23 August 2024 (MIA)

 

1305 – William Wallace, Scottish patriot, is executed for high treason by Edward I of England.

 

1514 – Battle of Chaldiran ended with a decisive victory for the Sultan Selim I, Ottoman Empire, over the Shah Ismail I, Safavids founder.

 

1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.

 

1572 – Mob violence against Huguenots in Paris – St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre.

 

1595 – Michael the Brave confronts the Ottoman army in the Battle of Calugareni.

 

1775 – King George III declares that the American colonies exist in a state of open and avowed rebellion.

 

1793 – French Revolution: a levée en masse is decreed by the National Convention.

 

1799 – Napoleon leaves Egypt for France en route to seize power.

 

1839 – The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.

 

1866 – Austro-Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague.

 

1896 – First Cry of the Philippine Revolution is made in Pugad Lawin (Quezon City), in the province of Manila.

 

1914 – World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.

 

1929 – Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.

 

1939 – World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.

 

1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.

 

1943 – World War II: Kharkov liberated.

 

1944 – World War II: Marseille liberated.

 

1944 – World War II King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of General Antonescu, who is arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies.

 

1958 – Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins with the People’s Liberation Army’s bombardment of Quemoy.

 

1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

 

1975 – Successful Communist coup in Laos.

 

1979 – Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defects to the United States.

 

1982 – Bachir Gemayel is elected Lebanese President amidst the raging civil war.

 

1985 – Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.

 

1989 – Hungary: the last communist government open the Iron curtain and causes the exodus of thousands of Eastern Germans to West Germany via Hungary (September 11).

 

1989 – Singing Revolution: two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands (Baltic Way).

 

1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western “guests” (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.

 

1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.

 

1990 – West Germany and East Germany announce that they will unite on October 3.

 

1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled ‘A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.’

 

2000 – Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143.

 

2006 – Natascha Kampusch, who is abducted at the age of 10, managed to escape from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil, after 8 years of captivity.

 

2007– Hashtag invented and first used in a tweet by US product designer Chris Messina.

 

2015 – 12-year-old boy trips and rips 17th-century painting "Flowers" by Paolo Porpora worth $1.5m at exhibition in Taiwan.

 

2017 – World's driest place, the Atacama desert in Chile blooms after unexpected rainfall.

 

2021 – US Food and Drug Administration grants full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for people 16 and over. First vaccine to move past emergency-use status in the US.

 

2023 – Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group, reported killed along with 9 others in a plane crash northwest of Moscow, according to Russian Federal Air Transport Agency.