Wednesday, April 23, 2014

August 20 in history


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AUG 19      INDEX      AUG 21
14 – Agrippa Postumus, adopted son of the late Roman emperor Augustus, is executed by his guards while in exile under mysterious circumstances.

573 – Gregory of Tours selected bishop of Tours.

636 – Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-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 Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army.

1000 – The foundation of the Hungarian state, Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Saint Stephen, celebrated as a National Day in Hungary.

1083 – Canonization of the first King of Hungary, Saint Stephen and his son Saint Emeric.

1191 – Crusader King Richard I kills 3,000 muslim prisoners in Akko.

1308 – Pope Clement V pardons Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, absolving him of charges of heresy.

1391 – Konrad von Wallenrode becomes the 24th Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order.

1467 – The Second Battle of Olmedo takes places as part of a 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 reign of the Ming Dynasty emperor Zhengde.

1534 – Turkish admiral Chaireddin "Barbarossa" occupies Tunis.

1566 – Iconoclasm reaches Antwerp, Belgium; the Cathedral's interior is torn apart by Protestants.

1578 – Francis Drake renames his flagship the Pelican to the Golden Hind in honor of his patron, Sir Christopher Hatton.

1597 – 1st Dutch East India Company ships return from the Far East.

1604 – Spanish garrison of Sluis surrenders to count Maurice.

1612 – 9 Pendle witches hanged at Gallows Hill in Lancaster, England.

1619 – The first known African slaves in English North America (approx. 20) land at Point Comfort (Fort Monroe), Virginia.

1641 – England & Scotland sign Treaty of Pacification.

1648 – Battle of Lens: French Duc d'Enghien defeats Spaniards

1667 – John Milton publishes Paradise Lost, an epic poem about the fall of Adam and Eve.

1672 – Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.

1707 – The first Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida.

1710 – War of the Spanish Succession: A multinational army led by the Austrian commander Guido Starhemberg defeats the Spanish-Bourbon army commanded by Alexandre Maître, Marquis de Bay in the Battle of Saragossa.

1741 – Danish navigator Vitus Jonas Bering, commissioned by Peter the Great of Russia to find land connecting Asia and North America, discovers Alaska.

1775 – The Spanish establish the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.

1781 – Under the command of George Washington, troops begin to move south to fight Cornwallis,

1794 – The Battle of Fallen Timbers. the final, decisive battle of the Northwest Indian War, is fought near present day Toledo, Ohio. American forces under General "Mad Anthony" Wayne defeat a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat. The Battle of Fallen Timbers was a critical victory for the fledgling, barely decade old United States, and it sealed America’s claim to land that would soon become the states of Ohio and Indiana.

1823 – Gioachino Rossini's opera "Le Comte Ory" premieres in Paris

1847 – Battle of Churubusco: After defeating General Gabriel Valencia's army at Contreras, Major General Winfield Scott's U.S. Army pursued the retreating Mexicans to Churubusco where, reinforced by the main enemy army commanded by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, they made a stand later the same day. 

1858 – Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.

1864 – 8th/last day of battle at Deep Bottom Run Va (about 3,900 casualties)

1865 – President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.

1882 – Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia.

1885 – "The Mikado", by Gilbert and Sullivan, opens at the Fifth Avenue Theatre (spawning the early ear-worm “Three Little Maids from School”). whatwasthere.com The site is now a parking garage.

1892 – The Transvaal National Union, a political organisation, is set up with J. Tudhope as president.

1896 – Dial telephone patented.

1901 – The Fawcett Commission visits Mafeking concentration camp in Cape Colony

1904 – Dublin's Abbey Theatre is founded, an outgrowth of the Irish Literary Theatre founded in 1899 by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory.

1905 – Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen forms the first chapter of T'ung Meng Hui, a union of all secret societies determined to bringing down the Manchus (Qing dynasty)

1908 – The American Great White Fleet arrives in Sydney, Australia, to be greeted with a tremendous welcome; 221 American sailors desert to remain in Australia.

1908 – Congo Free State becomes Belgian Congo.

1909 – Pluto was photographed for the first time on this day in 1909, 21 years before it was officially discovered by Clyde Tombaugh.

1910 – The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the "Big Blowup" or the "Big Burn") swept through parts of northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana, killing at least 85 people and burning approximately 3 million acres (12,000 km2).

1910 – US supported opposition brings down Madriz in Nicaragua.

1912 – Plant Quarantine Act goes into effect.

