balliol.
 1480  Battle of Otranto: Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam.
 1499  Battle of Zonchio: between Venetian and Ottoman fleets.
 1596  The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is created.
 1624  The President of Louis XIII of France's royal council is arrested, leaving Cardinal Richelieu in the role of the King's principal minister.
 1665  The naval battle of the Bay of Bergen takes place during the Anglo-Dutch War, ending in a Dutch victory over English forces.
 1676  King Philip's War ends.
 1793  Rhone and Loire departments in France are created.
 1806  Santiago de Liniers, 1st Count of Buenos Aires retakes the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina, after the first British invasion.
 1825  Simón Bolívar become president of Colombia.
 1831  French intervention forces William I of the Netherlands to abandon his attempt to crush the Belgian Revolution.
 1833  Chicago, Illinois is incorporated as a city.
 1851  Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine.
 1854  Count Gaston de Raousset Boulbon is executed by shooting, for his part in the Battle of Guaymas.
 1877  Asaph Hall discovers Deimos, a moon of Mars.
 1881  The National Theater in Prague burns down.
 1883  The last quagga dies at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam
 1898  Armistice ends the Spanish-American War
 1898  The Hawaiian flag is lowered from Iolani Palace in an elaborate annexation ceremony and replaced with the American flag to signify the transfer of sovereignty from the Republic of Hawaii to the United States.

1901  2000 
 1908  First Model T Ford built
 1914  World War I - Britain declares war on Austria-Hungary; British Empire countries automatically included.
 1914  Beginning of the Battle of Cer between Austria-Hungary and Serbia.
 1928  The 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam end.
 1933  Cuban leader Gerardo Machado is deposed by a general strike and flees the country.
 1944  Nazi German troops end the week-long Wola massacre, during which time 40,000 people were killed either randomly or by mass executions.
 1944  SS officers murder almost all residents of the Italian village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema, killing 560 people; 116 of them children.
 1948  The United States recognizes the government of South Korea but not the government of North Korea.
 1950  Korean War: Bloody Gulch massacre - American POWs are killed by the North Korean army.
 1952  13 Jewish intellectuals are murdered in one night in Moscow.
 1953  Nuclear testing: The Soviet Union detonates its first hydrogen bomb.
 1953  The Greek islands of Zakynthos and Kefalonia are severely damaged by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake.
 1958  Art Kane photographs 57 important jazz musicians in the black and white group portrait "A Great Day in Harlem" in front of a brownstone in New York City.
 1960  Echo I, the first communications satellite, is launched.
 1964  South Africa is banned from the Olympics, because of its Apartheid policy. It is reinstated in the 1990s, after Nelson Mandela was released.
 1969  Violence erupts after the Apprentice Boys of Derry march in Northern Ireland, resulting in a three-day communal riot.
 1976  Between 1,000 and 3,500 Palestinians are killed in the Tel al-Zataar massacre.
 1977  First free flight of the Space Shuttle Enterprise.
 1977  The 1977 Sri Lankan riots, targeting the Tamil minority, begin. They ultimately result in the killings of around 300 Tamil people.
 1980  The Montevideo Treaty, creating the Latin American Integration Association, is signed.
 1981  The IBM PC, an early personal computer, is introduced.
 1982  The Debt Crisis affecting Latin America and less-developed countries begins when Mexico announces that it is unable to pay its enormous external debt.
 1985  Japan Airlines flight 123 Boeing 747 jumbo jet crashes into Mount Ogura, Japan killing 520, in the world's worst single-plane air disaster.
 1990  Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton found to-date, is discovered by Sue Hendrickson in South Dakota.
 1992  Canada, Mexico and the United States announce completion of negotiations for the NAFTA.
 1994  The Woodstock '94 rock concert takes place.
 1994  Major League Baseball players go on strike. The strike forces the cancellation of the World Series.
 2000  Russian submarine K-141 Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea.
 2000  Ronald Venetiaan becomes President of Suriname.

From 2001 
 2004  Lee Hsien Loong is sworn in as Singapore's 3rd Prime Minister.
 2004  Sweden announces that it has reached a population of 9 million.
 2005  The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter space probe, of NASA, is sent to the planet Mars.
 2010  Desi Bouterse becomes President of Suriname.
 2012  The 2012 Summer Olympics in London end. The Great Britain team, hosting the event, finishes with 29 gold medals, coming third behind the United States and China.
 2014  Iranian-born Maryam Mirzakhani becomes the first woman to win the Fields Medal, one of the biggest prizes in mathematics.
 2015  Two explosions at a warehouse storing chemicals kill about 173 people in the city of Tianjin, China, and injure hundreds more.
 2017  A car attack occurs in Unite the Right rally.
 2018  NASA launches the unmanned Parker Solar Probe to study the Sun at close range and the solar wind.
 2018  The first multi-sport European Championships in Glasgow and Berlin come to an end.

