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 Noteborg - 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 Simon Bolivar 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 Schrodinger, Austrian physicist (died 1961)
1889 Zerna Sharp, American author 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 Andre Kolingba, President of the Central African Republic (died 2010)
1937 Walter Dean Myers, American author 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 author (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 Francois 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 Koji, 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 Cisse, 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 Nordenskiold, 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 Jagic, Croatian philologist (born 1838)
1928 Leos Janacek, 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 author 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 Jose 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.