August 20



Events

Up to 1900 
 14  Agrippa Postumus, adopted son of the deceased emperor Augustus, is executed by his guards while in exile under mysterious circumstances.
 636  Battle of Yarmuk: Arab forces led by Khalid bin 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.
 917  Battle of Anchialus: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria invades Thrace and drives the Byzantines out.
 1000  Date of the official founding of Hungary by Saint Stephen.
 1083  Canonization of Saint Stephen of Hungary and his son, Saint Emeric.
 1391  Konrad von Wallenrode becomes the 24th Hochmeister of Teutonic Order.
 1467  The Second Battle of Olmedo takes place as part of the succession conflict between Henry IV of Castile and his half-brother, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias.
 1519  Philosopher and General Wang Yangming defeats Zhu Chenhao, ending the Prince of Ning rebellion against the Ming Dynasty's Zhengde Emperor.
 1619  First Africans arrive in the US, transported by the Dutch, and are sold as servants in Jamestown, Virginia.
 1630  Lemonade is invented in Paris, France.
 1672  Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother, Cornelis de Witt, are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.
 1707  The first Siege of Pensacola ends with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida, from the Spanish.
 1710  War of the Spanish Succession: A multinational (of different nationalities) army led by the Austrian commander Guido Starhemberg defeats the Spanish Bourbon army commanded by Alexandre Maitre, Marquis de Bray in the Battle of Zaragoza.
 1728  Vitus Bering lands on St. Lawrence Island in the now-named Bering Sea. The island is now part of the US state of Alaska.
 1775  Spanish colonists establish the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson, in the town that would become 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.
 1833  Nat Turner leads his revolt against the Southern plantation owners of Southampton County, Virginia
 1857  The ship Dunbar sinks off Sydney Heads, 121 people drown.
 1857  First book published by an Australian female writer: Gertrude the Emigrant by Caroline Atkinson.
 1858  Charles Darwin first publishes his Theory of Evolution through natural selection alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.
 1860  In Melbourne, Robert O'Hara Burke and William Wills begin their South-North expedition of Australia. They successfully go from the South to North but both die on they way back south in late June 1861.
 1866  US President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War to be over.
 1868  The Abergele train disaster in North Wales kills 33 people.
 1882  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow.
 1892  The Celtic Park football stadium opens in Glasgow, Scotland. It is home to Celtic FC.

1901  2000 
 1910  Fire rips through parts of eastern Washington State, northern Idaho and western Montana.
 1914  World War I: German forces occupy Brussels.
 1915  World War I: Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
 1920  The National Football League (NFL) is founded.
 1920  The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan.
 1926  Japan's broadcasting company Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) is founded.
 1938  Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career Grand Slam, a record in baseball that still stands.
 1940  Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded in Mexico City by an assassin's ice-ax. He will die the next day.
 1940  Winston Churchill makes a famous speech containing the following quote: Never was so much owed by so many to so few.
 1944  World War II: The Battle of Romania begins with a Soviet offensive.
 1950  Korean War: The United Nations repel an offensive by North Korean divisions attempting to cross the Naktong River and assault the city of Taegu.
 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 independence.
 1962  The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered civilian ship, starts her first voyage.
 1968  200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization.
 1975  Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
 1977  Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
 1980  Reinhold Messner reaches the top of Mount Everest, both without oxygen, and on his own.
 1982  Lebanese Civil War: A multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon.
 1986  In Edmond, Oklahoma, US Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
 1988  Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
 1988  An earthquake in India and Nepal kills 1,450 people.
 1988  Iran-Iraq War: A ceasefire is agreed to end eight years of war.
 1989  The O-Bahn busway opens in Adelaide, South Australia, as the world's longest guided busway.
 1989  The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the Thames in London, killing 51 people.
 1989  In Beverly Hills, California, Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot and kill their wealthy parents.
 1991  Collapse of the Soviet Union: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup that deposed President Mikhail Gorbachev.
 1991  Estonia separates from the Soviet Union.
 1993  After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Peace Accords were signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington D.C. the next month.
 1995  The Hindu temple in Neasden, London, UK, is opened. At the time of its opening, it is the largest Hindu temple outside India.
 1996  Russian soldiers surround Grozny, Chechnya.
 1997  Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people killed, 15 kidnapped.
 1998  The Supreme Court of Canada states Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.
 1998  1998 U.S. embassy bombings: The United States military 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. The al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum is destroyed in the attack.