1913 – 700 feet above Buc, France, parachutist Adolphe Pégoud becomes the first person to jump from an airplane and land safely.

1914 – World War I: German army captures Brussels as the Belgian army retreats to Antwerp. German General von Bulow executes 211 Belgians.

1914 – Russia wins an early victory over Germany at Gumbinnen, East-Prussia.

1914 – Battle at Morhange: German troops chase French, killing thousands.

1914 – Bavarian troops kill 50 inhabitants of Nomeny, France.

1915 – Chicago White Sox obtain 'Shoeless' Joe Jackson from Cleveland for Robert Roth, Larry Chappell, Ed Klepfer & $31,500; Jackson involved in 'Black Sox Scandal' 1919.

1918 – WWI: Britain opens offensive on Western front

1920 – The first commercial radio station, 8MK (now WWJ), begins daily broadcasting in Detroit, Michigan.

1920 – American Professional Football Association forms. Jim Thorpe is installed as president. It would later become the National Football League (NFL),

1926 – Japan's public broadcasting company, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai (NHK) is established.

1926 – Uprising against Rezā Shāh Pahlavi in Iran.

1929 – First airship flight around Earth flying eastward completed.

1935 – Military coup by General Pons & President Ibarra in Ecuador.

1938 – Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam, a record that stood for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.

1939 – Russian offensive under General Zjoekov against Japanese invasion in Mongolia.

1940 – In Mexico City, Mexico, after a previous machine gun attack failed, exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded by Ramón Mercader with an alpine ax to the back of the head. He dies the next day.

1940 – World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. in the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, makes his famous homage to the Royal Air Force: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

1940 – Radar is used for the first time, by the British during the Battle of Britain.

1940 – First Polish squadrons fight along allies in the Battle of Britain.

1940 – Louis Buchalter is indicted on murder charges in Los Angeles for the killing of Harry Greenberg, a mob associate of casino owner Meyer Lansky and mobster Bugsy Siegel

1941 – Adolf Hitler authorizes the development of the V-2 missile.

1941 – Police raid 11th district of Paris, take 4,000+ Jewish males.

1942 – Dim-out regulations implemented in San Francisco.

1944 – World War II: 168 captured allied airmen, including Phil Lamason, accused by the Gestapo of being "terror fliers", arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet Union offensive at Jassy & Kisjinev.

1944 – United States and British forces close the pincers on German units in the Falaise-Argentan gap in France, destroy German 7th Army.

1944 – French General Charles de Gaulle returns to France.

1945 – Soviet troops occupy Harbin & Mukden.

1948 – US expels Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob Lomakin

1949 – Hungary (Magyar People's Republic) accepts constitution

1950 – Korean War: United Nations repel an offensive by North Korean divisions attempting to cross the Naktong River and assault the city of Taegu.

1951:  The Deer Creek Powerplant on the Provo River Project in Utah was approved.

1952 – Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meets Chinese premier Zhou Enlai.

1953 – General Fazlollah Zahedi arrests Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in a CIA supported coup d'état.

1953 – USSR publicly acknowledges it tested a hydrogen bomb eight days earlier.

1955 – Hundreds killed in anti-French rioting in Morocco and Algeria. In Morocco, a force of Berbers from the Atlas Mountains region of Algeria raid two rural settlements and kill 77 French nationals.

1956 – Republicans convene at Cow Palace

1960 – USSR recovers 2 dogs, Belka and Strelka, the first animals to be launched into orbit and returned alive (Sputnik 5).

1960 – Senegal breaks from the Mali Federation, declaring its independence.

1961 – East Germany begins erecting a wall along western border to replace barbed wire put up Aug 13; US 1st Battle Group, 18th Infantry Division arrives in West Berlin.

1962 – The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered civilian ship, embarks on its maiden voyage.

1964 – US President Lyndon Baines Johnson signs the Economic Opportunity Act, an anti-poverty measure totaling nearly $1 billion, as part of his War on Poverty.

1965 – Keene, NH Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels, 26, is martyred; murdered by shotgun at point-blank range in Hayneville, AL, by an unpaid sheriff's deputy, sacrificing his life for young black activist Ruby Sales whom he pushed out of the way of the blast.

1968 – Some 650,000 Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring.

1971 – The Cambodian military launches a series of operations against the Khmer Rouge.

1974 – After US Vice President Gerald Ford, who had replaced Spiro Agnew, assumes the Office of the President after Richard Nixon resigns. Ford nominates Nelson Rockefeller as Vice President.