Births

Up to 1900 
 1503  King Christian III of Denmark and Norway (died 1559)
 1517  Peter Ernst I von Mansfeld-Vorderort, Stadholder of the Netherlands (died 1604)
 1566  Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain (died 1633)
 1604  Tokugawa Iemitsu, 3rd Tokugawa shogun (died 1651)
 1629  Tsar Alexei I of Russia (died 1676)
 1643  King Afonso IV of Portugal (died 1683)
 1644  Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Bohemian composer (died 1704)
 1681  Vitus Bering, Danish explorer (died 1741)
 1720  Konrad Ekhof, German actor (died 1778)
 1762  King George IV of the United Kingdom (died 1830)
 1774  Robert Southey, English poet and biographer (died 1843)
 1781  Robert Mills, American architect (died 1855)
 1816  Ion Ghica, Romanian mathematician and politician (died 1897)
 1831  Helena Blavatsky, Russian writer (died 1891)
 1837  Sven Berggren, Swedish naturalist and botanist (died 1917)
 1843  Colmar von der Goltz, Prussian field marshal (died 1916)
 1856  Diamond Jim Brady, American businessman and philanthropist (died 1917)
 1859  Katharine Lee Bates, American poet (died 1929)
 1860  Klara Hitler, mother of Adolf Hitler (died 1907)
 1866  Jacinto Benavente, Spanish writer (died 1954)
 1866  Henrik Sillem, Dutch target shooter (died 1907)
 1867  Edith Hamilton, German-American writer, teacher and classicist (died 1963)
 1871  Gustavs Zemgals, 2nd President of Latvia (died 1939)
 1872  Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein (died 1956)
 1876  Mary Roberts Rinehart, American writer (died 1958)
 1877  Albert Bartha, Hungarian general and politician (died 1960)
 1880  Christy Mathewson, American Baseball Hall of Famer (died 1925)
 1880  Radclyffe Hall, British writer (died 1943)
 1881  Cecil B. DeMille, American director (died 1959)
 1883  Pauline Frederick, American stage and movie actress (died 1938)
 1885  Jean Cabannes, French physicist (died 1959)
 1886  Keith Murdoch, Australian journalist (died 1952)
 1887  Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist (died 1961)
 1889  Zerna Sharp, American writer and educator (died 1981)
 1892  Alfred Lunt, actor (died 1977)
 1896  Ejner Federspiel, Danish actor (died 1981)
 1897  Maurice Fernandes, Guyanese cricketer (died 1981)

1901  1925 
 1902  Mohammad Hatta, Vice President of Indonesia (died 1980)
 1902  Pope Cyril VI of Alexandria, Egyptian Coptic Church leader (died 1971)
 1903  Mario Nasalli Rocca di Corneliano, Italian cardinal (died 1988)
 1904  Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich of Russia, heir to the throne of Russia (died 1918)
 1906  Harry Hopman, Australian tennis player (died 1985)
 1906  Tedd Pierce, animator (died 1972)
 1907  Benjamin Sheares, 2nd President of Singapore (died 1981)
 1907  Joe Besser, actor, comedian; member of the Three Stooges (died 1988)
 1910  Yusof bin Ishak, first President of Singapore (died 1970)
 1910  Gustav Lantschner, Austrian skier (died 2011)
 1910  Heinrich Sutermeister, Swiss composer (died 1995)
 1911  Cantinflas (Mario Moreno Reyes), Mexican actor, comedian and filmmaker (died 1993)
 1912  Feroze Gandhi, Indian politician and journalist (died 1960)
 1913  Richard L. Bare, American film director (died 2015)
 1914  Gerd Buchdahl, German philosopher (died 2001)
 1918  Sid Bernstein, American record producer (died 2013)
 1919  Vikram Sarabhai, Indian physicist (died 1971)
 1919  Margaret Burbidge, English-American astrophysicist
 1924  Hajo Meyer, German-Dutch physicist (died 2014)
 1924  Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, Leader of Pakistan (died 1988)
 1924  Derek Shackleton, English cricketer, coach and umpire (died 2007)
 1925  Norris McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of World Records (died 2004)
 1925  Ross McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of World Records (died 1975)
 1925  Thor Vilhjalmsson, Icelandic writer (died 2011)
 1925  Dale Bumpers, American politician, 38th Governor of Arkansas (died 2016)