From 2001 
 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.
 2004  Talk show host Regis Philbin breaks the record for Most Hours on Camera, with 15,188.
 2008  A Spanair plane, due to travel from Madrid to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Madrid Barajas Airport, killing 146 people, with 8 dying later. 18 survive.
 2009  Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only person to have been convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, who is suffering from prostate cancer, is released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, returning to his native Libya. He dies on May 20, 2012.
 2014  A series of landslides in Hiroshima Prefecture kills 72 people, after a month's worth of rain fell in one day.
 2018  Then-15-year-old Greta Thunberg protests outside the Swedish parliament over politicians' lack of action on climate change, starting what would become a worldwide movement of school strikes.
 2019  Giuseppe Conte announces his resignation as Prime Minister of Italy over his coalition partner and League party leader Matteo Salvini's calls for an early election.

Births

Up to 1900 
 1085  Boleslaw III Wrymouth, Duke of Poland (d. 1138)
 1517  Antoine Perrenot de Granville, French cardinal (d. 1586)
 1561  Jacopo Peri, Italian composer (d. 1633)
 1613  Elisabeth Sophie of Mecklenburg, German poet and composer (d. 1676)
 1625  Thomas Corneille, French playwright (d. 1709)
 1710  Thomas Simpson, English mathematician (d. 1761)
 1719  Christian Mayer, Czech astronomer (d. 1783)
 1720  Bernard de Bury, French musician and court composer (d. 1785)
 1761  José, Prince of Brazil, Portuguese royal (d. 1788)
 1777  Francis I of the Two Sicilies (d. 1830)
 1778  Bernardo O'Higgins, Chilean revolutionary (d. 1842)
 1779  Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (d. 1848)
 1786  José Joaquín Prieto Vial, President of Chile (d. 1854)
 1792  Jacques Le Roy de Saint Arnauld, French statesman (d. 1854)
 1799  Heinrich von Gagern, German politician (d. 1880)
 1827  Josef Strauss, Austrian architect, inventor and composer (d. 1870)
 1831  Eduard Suess, Austrian geologist and politician (d. 1914)
 1833  Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States (d. 1901)
 1843  Edward Lee Greene, American botanist (d. 1915)
 1844  Mutsu Munemitsu, Japanese politician (d. 1897)
 1845  Albert Chmielowski, Polish saint (d. 1916)
 1847  Boleslaw Prus, Polish writer and publicist (d. 1912)
 1860  Raymond Poincaré, President of France and four-times Prime Minister of France (d. 1934)
 1862  Jesse Carleton, American golfer (d. 1921)
 1864  Ion I. C. Bratianu, Prime Minister of Romania (d. 1927)
 1868  Ellen Roosevelt, American tennis player (d. 1954)
 1873  Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen, Finnish architect (d. 1950)
 1881  Edgar Guest, English poet (d. 1959)
 1881  Aleksander Hellat, Estonian politician (d. 1943)
 1882  Ricardo Joaquin Alfaro Jovane, President of Panama (d. 1971)
 1883  Robert Lehr, German politician (d. 1956)
 1884  Forrest C. Donnell, 40th Governor of Missouri (d. 1980)
 1885  Dino Campana, Italian poet (d. 1932)
 1886  Paul Tillich, German-American theologian (d. 1965)
 1888  Ton Duc Thang, President of North Vietnam (d. 1980)
 1890  H. P. Lovecraft, American writer (d. 1937)
 1898  Vilhelm Moberg, Swedish writer (d. 1973)
 1900  Rita Montaner, Cuban singer and actress (d. 1958)

1901  1950 
 1901  Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian writer (d. 1968)
 1905  Jack Teagarden, jazz musician (d. 1964)
 1905  Jean Gebser, writer, linguist, and poet (d. 1973)
 1906  Vidrik Bootare, Estonian chess player (d. 1981)
 1908  Al Lopez, American baseball player (d. 2005)
 1910  Eero Saarinen, Finnish architect (d. 1961)
 1913  Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neurobiologist (d. 1994)
 1918  Jacqueline Susann, novelist (d. 1974)
 1919  Walter Bernstein, American screenwriter and film producer
 1919  Thomas G. Morris, American politician (d. 2016)
 1920  George Zuverink, American baseball player (d. 2014)
 1921  Ursula B. Marvin, American planetary geologist (d. 2018)
 1923  Jim Reeves, American country singer (d. 1964)
 1927  Peter Oakley, English blogger (d. 2014)
 1928  Luciano De Crescenzo, Italian writer, actor and director (d. 2019)
 1930  Jan Olszewski, Polish politician (d. 2019)
 1931  Don King, American boxing promoter
 1932  Anthony Ainley, British actor (d. 2004)
 1932  Vasily Aksyonov, Russian writer (d. 2009)
 1933  George J. Mitchell, American politician and businessman
 1934  Armi Kuusela, Finnish model
 1935  Ron Paul, American politician
 1936  Hideki Shirakawa, Japanese chemist, Nobel Prize, laureate
 1937  Stelvio Cipriani, Italian composer (d. 2018)
 1937  Andrei Konchalovsky, Russian movie director
 1937  Jim Bowen, English comedian and television personality (d. 2018)
 1937  Sky Saxon, American singer-songwriter and musician (d. 2009)
 1939  Javier Usabiaga Arroyo, Mexican businessman and politician (d. 2018)
 1939  Fernando Poe, Jr., Filipino movie actor and politician (d. 2004)
 1940  Rubén Hinojosa, American politician
 1940  Ronnie McKinnon, Scottish footballer
 1941  Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia and Yugoslavia (d. 2006)
 1942  Isaac Hayes, American singer, songwriter, and actor (d. 2008)
 1943  Sylvester McCoy, Scottish actor
 1944  Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (d. 1991)
 1944  José Wilker, Brazilian television director and actor (d. 2014)
 1946  Ralf Hütter, German musician (Kraftwerk)
 1946  Ryszard Czerniawski, Polish lawyer and economist (d. 2019)
 1946  Laurent Fabius, French politician
 1946  Connie Chung, American journalist
 1946  N.R. Narayana Murthy, Indian businessman
 1948  Robert Plant, British singer (Led Zeppelin)
 1948  Kees van Kooten, Dutch footballer (d. 2015)
 1949  Phil Lynott, Irish musician (d. 1986)

