August 20
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
August 20 is the 233rd day of the year (234th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 132 days remaining after August 20 until the end of the year.
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[change] Births
- 1561 – Jacopo Peri, Italian composer (d. 1633)
- 1625 – Thomas Corneille, French playwright (d. 1709)
- 1710 – Thomas Simpson, English mathematician (d. 1761)
- 1778 – Bernardo O'Higgins, Chilean revolutionary (d. 1842)
- 1779 – Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Swedish chemist (d. 1848)
- 1827 – Josef Strauss, Austrian architect, inventor and composer (d. 1870)
- 1831 – Eduard Suess, Austrian geologist and politician (d. 1914)
- 1833 – Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States (d. 1901)
- 1847 – Boleslaw Prus, Polish writer and publicist (d. 1912)
- 1860 – Raymond Poincare, President of France and four-times Prime Minister of France (d. 1934)
- 1873 – Gottlieb Eliel Saarinen, Finnish architect (d. 1950)
- 1881 – Edgar Guest, English poet (d. 1959)
- 1890 – H. P. Lovecraft, writer (d. 1937)
- 1898 – Vilhelm Moberg, Swedish author (d. 1973)
- 1901 – Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian writer (d. 1968)
- 1905 – Jack Teagarden, jazz musician (d. 1964)
- 1905 – Jean Gebser, author, linguist, and poet (d. 1973)
- 1910 – Eero Saarinen, Finnish architect (d. 1961)
- 1913 – Roger Walcott Sperry, American neurobiologist (d. 1994)
- 1918 – Jacqueline Susann, novelist (d. 1974)
- 1923 – Jim Reeves, country singer (d. 1964)
- 1931 – Don King, boxing promoter
- 1932 – Anthony Ainley, British actor (d. 2004)
- 1932 – Vasily Aksyonov, Russian writer (d. 2009)
- 1935 – Ron Paul, American politician
- 1936 – Hideki Shirakawa, Japanese chemist, Nobel Prize, laureate
- 1937 – Andrei Konchalovsky, Russian film director
- 1940 – Rubén Hinojosa, American politician
- 1941 – Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia and Yugoslavia (d. 2006)
- 1942 – Isaac Hayes, American singer, songwriter, and actor (d. 2008)
- 1943 – Sylvester McCoy, Scottish actor
- 1944 – Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (d. 1991)
- 1946 – Connie Chung, journalist
- 1946 – N.R. Narayana Murthy, Indian businessman
- 1948 – Robert Plant, British singer (Led Zeppelin)
- 1949 – Phil Lynott, Irish musician (d. 1986)
- 1951 – Greg Bear, science fiction author
- 1952 – John Hiatt, musician
- 1954 – Al Roker, American television broadcaster
- 1955 – Agnes Chan, singer, professor of education, essayist
- 1956 – Joan Allen, actress
- 1961 – Steve McMahon, English footballer
- 1962 – James Marsters, American actor
- 1964 – Giuseppe Giannini, Italian footballer and coach
- 1965 – KRS-One (Lawrence Krisna Parker), rapper
- 1966 – Dimebag Darrell Abbott, American lead guitar player in Pantera, heavy metal band
- 1968 – Yuri Shiratori, Japanese seiyū
- 1970 – John Carmack, computer game programmer
- 1971 – Jonathan Ke Quan, American actor
- 1971 – David Walliams, British actor and comedian (Little Britain)
- 1973 – Todd Helton, American baseball player
- 1975 – Amy Adams, American actress
- 1977 – Ivar Ingimarsson, Icelandic footballer
- 1979 – Jamie Cullum, British musician
- 1982 – Joshua Kennedy, Australian footballer
- 1983 – Yuri Zhirkov, Russian footballer
- 1990 – Ranomi Kromowidjojo, Dutch swimmer
- 1992 – Demi Lovato, American singer and actress
[change] Deaths
- 984 – Pope John XIV
- 1384 – Geert Groote, Dutch founder of the Brethren of the Common Life (b. 1340)
- 1572 – Miguel López de Legazpi, Spanish conquistador (b.1502)
- 1580 – Jeronymo Osorio, Portuguese historian (b. 1506)
- 1611 – Tomás Luis de Victoria, Spanish composer (b. in the 1500s)
- 1639 – Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet (b. 1597)
- 1643 – Anne Hutchinson, English Puritan preacher (b. 1591)
- 1648 – Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, English diplomat, poet, and philosopher (b. 1583)
- 1672 – Johan de Witt, Dutch politician (b. 1625)
- 1672 – Cornelius de Witt, Dutch politician (b. 1623)
- 1680 – William Bedloe, English informer (b. 1650)
- 1701 – Charles Sedley, English playwright (b. in the 1600s)
- 1707 – Nicolas Gigault, French organist and composer (b. 1627)
- 1773 – Enrique Florez, Spanish historian (b. 1701)
- 1823 – Pope Pius VII (b. 1740)
