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 Jose, 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 Jons Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (d. 1848)
1786 Jose Joaquin 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 Poincare, 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 Ruben Hinojosa, American politician
1940 Ronnie McKinnon, Scottish footballer
1941 Slobodan Milosevic, 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 Jose Wilker, Brazilian television director and actor (d. 2014)
1946 Ralf Hutter, 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 seiyu
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 Stephane Gillet, Luxembourgish footballer
1977 Felipe Contepomi, Argentine rugby player
1977 Manuel Contepomi, Argentine rugby player
1978 Neco Martinez, 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 Lopez de Legazpi, Spanish conquistador (b.1502)
1580 Jeronymo Osorio, Portuguese historian (b. 1506)
1611 Tomas 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