1951  1975 
 1951  Greg Bear, American science fiction writer
 1952  John Hiatt, musician
 1954  Al Roker, American television broadcaster
 1954  Don Stark, American actor
 1955  Danny Murphy, American actor (d. 2014)
 1955  Agnes Chan, singer, professor of education, essayist
 1955  Janet Royall, Baroness Royall of Blaisdon, English politician
 1956  Joan Allen, actress
 1956  Roberto Regazzi, Italian violin maker
 1958  Nigel Dodds, Northern Irish politician of the Democratic Unionist Party
 1960  Annabelle Ewing, Scottish politician
 1961  Joe Pasquale, English comedian
 1961  Steve McMahon, English footballer
 1962  James Marsters, American actor
 1962  Sophie Aldred, English voice actress
 1963  Riccardo Ferri, Italian footballer
 1964  Giuseppe Giannini, Italian footballer and coach
 1965  KRS-One (Lawrence Krisna Parker), American rapper
 1966  Dimebag Darrell Abbott, American lead guitar player in Pantera, heavy metal band
 1966  Enrico Letta, former Prime Minister of Italy
 1966  Markus Gandler, Austrian skier
 1968  Yuri Shiratori, Japanese seiyū
 1968  Klas Ingesson, Swedish footballer (d. 2014)
 1970  John Carmack, computer game programmer
 1970  Fred Durst, American singer
 1971  Jonathan Ke Quan, American actor
 1971  David Walliams, British actor and comedian (Little Britain)
 1973  Todd Helton, American baseball player
 1974  Amy Adams, American actress
 1974  Misha Collins, American actor
 1974  Big Moe, American rapper (d. 2007)

From 1976 
 1976  Chris Drury, American ice hockey player
 1977  Ivar Ingimarsson, Icelandic footballer
 1977  Stéphane Gillet, Luxembourgish footballer
 1977  Felipe Contepomi, Argentine rugby player
 1977  Manuel Contepomi, Argentine rugby player
 1978  Neco Martínez, Colombian footballer
 1979  Jamie Cullum, British musician
 1979  Cory Sullivan, American baseball player
 1981  Bernard Mendy, French footballer
 1982  Joshua Kennedy, Australian footballer
 1983  Yuri Zhirkov, Russian footballer
 1983  Andrew Garfield, British-American actor
 1985  Alvaro Negredo, Spanish footballer
 1985  Stephen Ward, Irish footballer
 1988  Jerryd Bayless, American basketball player
 1990  Ranomi Kromowidjojo, Dutch swimmer
 1990  Leigh Griffiths, Scottish footballer
 1991  Cory Joseph, American basketball player
 1992  Demi Lovato, American singer and actress
 1995  Liana Liberato, American actress