- 1887 – Jules Laforgue, French poet (b. 1860)
- 1912 – William Booth, English founder of the Salvation Army (b. 1829)
- 1914 – Pope Pius X (b. 1835)
- 1915 – Paul Ehrlich, German doctor, won the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, (b. 1854)
- 1917 – Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1835)
- 1961 – Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1882)
- 1980 – Joe Dassin, American singer (b. 1938)
- 1986 – Milton Acorn, Canadian poet (b. 1923)
- 1996 – Rio Reiser, German rock musician (b. 1950)
- 2001 – Sir Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and science fiction writer (b. 1915)
- 2005 – Thomas Herrion, American football player (b. 1981)
- 2005 – Krzysztof Raczkowski, Polish drummer (b. 1970)
- 2008 – Hua Guofeng, Chairman of the Chinese Communist party (b. 1921)
[change] Events
- 636 – Battle of Yarmuk: Arab forces led by Khalid bin 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 Anchialus: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria invades Thrace and drives the Byzantines out.
- 1000 – Date of the official founding of Hungary by Saint Stephen.
- 1619 – First Africans arrive in the US by the Dutch, and sold as servants in Jamestown, Virginia.
- 1630 – Lemonade invented in Paris, France.
- 1794 – Battle of Fallen Timbers - American troops force a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat.
- 1804 – Lewis and Clark Expedition: The "Corps of Discovery", exploring the Louisiana Purchase, suffers its only death when Sergeant Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute appendicitis.
- 1833 – Nat Turner leads his revolt against the Southern plantation owners of Southampton County, Virginia
- 1857 – The ship Dunbar sinks off Sydney Heads, 121 people drown.
- 1857 – First book published by an Australian female author: Gertrude the Emigrant by Caroline Atkinson
- 1882 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow.
- 1914 – World War I: German forces occupy Brussels.
- 1920 – The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan.
- 1940 – Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded in Mexico City by an assassin's ice-ax. He will die the next day.
- 1955 – 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 independence.
- 1968 – 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization.
- 1975 – Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
- 1977 – Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
- 1980 – Reinhold Messner reaches the top of Mount Everest, both without oxygen, and on his own.
- 1982 – Lebanese Civil War: A multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon.
- 1986 – In Edmond, Oklahoma, US Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
- 1988 – Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
- 1988 – An earthquake in India and Nepal kills 1,450 people.
- 1989 – In Beverly Hills, California, Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot and kill their wealthy parents.
- 1991 – Collapse of the Soviet Union: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup that deposed President Mikhail Gorbachev.
- 1991 – Estonia separates from the Soviet Union.
- 1993 – After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Peace Accords were signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington D.C. the next month.
- 1996 – Russian soldiers surround Grozny, Chechnya.
- 1997 – Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people killed, 15 kidnapped.
- 1998 – The Supreme Court of Canada states Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.
- 1998 – 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: The United States military launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum is destroyed in the attack.
- 2004 – Talk show host Regis Philbin breaks the record for Most Hours on Camera, with 15,188.
- 2008 – A Spanair plane, due to travel from Madrid to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Madrid Barajas Airport, killing 146 people, with 8 dying later. 18 survive.
- 2009 – Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the only person to have been convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, who is suffering from prostate cancer, is released from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds, returning to his native Libya.