1926  1950 
 1926  John Derek, actor (died 1998)
 1927  Don Shepherd, Welsh cricketer (died 2017)
 1928  Bob Buhl, American Major League Baseball player (died 2001)
 1928  Porter Wagoner, American country and western singer (died 2007)
 1929  Buck Owens, American country and western singer (died 2006)
 1930  George Soros, American businessman
 1930  Jacques Tits, Belgian mathematician
 1931  William Goldman, American screenwriter (died 2018)
 1932  Sirikit, Queen consort of Thailand
 1935  Jan Popluhar, Slovakian footballer (died 2011)
 1935  John Cazale, American actor (died 1978)
 1936  André Kolingba, President of the Central African Republic (died 2010)
 1937  Walter Dean Myers, American writer and poet (died 2014)
 1939  George Hamilton, American actor
 1939  Roy Romanow, Canadian politician, 12th Premier of Saskatchewan
 1939  David King, South African chemist and academic
 1941  Dana Ivey, American actress and singer
 1942  Martin Seligman, American psychologist
 1945  Dorothy E. Denning, American computer scientist
 1945  Jean Nouvel, French architect
 1946  Terry Nutkins, English television presenter and writer (died 2012)
 1947  Stefano Benni, Italian writer and journalist
 1948  Siddaramaiah, Indian politician, 22nd Chief Minister of Karnataka
 1949  Mark Knopfler, British musician (Dire Straits)
 1949  Terry Oldfield, British musician and composer
 1949  Fernando Collor de Mello, former President of Brazil
 1950  George McGinnis, American basketball player

1951  1975 
 1951  Andrzej Blumenfeld, Polish actor (died 2017)
 1953  Carlos Mesa, former President of Bolivia
 1954  François Hollande, former President of France
 1954  Sam J. Jones, American actor
 1954  CY Leung, 3rd Chief Executive of Hong Kong
 1954  Pat Metheny, American guitarist
 1957  Amanda Redman, English actress
 1960  Laurent Fignon, French cyclist (died 2010)
 1960  Steven Hartley, English actor
 1961  Roy Hay, English guitarist, keyboardist and composer (Culture Club)
 1963  Koji Kitao, Japanese sumo wrestler
 1965  Peter Krause, American actor, director and producer
 1966  Tobias Ellwood, English politician
 1967  Andrey Plotnikov, Russian race walker
 1970  Alan Brown, Scottish politician
 1970  Toby Perkins, English politician
 1971  Rebecca Gayheart, American actress
 1971  Pete Sampras, American tennis player
 1972  Del the Funky Homosapien, American rapper and producer
 1972  Takanohana Kōji, Japanese sumo wrestler (65th Yokozuna)
 1972  Mark Kinsella, Irish footballer
 1973  Mark Iuliano, Italian footballer
 1973  Richard Reid, alleged Al-Qaida operative; "the shoe bomber"
 1973  Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraqi theologian and political leader
 1975  Casey Affleck, American actor

From 1976 
 1976  Wednesday 13, American singer-songwriter and guitarist
 1976  Brad Lukowich, Canadian ice hockey player
 1976  Richard McCourt, English comedian and actor
 1976  Henry Tuilagi, Samoan rugby player
 1976  Antoine Walker, American basketball player
 1977  Jesper Gronkjaer, Danish footballer
 1979  Austra Skujyte, Lithuanian athlete
 1980  Royda Demirer, Turkish actress
 1981  Djibril Cissé, French footballer
 1982  Alexandros Tzorvas, Greek footballer
 1983  Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Dutch footballer
 1983  Kana Asumi, Japanese voice actress and singer
 1986  Kateryna Bondarenko, Ukrainian tennis player
 1988  Tyson Fury, English boxer
 1988  Justin Gaston, American singer-songwriter, model and actor
 1988  Leah Pipes, American actress
 1989  Tom Cleverley, English footballer
 1990  Mario Balotelli, Italian footballer
 1992  Cara Delevingne, English model and actress
 1993  Luna, South Korean actress, singer and dancer
 1998  Stefanos Tsitsipas, Greek tennis player

Deaths

Up to 1900 
 30 BC  Cleopatra VII, Egyptian Queen (born 69 BC)
 875  Louis II of Italy, Holy Roman Emperor
 1424  Yongle Emperor of China (born 1360)
 1484  George of Trebizond, Greek philosopher (born 1395)
 1512  Alessandro Achillini, Italian philosopher (born 1463)
 1633  Jacopo Peri, Italian composer (born 1561)
 1648  Ibrahim I, Ottoman Sultan (born 1615)
 1674  Philippe de Champaigne, French painter (born 1602)
 1689  Pope Innocent XI (born 1611)
 1809  Mikhail Kamensky, Russian field marshal (born 1738)
 1827  William Blake, English poet (born 1757)
 1848  George Stephenson, English engineer (born 1781)
 1849  Albert Gallatin, American politician (born 1761)
 1861  Eliphalet Remington, American inventor and businessman (born 1793)
 1891  James Russell Lowell, American poet and critic (born 1819)
 1900  Wilhelm Steinitz, German chess player (born 1836)
 1900  James Edward Keeler, American astrophysicist (born 1857)