Deaths

Up to 1900 
 2  Lucius Caesar, heir of Augustus Caesar (b. 17 BC)
 14  Agrippa Postumus, Roman son of Marcus Vespasianus Agrippa and Julia the Elder (b. 12 BC)
 480  Leonidas I of Sparta
 768  Eadberht of Northumbria
 984  Pope John XIV
 1153  Bernard of Clairvaux, French theologian (b. 1090)
 1384  Geert Groote, Dutch founder of the Brethren of the Common Life (b. 1340)
 1572  Miguel López de Legazpi, Spanish conquistador (b.1502)
 1580  Jeronymo Osorio, Portuguese historian (b. 1506)
 1611  Tomás Luis de Victoria, Spanish composer (b. in the 1500s)
 1639  Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet (b. 1597)
 1643  Anne Hutchinson, English Puritan preacher (b. 1591)
 1648  Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, English diplomat, poet, and philosopher (b. 1583)
 1672  Johan de Witt, Dutch politician (b. 1625)
 1672  Cornelius de Witt, Dutch politician (b. 1623)
 1680  William Bedloe, English informer (b. 1650)
 1701  Charles Sedley, English playwright (b. in the 1600s)
 1707  Nicolas Gigault, French organist and composer (b. 1627)
 1773  Enrique Florez, Spanish historian (b. 1701)
 1823  Pope Pius VII (b. 1740)
 1823  Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, German publisher (b. 1772)
 1854  Shiranui Dakuemon, Japanese sumo wrestler (b. 1801)
 1854  Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, German philosopher (b. 1775)
 1887  Jules Laforgue, French poet (b. 1860)

1901  2000 
 1912  William Booth, English founder of the Salvation Army (b. 1829)
 1914  Pope Pius X (b. 1835)
 1915  Paul Ehrlich, German doctor, won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, (b. 1854)
 1917  Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1835)
 1919  Greg MacGregor, Scottish cricketer and rugby player (b. 1869)
 1930  Charles Bannerman, Australian cricketer and umpire (b. 1851)
 1942  Istvan Horthy, Hungarian admiral (b. 1904)
 1947  Albert Henderson, Canadian soccer player (b. 1881)
 1961  Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1882)
 1965  Jonathan Daniels, American activist (b. 1939)
 1979  Christian Dotremont, Belgian painter and writer (b. 1922)
 1980  Joe Dassin, American singer (b. 1938)
 1982  Ulla Jacobsson, Swedish actress (b. 1929)
 1986  Milton Acorn, Canadian poet (b. 1923)
 1993  Bernard Delfgaauw, Dutch philosopher (b. 1912)
 1995  Hugo Pratt, Italian author and illustrator (b. 1927)
 1996  Rio Reiser, German rock musician (b. 1950)

From 2001 
 2001  Sir Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and science fiction writer (b. 1915)
 2005  Thomas Herrion, American football player (b. 1981)
 2005  Krzysztof Raczkowski, Polish drummer (b. 1970)
 2006  Claude Blanchard, French-Canadian singer, comedian and actor (b. 1932)
 2006  Joe Rosenthal, American photographer (b. 1912)
 2008  Hua Guofeng, Chairman of the Chinese Communist party (b. 1921)
 2008  Gene Upshaw, American football player and union leader (b. 1945)
 2012  Phyllis Diller, American actress and comedienne (b. 1917)
 2012  Virginia Dwyer, American actress (b. 1919)
 2012  Dom Mintoff, former Prime Minister of Malta (b. 1916)
 2012  Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of Ethiopia and ex-President of Ethiopia (b. 1955)
 2013  Elmore Leonard, American novelist and screenwriter (b. 1925)
 2013  Ted Post, American director (b. 1919)
 2013  Marian McPartland, British-American jazz pianist (b. 1918)
 2014  B. K. S. Iyengar, Indian yoga teacher and author (b. 1918)
 2014  Boris Dubin, Russian sociologist and translator (b. 1946)
 2014  Anton Buslov, Russian scientist and blogger (b. 1983)
 2014  Sava Stojkov, Serbian painter (b. 1925)
 2014  Edmund Szoka, American cardinal (b. 1927)
 2015  Lev Durov, Russian actor (b. 1931)
 2015  Lina Morgan, Spanish actress and playwright (b. 1937)
 2015  Harry Volkman, American meteorologist (b. 1926)
 2017  Margot Hielscher, German singer and actress (b. 1919)
 2017  Jerry Lewis, American actor and comedian (b. 1926)
 2017  Colin Meads, New Zealand rugby player (b. 1936)
 2017  Nati Mistral, Spanish actress (b. 1928)
 2017  Wilhelm Killmayer, German composer and conductor (b. 1927)
 2017  Gordon M. Williams, Scottish writer (b. 1934)
 2018  John N. Abrams, American general (b. 1946)
 2018  Uri Avnery, Israeli peace activist (b. 1923)
 2018  Jimmy McIlroy, Northern Irish footballer (b. 1931)
 2018  Eddie Willis, American guitarist (b. 1936)
 2019  Rudolf Hundstorfer, Austrian politician (b. 1951)
 2019  John H. McArthur, Canadian-American theorist (b. 1934)
 2019  Larry Siegel, American comedy writer (b. 1925)

Observances 
 Saint Stephen's Day (Hungary), commemorating the founding of the Kingdom of Hungary in the year 1000
 Regaining of Independence (Estonia)
 World Mosquito Day

Days of the year