Today in History
20 August
1
George Washington
Andrew Johnson
|
||
|
||
|
||
| Battle at Anchialus: Bulgaria army counter attacks Byzantines | ||
| Gregory of Tours selected bishop of Tours | ||
| 636 a Byzantine attempt to drive Muslims out of Syria was thwarted at the battle of Yarmuk. | ||
| 1191 Crusader King Richard I kills 3,000 muslim prisoners in Akko | ||
| 1517 Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, cardinal/viceroy of Naples (1571-75) was born | ||
| 1534 Turkish admiral Chaireddin"Barbarossa" occupies Tunis | ||
| 1566 Iconoclasm reaches Antwerp Belgium | ||
| 1585 English queen Elizabeth I signs Treaty of Nonsuch: aid to Netherland | ||
| 1597 1st Dutch East India Company ships returned from Far East | ||
| 1604 Spanish garrison of Sluis surrenders to count Maurice | ||
| 1619 1st Black slaves brought by Dutch to colony of Jamestown Virginia |
1 |
|
| 1641 Britain & Scotland sign Treaty of Pacification | ||
| 1648 Battle of Lens: French duke d'Enghien defeats Spaniards | ||
| 1710 Thomas Simpson, English mathematician (rules of Simpson) was born | ||
| 1741 Alaska discovered by Danish explorer Vitus Bering | ||
| 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie reaches Blair Castle Scotland | ||
| 1781 George Washington begins to move his troops south to fight Cornwallis | ||
| 1791 Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering discovers Alaska | ||
| 1794 Gen Mad Anthony Wayne defeated the Indians at Fallen Timbers Ohio | ||
| 1795 Joseph Haydn returns to Vienna from England | ||
| 1842 Juliaan de Vriendt, Flemish painter was born | ||
| 1852 Steamer "Atlantic" collided with fishing boat, sinks with 250 aboard | ||
| 1866 Pres Andrew Johnson formally declares Civil War over | ||
| 1893 Shechita (ritual slaughtering) prohibited in Switzerland | ||
| 1896 Dial telephone patented | George Washington |
|
| 1900 Great Britain beats France in cricket in Olympic Games | ||
| 1901 Fawcett committee visits Mafeking concentration camp in Cape Colony | ||
| 1908 Congo Free State becomes Belgian Congo | ||
| 1910 US supported opposition brings down Madriz in Nicaragua | ||
| 1914 Battle at Gumbinnen, East-Prussia: Russian beat Germans | ||
| 1914 Battle at Morhange: German troops chase French, killing 1000s | ||
| 1914 Bavarian troops kill 50 inhabitants of Nomeny France | ||
| 1914 German army captured Brussels as the Belgian army retreated to Antwerp | ||
| 1915 Italy declares war on Turkey | ||
| 1918 Britain opens offensive on Western front during WW I | ||
| 1929 1st airship flight around Earth flying eastward completed |
|
|
| 1939 Russ offensive under gen Zjoekov against Jap invasion in Mongolia | ||
| 1940 as the aerial Battle of Britain raged, Prime Minister Winston Churchill told Parliament: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." | ||
| 1940 Leon Trotsky, Russian revolutionary, was fatally wounded by a Spanish communist with an ax in Mexico City, dying the next day. The Soviet government denied responsibility. | ||
| 1944 Gen de Gaulle returns to France | ||
| 1944 Russian offensive at Jassy & Kisjinev | ||
| 1944 U.S. and British forces destroyed the German Seventh Army at the Falaise-Argentan Gap, west of Paris. | ||
| 1946 The Allied Control Commission ordered the disbanding of the German armed forces, the Wehrmacht. | ||
| 1948 US expels Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob Lomakin | ||
| 1949 A new assembly in Hungary adopted a Soviet-style constitution and renamed the country the Hungarian People's Republic. | ||
| 1953 French forces forced the Sultan of Morocco, Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef, from the throne. | ||
| 1953 Russia publicly acknowledges hydrogen bomb test detonation | ||
| 1955 1st airplane to exceed 1800 mph (2897 kph)-HA Hanes, Palmdale Ca | ||
| 1955 Hundreds killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco & Algeria | ||
| 1959 Belgium shortens conscription to 12 months | ||
| 1960 Senegal decided to withdraw from the Mali Federation which it had formed with French Soudan (now Mali) in 1959. | ||
| 1961 East Germany began to erect a five-foot-high wall along its border with the West to replace the barbed wire put up on August 13. |
|
|
| 1968 Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops crossed the border into Czechoslovakia just before midnight, at the start of their invasion to crush the "Prague Spring" reforms. | ||
| 1974 Newly-installed U.S. President Gerald Ford, assuming office after Richard Nixon's resignation, nominated Nelson Rockefeller as his vice-president. | ||
| 1975 Il-62 crashes south of Damascus, Syria, killing 126 | ||
| 1975 The U.S. Viking I spacecraft was launched on its way to Mars. It deployed a landing craft that touched down on the planet in July 1976. | ||
| 1977 The U.S. Voyager II spacecraft was launched on its mission to explore the outer planets. It passed close to Jupiter (July 1979), Saturn (August 1981), Uranus (January 1986) and Neptune (August 1989) before leaving the solar system. | ||
| 1978 Gunmen open fire on an Israeli El Al Airline bus in London | ||
| 1978 Palestinian guerrillas attacked an El Al airline bus in London, killing two people | ||
| 1979 India premier Charan Singh resigns | ||
| 1980 Italian Reinhold Messner made the first successful solo ascent of Mount Everest. | ||
| 1985 Libya throws out 1000s Tunisian/Egyptian gas workers | ||
| 1988 6.5 earthquake strikes India/Nepal, 1,000s killed | ||
| 1989 51 died when the pleasure cruiser Marchioness sank after being rammed by a dredger on the River Thames, London. | Andrew Johnson |
|
| 1990 Iraq confirmed that Western hostages held after the outbreak of the Gulf War were being moved to military and other vital installations as a human shield to deter attacks. | ||
| 1991 The Estonian parliament declared independence from the Soviet Union. | ||
| 1993 Mother Teresa hospitalized with malaria | ||
| 1994 Ferry boat sinks at Chandpur Bangladesh, 300-350 killed | ||
| 1995 at least 350 people were killed in India's worst train disaster when two Delhi-bound trains collided at Firozobad, 125 miles from the capital. | ||
| 1995 Liberia's main warring factions signed a peace accord calling for a cease-fire after more than five years of civil war and the start of democratic rule in one year. | ||
| 1997 Israel launched its biggest air attack on Lebanon for 16 months in retaliation for a Hezbollah rocket barrage. | ||
C.H. OSTFELD, INC.