19 August
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19 August |
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| 14 AD Augustus (Octavius Augustus Caesar) died. Augustus was the first Roman Emperor. He was great-nephew of Julius Caesar and was formally adopted by him as his son and heir. | ||
| 1071 The battle of Manzikert in which the Byzantine army was defeated by the Seljuks Turks, is one of the decisive battles of history. In the spring of 1071 the Byzantine emperor Romanus tried to extend his influence into parts of Turkish - held Armenia. His army was composed of mercenaries that included some Turkmen. The night before the battle, his Turkmen betrayed and went over to the enemy and in the following battle the Byzantine army was utterly destroyed. After Manzikert, there was nothing to oppose the Turkish flood, and only the Bosphorus saved the Byzantine Empire. Anatolia was occupied by the Turks and the Byzantines were confined to the European part of the empire and a small strip of land along the Bosphorus including Constantinople (modern day Instanbul). Seldjuken sultan Alp Arslan led the army of Seljuks Turks | ||
| 1099 Crusaders led by Godfrey of Bouillon (b.1058 d.1100 - Duke of Lower Lorraine) defeat the Saracens in the Battle of Ascalon | ||
| 1263 Censorship of Jewish (Hebrew) writings ordered by King James (Jayme) I of Aragon. The famous debate called the Barcelona Dispute at the court of James I of Aragon in Barcelona. The debate was between the Ramban (Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman - otherwise known as RAMBAN or Nachmanides) and Pablo Christiani began. King James I of Aragon hosted the debate, and guaranteed the Ramban freedom to say what he pleased and rewarded the Ramban with 300 gold coins for his "most admirable defense of a wrong position". | ||
| 1399 King Richard II of England surrenders to his cousin Henry | ||
| 1458 Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini chosen Pope Pius II | ||
| 1477 Maximilian I, son of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, married Mary of Burgundy and acquired the Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands and France. | ||
| 1493 Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, died and was succeeded by Maximilian I. | ||
| 1521 Lodovico Guicciardini, Italian historian (Descrittione di Tutti) was born | ||
| 1524 Emperor Charles V's troops besieges Marseille, France | ||
| 1561 Mary Queen of Scots arrived in Scotland to assume the throne after spending 13 years in France. | ||
| 1587 Sigismund III, son of John of Sweden, was elected King of Poland. He sought a union of Poland with Sweden but instead created hostility and war between the two. | ||
| 1591 French king Henri IV (formerly King of Navarre) occupies Rouen | ||
| 1601 Michael the Brave, Romanian national hero, was assassinated. | ||
| 1627 Prince Frederik Henry at the head of Dutch forces conquers the fortress at Groenlo (Netherlands) after a siege that lasted more than a month. Groenlo is a town in the region called Gelderland that was locally known as ‘Grolle’ or ‘Grol’. This is where the name of the longtime local brewery Grolsch comes from. The town was granted city rights in 1277 after it had been reverted to Gelre. Taken by Prince Maurits in 1597, it was recaptured by Spanish general Spinola in 1606. | ||
| 1691 The second Battle at Szalankemen: Austrians beat Turks | 1 |
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| 1692 5 women executed for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts | ||
| 1698 Russian czar Peter the Great begins reign | ||
| 1757 Battle at Gross Jaegersdorf (Eastern Prussia): the Russian army beats Prussia. The battle of Gross Jaegersdorf in 1757 between Von Lehwalt’s Prussian army and the Russians under Apraksin. The Prussians, although outnumbered in infantry and artillery pursued the Russians across the Pregel River when they retired over it. The Russians expected the Prussians to remain on the other side of the river and encamped on the other side at Norkitten wood. The Prussians decided to follow them and at 1:30 in the morning pushed through the woods in an attempt to catch the Russians by surprise. The Russians did not sound the alert until 4:30 A.M. After a desperate fight the Russians defeated the Prussians by weight of numbers and artillery. However the strategic victory was won and the Russians called off the campaign in East Prussia shortly thereafter. This resulted in the court marshal of Apraxin and more breathing time for Frederick II. | ||
| 1772 Gustav III seized effective control of the Swedish government and restored the full power of the monarchy which had been subordinate to parliament since 1720. | ||
| 1787 Sir William Herschel discovers Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. As the most renowned astronomer of his time, William Herschel contributed significantly to most branches of astronomy. Besides searching clusters and nebulae, he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781, two satellites of Uranus, Titania and Oberon, in 1787, and Saturn's moons Mimas and Enceladus in 1789 (on this day). He investigated the proper motion of stars and derived the peculiar motion of the solar system toward the direction of constellation Hercules, modelled the Milky Way galaxy from stellar statistics and speculated about the nature of the nebulae, including a discussion of the possibility of external island universes (galaxies) which had been brought up by philosopher Emmanuel Kant. He also contributed to physics (especially optics) and discovered infrared radiation which has been used widely in medicine. His main literary work was his Catalog of Deep Sky objects | ||
