August 20

Events

Pre-1600

• AD 14 - Agrippa Postumus, maternal grandson of the late Roman emperor Augustus, is executed by his guards while in exile.
• 636 - Marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia, Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid defeat the Byzantine Empire and take control of the Levant.
• 917 - Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army.
• 1083 - The first King of Hungary, Stephen I, and his son, Prince Emeric, are canonized, a date now celebrated as a National Day in Hungary.
• 1191 - Believing Saladin had reneged on ransom promises, Richard I of England initiates the massacre at Ayyadieh, beheading 2,700 captive Muslim soldiers and another 300 women and children seized at the Fall of Acre.
• 1308 - At the conclusion of the interrogation of the leaders of the Knights Templar, the three papal investigators, Cardinals Bérenger Frédol, Etienne de Suisy and Landolfo Brancacci, write the "Chinon Parchment", in which they affirm that the accused Templars had confessed, done penance, and were absolved of heresy.
• 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 - On the third day of battle, philosopher and general Wang Yangming defeats Zhu Chenhao, ending the Prince of Ning rebellion against the reign of the Ming dynasty's Zhengde Emperor.

  1601–1900

• 1648 - The Battle of Lens is the last major military confrontation of the Thirty Years' War, contributing to the signing of the Peace of Westphalia in October that year.
• 1672 - Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are lynched by a mob in The Hague.
• 1707 - The first Siege of Pensacola comes to an 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.
• 1775 - The Spanish establish the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.
• 1794 - Northwest Indian War: United States troops force a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
• 1852 - Steamboat Atlantic sank on Lake Erie after a collision, with the loss of at least 150 lives.
• 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 - Bakumatsu: Kinmon incident: The Chōshū Domain attempts to expel the Satsuma and Aizu Domains from Japan's imperial court.
• 1866 - President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.
• 1882 - Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia.

  1901–present

• 1905 - Sun Yat-sen, Song Jiaoren, and others establish the Tongmenghui, a Republican, anti-Qing revolutionary organisation, in Tokyo, Japan.
• 1910 - Extreme fire weather in the Inland Northwest of the United States causes many small wildfires to coalesce into the Great Fire of 1910, burning approximately and killing 87 people.
• 1914 - World War I: Brussels is captured during the German invasion of Belgium.
• 1920 - The first commercial radio station, 8MK, begins operations in Detroit.
• 1920 - The National Football League is organized as the American Professional Football Conference in Canton, Ohio
• 1926 - Japan's public broadcasting company, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai is established.
• 1938 - Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam, a record that stood for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.
• 1940 - In Mexico City, exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramón Mercader. He dies the next day.
• 1940 - World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".
• 1940 - World War II: The Eighth Route Army launches the Hundred Regiments Offensive, a successful campaign to disrupt Japanese war infrastructure and logistics in occupied northern China.
• 1944 - World War II: One hundred sixty-eight 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.
• 1948 - Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob M. Lomakin is expelled by the United States, due to the Kasenkina Case.
• 1949 - Hungary adopts the Hungarian Constitution of 1949 and becomes a People's Republic.
• 1955 - Battle of Philippeville: 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 its independence.
• 1962 - The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered civilian ship, embarks on its maiden voyage.
• 1968 - Cold War: Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring. East German participation is limited to a few specialists due to memories of the recent war. Only Albania and Romania refuse to participate.
• 1975 - Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
• 1975 - ČSA Flight 540 crashes on approach to Damascus International Airport in Damascus, Syria, killing 126 people.
• 1977 - Voyager program: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
• 1986 - In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill shoots and kills 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
• 1988 - "Black Saturday" of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park
• 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.
• 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 - Estonia, occupied by and incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, issues a decision on the re-establishment of independence on the basis of legal continuity of its pre-occupation statehood.
• 1992 - In India, Meitei language was included in the scheduled languages' list and made one of the official languages of the Indian Government.
• 1995 - The Firozabad rail disaster kills 358 people in Firozabad, India.
• 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 weapons 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.
• 2006 - Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil politician and former MP S. Sivamaharajah is shot dead at his home in Tellippalai.
• 2007 - China Airlines Flight 120 catches fire and explodes after landing at Naha Airport in Okinawa, Japan.
• 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.
• 2011 - First Air Flight 6560 crashes 1 mile from the Resolute Bay runway, killing 12 of the 15 aboard.
• 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.
• 2016 - Fifty-four people are killed when a suicide bomber detonates himself at a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep, Turkey.
• 2020 - Joe Biden gives his acceptance speech virtually for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination at the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

  Births

Pre-1600

• 1377 - Shahrukh Mirza, ruler of Persia and Transoxiania
• 1517 - Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, French cardinal and art collector
• 1561 - Jacopo Peri, Italian singer and composer

  1601–1900

• 1625 - Thomas Corneille, French playwright and philologist
• 1632 - Louis Bourdaloue, French preacher and academic
• 1659 - Henry Every, English pirate
• 1710 - Thomas Simpson, English mathematician and academic
• 1719 - Christian Mayer, Czech astronomer and educator
• 1720 - Bernard de Bury, French harpsichord player and composer
• 1778 - Bernardo O'Higgins, Chilean general and politician, 2nd Supreme Director of Chile
• 1779 - Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Swedish chemist and academic
• 1799 - James Prinsep, English orientalist and scholar
• 1833 - Benjamin Harrison, American general, lawyer, and politician, 23rd President of the United States
• 1845 - Albert Chmielowski, Polish saint, founded the Albertine Brothers
• 1847 - Andrew Greenwood, English cricketer
• 1847 - Bolesław Prus, Polish journalist and author
• 1856 - Jakub Bart-Ćišinski, German poet and playwright
• 1857 - George Griffith, British writer
• 1860 - Raymond Poincaré, French lawyer and politician, 10th President of France
• 1865 - Bernard Tancred, South African cricketer and lawyer
• 1868 - Ellen Roosevelt, American tennis player
• 1873 - Eliel Saarinen, Finnish architect and academic, co-designed the National Museum of Finland
• 1881 - Edgar Guest, English-American poet and author
• 1881 - Aleksander Hellat, Estonian politician, 6th Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs
• 1884 - Rudolf Bultmann, German Lutheran theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg
• 1885 - Dino Campana, Italian poet and author
• 1886 - Paul Tillich, German-American philosopher and theologian
• 1887 - Phan Khôi, Vietnamese journalist and scholar
• 1888 - Tôn Đức Thắng, Vietnamese politician, 2nd President of Vietnam
• 1890 - H. P. Lovecraft, American short story writer, editor, novelist
• 1896 - Gostha Pal, Indian footballer
• 1897 - Tarjei Vesaas, Norwegian author and poet
• 1898 - Vilhelm Moberg, Swedish historian, journalist, author, and playwright