What Happened on August 23rd in History
30 historical events on this date
World War II: Marseille is liberated by the Allied forces.
Marseille is a city in southern France, the prefecture of the department of Bouches-du-RhĂ´ne and of the Provence-Alpes-CĂ´te d'Azur region. Situated in the Provence region, it is located on the coast...
World War II: King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of Marshal Antonescu, who is later arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies.
Michael I was the last king of Romania, reigning from 20 July 1927 to 8Â June 1930 and again from 6 September 1940 until his forced abdication on 30 December 1947.
World War II: SovietâJapanese War: The USSR State Defense Committee issues Decree no. 9898cc "About Receiving, Accommodation, and Labor Utilization of the Japanese Army Prisoners of War".
The SovietâJapanese War was a campaign of the Second World War that began with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria following the Soviet declaration of war against Japan on 8 August 1945. The Soviet...
Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Länder (states) of Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein.
Ordinance No. 46, effective 23 August 1946, was an ordinance issued by the British Military Government (CCG/BE) in the British Zone of Allied-occupied Germany by which, among others, the Prussian...
The World Council of Churches is formed by 147 churches from 44 countries.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the...
The first flight of the Lockheed C-130 multi-role aircraft takes place.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed. Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130...
The Cruise of the Kings, a royal cruise organised by the Queen Consort of Greece, Frederica of Hanover, departs from Marseille, France.
The Cruise of the Kings was a royal cruise around the Mediterranean Sea in the summer of 1954, organised by Queen Frederica and King Paul of Greece.
Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.
The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the forces of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Armed conflict continued intermittently from 1...
Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
The 1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic spacecraft mission, part of NASA's Lunar Orbiter program, was the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas...
Organized by Mexican American labor union leader CĂŠsar ChĂĄvez, the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history, begins.
Mexican Americans are Americans of full or partial Mexican descent. In 2022, Mexican Americans made up 11.2% of the US population and 58.9% of all Hispanic Americans. In 2019, 71% of Mexican...
A bank robbery gone wrong in Stockholm, Sweden, turns into a hostage crisis; over the next five days the hostages begin to sympathise with their captors, leading to the term "Stockholm syndrome".
The Norrmalmstorg robbery was a bank robbery and hostage crisis that occurred at the Norrmalmstorg Square in Stockholm, Sweden, in August 1973 and was the first crime in Sweden to be covered by live...
The start of the Wave Hill walk-off by Gurindji people in Australia, lasting eight years, a landmark event in the history of Indigenous land rights in Australia, commemorated in a 1991 Paul Kelly song and an annual celebration.
The Wave Hill walk-off, also known as the Gurindji strike, was a walk-off and strike by 200 Gurindji stockmen, house servants and their families, starting on 23 August 1966 and lasting for seven...
The Pontiac Silverdome opens in Pontiac, Michigan, 30 miles (48Â km) northwest of Detroit, Michigan
The Pontiac Silverdome was a multi-purpose stadium in Pontiac, Michigan, United States. It opened in 1975 and sat on 199 acres (51Â ha) of land. When the stadium opened, it featured a fiberglass...
Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.
Hans-Joachim Tiedge was a head of West Germany's counter-intelligence in the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) in Cologne. His defection to the East on 19 August 1985 revealed him...
Singing Revolution: Two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the VilniusâTallinn road, holding hands.
The Singing Revolution was a series of events from 1987 to 1991 that led to the restoration of independence of the three Soviet-occupied Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania at the end...
Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.
Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003 during the United States-led invasion of Iraq. He previously...
Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked country in the Armenian highlands of West Asia. It is a part of the Caucasus region and is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the...
West and East Germany announce that they will reunite on October 3.
German reunification, also known as the expansion of the Federal Republic of Germany (BRD), was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and...
The World Wide Web is opened to the public.
The World Wide Web is a global interconnected information system that enables content sharing over the Internet. It facilitates access to documents and other web resources according to specific...
Eugene Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.
Eugene Jacques Bullard was one of the first African-American military pilots, although Bullard flew for France, not the United States. Bullard was one of the few Black combat pilots during World War...
Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143.
Gulf Air Flight 072 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Cairo International Airport, Egypt, to Bahrain International Airport, Bahrain, operated by Gulf Air. On 23 August 2000 at...
Natascha Kampusch, who had been abducted at the age of ten, escapes from her captor Wolfgang PĹiklopil, after eight years of captivity.
Natascha Maria Kampusch is an Austrian author and former talk show host. At the age of 10, on 2 March 1998, she was abducted and held in a secret cellar by her kidnapper, Wolfgang PĹiklopil, for...
The skeletal remains of Russia's last royal family members Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Grand Duchess Anastasia are discovered near Yekaterinburg, Russia.
Alexei Nikolaevich Romanov was the last Russian tsesarevich. He was the youngest child and only son of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. He was born with haemophilia, which his...
The Manila hostage crisis occurred near the Quirino Grandstand in Manila, Philippines killing 9 people including the perpetrator while injuring 9 others.
The Manila hostage crisis, officially known as the Rizal Park hostage-taking incident, took place in Rizal Park, Manila, Philippines, on August 23, 2010. A tourist bus carrying 25 people, consisting...
A magnitude 5.8 (class: moderate) earthquake occurs in Virginia. Damage occurs to monuments and structures in Washington, D.C. and the resulted damage is estimated at 200Â millionâ300Â million USD.
On August 23, 2011, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of Virginia at 1:51:04Â p.m. EDT. The epicenter, in Louisa County, was 38Â mi (61Â km) northwest of Richmond and...
Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is overthrown after the National Transitional Council forces take control of Bab al-Azizia compound during the Libyan Civil War.
Muammar Muhammad Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi was a Libyan military officer, revolutionary, politician, and political theorist who ruled Libya from 1969 until his overthrow by Libyan rebel forces in 2011...
A hot-air balloon crashes near the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, killing six people and injuring 28 others.
On 23 August 2012, a hot air balloon on a commercial sightseeing flight crashed in stormy weather on the Ljubljana Marsh in central Slovenia, killing 6 of the 32 people on board.
A riot at the Palmasola prison complex in Santa Cruz, Bolivia kills 31 people.
On August 23, 2013, a prison riot broke out at Palmasola, a maximum-security prison in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The riot started when members of one cell block attacked a rival gang in another, using...
Chandrayaan-3 mission initiated first Moon landing in Indian history.
Chandrayaan-3 is the third mission in the Chandrayaan programme, a series of lunar-exploration missions developed by ISRO. The mission consists of Vikram, a lunar lander, and Pragyan, a lunar rover,...
A business jet carrying key leadership members of the Russian private military company Wagner Group crashes, killing all ten people on board.
The Wagner Group, officially known as PMC Wagner, is a Russian state-funded private military company (PMC) that was controlled until 2023 by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former close ally of Russia's...