1901  2000 
 1901  Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld, Swedish polar explorer (born 1832)
 1901  Francesco Crispi, Italian politician (born 1819)
 1904  William Renshaw, British tennis player (born 1861)
 1914  John Philip Holland, early submarine designer (born 1840)
 1918  Anna Held, actress and singer (born 1872)
 1920  Louisa Lawson, Australian writer and activist (born 1848)
 1920  Hermann Struve, Baltic German astronomer and mathematician (born 1854)
 1921  Pyotr Boborykin, Russian playwright and journalist (born 1836)
 1922  Arthur Griffith, Irish politician (born 1871)
 1923  Vatrslav Jagić, Croatian philologist (born 1838)
 1928  Leoš Janáček, Czech composer (born 1854)
 1934  Hendrik Petrus Berlage, Dutch architect (born 1856)
 1935  Friedrich Schottky, German mathematician (born 1851)
 1936  Victoria Diez Bustos de Molina, Spanish religious teacher (born 1903)
 1941  Freeman Freeman-Thomas, 1st Marquess of Willingdon, Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India (born 1866)
 1943  Bobby Peel, Yorkshire cricketer (born 1857).
 1944  Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., American pilot, brother of John F. Kennedy (born 1915)
 1948  Harry Brearley, inventor of stainless steel (born 1871)
 1955  Thomas Mann, German writer (born 1875)
 1955  James B. Sumner, American chemist (born 1887)
 1964  Ian Fleming, British novelist (born 1908)
 1973  Walter Rudolf Hess, Swiss physiologist (born 1881)
 1973  Karl Ziegler, German chemist (born 1898)
 1979  Ernst Boris Chain, German biochemist, won the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1906)
 1982  Henry Fonda, American actor (born 1905)
 1982  Salvador Sanchez, world champion boxer (born 1959)
 1985  Manfred Winkelhock, auto racing driver (born 1951)
 1985  Kyu Sakamoto, Japanese singer (born 1941)
 1989  William Shockley, physicist (born 1910)
 1990  Dorothy Mackaill, English-American actress and singer (born 1903)
 1992  John Cage, American composer (born 1912)
 1997  Luther Allison, American blues musician, guitarist (born 1939)
 1999  Jean Drapeau, Canadian politician, 37th Mayor of Montreal (born 1916)
 2000  Loretta Young, American actress (born 1913)

From 2001 
 2004  Godfrey Hounsfield, English engineer and inventor (born 1919)
 2007  Merv Griffin, American television host and game show creator (born 1925)
 2007  Mike Wieringo, American comic book artist (born 1963)
 2010  Isaac Bonewits, American writer and activist (born 1949)
 2010  Guido de Marco, President of Malta (born 1931)
 2013  Prince Friso of Orange-Nassau, Dutch royal (born 1968)
 2013  Tompall Glaser, American country music singer (born 1933)
 2013  Vasiliy Mihaylovich Peskov, Russian writer (born 1930)
 2013  David McLetchie, Scottish politician (born 1952)
 2014  Lauren Bacall, American actress (born 1924)
 2014  Abel Laudonio, Argentine boxer and actor (born 1938)
 2014  Arlene Martel, American actress (born 1936)
 2015  Jaakko Hintikka, Finnish philosopher (born 1929)
 2015  Stephen Lewis, English actor (born 1926)
 2015  Meshulim Feish Lowy, Hungarian-Canadian rabbi (born 1921)
 2017  Heather Heyer, American counter-protestor (born 1985)
 2017  Bryan Murray, Canadian ice hockey player (born 1942)
 2018  Samir Amin, Egyptian-French economist (born 1931)
 2018  Kazimiera Utrata, Polish actress (born 1932)
 2019  DJ Arafat, Ivorian DJ and musician (born 1986)
 2019  José Luis Brown, Argentine footballer (born 1956)
 2019  Florin Halagian, Romanian footballer and manager (born 1939)
 2019  Jim Marsh, American basketball player (born 1946)
 2019  Hussein Salem, Egyptian-Spanish businessman (born 1933)
 2019  Jan Simonsen, Norwegian politician (born 1953)

Astronomical events and holidays 
 The Annual Perseid Meteor Shower occurs around this date.
 Mother's Day (Thailand)
 Glorious Twelfth (United Kingdom)
 International Youth Day (United Nations)

Days of the year