| 1791 Benjamin Banneker published his 1st Almanac. Benjamin Banneker was born in Maryland on November 9, 1731. His father and grandfather were former slaves. A farmer of modest means, Banneker nevertheless lived a life of unusual achievement. In 1753, the young man borrowed a pocket watch from a well-to-do neighbor; he took it apart and made a drawing of each component, then reassembled the watch and returned it, fully functioning, to its owner. From his drawings Banneker then proceeded to carve, out of wood, enlarged replicas of each part. Calculating the proper number of teeth for each gear and the necessary relationships between the gears, he constructed a working wooden clock that kept accurate time and struck the hours for over 50 years. At age 58, Banneker began the study of astronomy and was soon predicting future solar and lunar eclipses. He compiled the ephemeris, or information table, for annual almanacs that were published for the years 1792 through 1797. "Benjamin Banneker's Almanac" was a top seller from Pennsylvania to Virginia and even into Kentucky.. | ||
| 1796 Spain and France sign anti-English alliance | ||
| 1812 In the Anglo-American war of 1812, the U.S. warship Constitution defeated the British frigate Guerriere. | ||
| 1816 Java again in Dutch hands | ||
| 1821 Failed liberal coup against French King Louis XVIII | ||
| 1826 Canada Co chartered to colonize Upper Canada (Ontario) | ||
| 1836 HMS Beagle anchors at Angra, Azores | ||
| 1839 Details of Louis Daguerre's first practical photographic process were released in Paris. | ||
| 1849 New York Herald reports gold discovery in California | ||
| 1891 William Huggins describes astronomical application of spectrum | ||
| 1897 1st electric taxi's drive in London | ||
| 1900 Start of the one and only olympic cricket match, in Paris | ||
| 1905 Russian tsar installs "Imperial Duma," without legislative powers | ||
| 1909 Indianapolis race track (where the 500 mile race is run) opens | ||
| 1914 German army executes 150 Belgians by firing squad | ||
| 1914 German fleet bombs English coast | ||
| 1915 Rationing laws go into effect in Netherlands | ||
| 1919 Afghanistan declares independence from UK | ||
| 1934 Germans vote to give Adolf Hitler the presidency in addition to being Chancellor. | ||
| 1936 Federico Garcia Lorca, leading Spanish writer and poet, was shot dead by Fascists at the beginning of the civil war. | ||
| 1940 Italian troops forced the British to withdraw from Somaliland. | ||
| 1942 1st American offensive in Pacific in WW2, Guadalcanal, Solomon Island | ||
| 1942 British and Canadian troops launched a disastrous attack on German-held Dieppe. Of the 6,000 troops involved, only about 2,500 returned. The rest were killed or captured. | ||
| 1942 Gen Paulus orders German 6th Army to conquer Stalingrad, USSR | ||
| 1943 US air raid on German bases at Gilze-Rijen/Vlissingen | ||
| 1944 Allied air raid on Maastricht, Holland with more that 80 killed | ||
| 1944 Last Japanese troops driven out of India | ||
| 1944 Paris police strike against Nazi occupiers | ||
| 1944 Polish 1st Division occupies Hill 262 (Mont Ormel), Normandy | ||
| 1944 US 15th Army corp occupies Mantes-Gassicourt near Paris | ||
| 1953 Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq was overthrown in a coup in Iran. General Zahedi took over and the Shah returned from exile in Italy. | ||
| 1955 Hurricane Diane kills 200 and 1st billion dollar damage storm (N.E. US) | ||
| 1960 Gary Powers, the U.S. spy plane pilot shot down by the Russians over Soviet territory, was sentenced to 10 years detention. | ||
| 1960 The Soviet Sputnik 5 satellite was launched into Earth orbit carrying two dogs named Belka and Strelka. | ||
| 1965 Auschwitz trials end with 6 life sentences | ||
| 1966 Earthquake strikes Varko Turkey: 2,400 killed | ||
| 1973 George Papadopoulos was sworn in as president of Greece as the monarchy came to an end. He lifted martial law, in effect since 1967, but was overthrown in a coup in November. | ||
| 1974 Roger Davis, U.S. ambassador to Cyprus, was shot dead during anti-American demonstrations in Nicosia. | ||
| 1978 A fire in a theater set by Muslims extremists in Abadan, Iran, killed over 400 people. | ||
| 1979 Soviet Cosmonauts Vladimir Lyakov and Valery Ryumin returned to Earth aboard Soyuz 34 after a record 175 days in space. | ||
| 1980 301 people died when fire swept through a Saudi Arabian airliner as it made an emergency landing at Riyadh airport. | ||
| 1981 2 US Navy F-14 jet fighters shoot down 2 Soviet-built Libyan SU-22 over the Mediterranean sea | ||
| 1985 Japan launches its 2nd probe of Halley's Comet, Suisei | ||
| 1986 Car bomb kills 20 in Tehran, Iran | ||
| 1987 In Britain's worst mass killing, gunman Michael Ryan shot dead 16 people during a rampage through Hungerford. | ||
| 1988 Iran-Iraq begin a cease-fire in their 8-year-old war | ||
| 1988 Muang Muang succeeds Gen Sein Lwin as president of Burma | ||
| 1991 An abortive coup by hard-liners against Soviet President Gorbachev began. It collapsed two days later. | ||
| 1993 Mattel and Fisher Price toys merge | ||
| 1995 U.S. envoy Robert C. Frasure and three others were killed when their vehicle plunged off a road near Sarajevo. | ||
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