1975 – Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars; with Viking 2, launched a few days later, provided high-resolution mapping of Mars, revolutionizing existing views of the planets.

1977 – Voyager Program: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.

1979 – The Penmanshiel Diversion on the  the East Coast Main Line rail route between England and Scotland opens, replacing the 134-year-old Penmanshiel Tunnel that had collapsed in March.

1980 – UN Security Council condemns Israel’s declaration that all of Jerusalem is its capital; vote is 14-0, with US abstaining.

1982 – A multinational force including 800 US Marines lands in Beirut, Lebanon, to oversee Palestinian withdrawal during the Lebanese Civil War.

1986 – Part-time mail carrier Patrick Sherrill shoots 20 fellow workers killing 14 and then commits suicide at Edmond Oklahoma, the first mass shooting by an individual in an office environment in the US. His actions give rise to the phrase “going postal,” for sudden violent outbursts.

1988 – "Black Saturday" of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park.

1988 – Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.

1988 – Iran–Iraq War: A ceasefire is agreed after almost eight years of war.

1988 – The Troubles: Eight British soldiers are killed and 28 wounded when their bus is hit by an IRA roadside bomb in Ballygawley, County Tyrone.

1989 – The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision. Fifty-one people are killed.

1989 – The O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, the world's longest guided busway, opens.

1990 – Iraq moves Western hostages to military installations to use them as human shields against air attacks by a US-led multinational coalition.

1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.

1991 – After an attempted coup in the Soviet Union, Estonia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, issues a decision on the re-establishment of independence on the basis of historical continuity of its pre-World War II statehood.

1993 – Secret negotiations in Norway lead to agreement on the Oslo Peace Accords, an attempt to resolve the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The signing is followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month.

1997 – Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped.

1998 – The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.

1998 – U.S. embassy bombings: The United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2002 – A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin, Germany for five hours before releasing their hostages and surrendering.

2008 – Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid, Spain to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. Of the 172 people on board, 146 die immediately, and eight more later die of injuries sustained in the crash.

2012 – A prison riot in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, kills at least 20 people.

2014 – Seventy-two people are killed in Japan's Hiroshima prefecture by a series of landslides caused by a month's worth of rain that fell in one day.



Saints' Days and Holy Days

Traditional Western

Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux, Confessor, and Doctor of the Church.     Double.
Commemoration of the Octave of the Assumption.


Contemporary Western

Bernard of Clairvaux
Blessed Georg Häfner
Maria De Mattias
Oswine of Deira
Philibert of Jumièges
William and Catherine Booth


Anglican, Episcopal, Lutheran



Eastern Orthodox

August 20 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

Afterfeast of the Dormition
Prophet Samuel (11th century BC)
Hieromartyr Philip of Heraclea, Bishop, and with him Martyrs Severus, Memnon,
      and 37 soldiers, in Philippopolis, Thrace (304)
Saints Reginus and Orestes the Great Martyrs, in Cyprus.
Martyr Lucius the Senator, of Cyprus (c. 310)
Martyrs Heliodorus and Dosa (Dausa) in Persia (380)
Martyr Photine, at the gates of Blachernae.
Saint Hierotheus, first Bishop and Enlightener of Hungary (10th century)
Saint Stephen I of Hungary, King of Hungary (1038)

Saint Porphyrius, an early martyr in Palestrina near Rome.
Saint Amator (Amadour), hermit.
Saint Maximus, a disciple of St Martin and founder of the monastery
      of Chinon in France, confessor (c. 470)
Martyr Oswine of Deira, king of Deira (651)
Saint Haduin (Harduin), Bishop of Le Mans in France, he founded
      several monasteries including Notre-Dame-d'Evron (c. 662)
Saint Philibert of Jumièges (Gaul) (685)
Saint Eadberht of Northumbria (Edbert), successor of St Ceolwulf on the
      throne of Northumbria in England, then became a monastic (768)
Saint Burchard, monk at Lobbes Abbey in Belgium, then became
      Bishop of Worms where he was a canonist (1026)

Venerable Abramius of Smolensk, Archimandrite, Wonderworker of Smolensk, (1220)
New Martyr Theocharis of Neapolis, Cappadocia (1740)
New Hieromartyr Vladimir Chetverin, Priest (1938)

Repose of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose of Platina, California (1982)
Repose of Archimandrite Spyridon (Lukich) of Kiev (1991)


Coptic Orthodox





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