Historical Events On August 11 - On This Day

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3114 BC 3114-08-11 BCE is traditionally considered the start date of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used by several pre-Columbian Mesoamerican civilizations, notably the Maya

• 2492 BC 2492-08-11 BCE is the traditional date given in Armenian legend for the defeat of Bel by Hayk, the legendary progenitor and founder of the Armenian nation
• 480 BC Greco-Persian Wars: Battle of Artemisium - Persian naval victory over the Greeks in an engagement fought off north coast of Euboea

355 Claudius Silvanus, accused of treason, proclaims himself Roman Emperor against Constantius II in Colonia Agrippina (modern Cologne)

• 1093 Foundation stone for the new Norman Durham cathedral laid by Bishop William of St. Calais in England
• 1304 Sea Battle of Zierikzee: Franco-Holland forces defeat the Flemish fleet
• 1378 London's Westminster Abbey is desecrated when Robert Hauley is murdered during High Mass attempting to seek sanctuary after escaping the Tower of London. The Abbey is closed for four months. [1]

1415 Henry V of England and an army of 12,000 sail from Southampton, England, bound for France on a campaign to reassert English sovereignty [1]

• 1492 Rodrigo de Borja becomes Pope Alexander VI
• 1522 Uprising of the nobility and burghers in Austria fails
• 1597 Germany expels English salespeople
• 1611 Emperor Rudolf forces out King of Bohemia
• 1674 Battle of Seneffe: French forces led by Louis, Grand Condé, fight a combined Dutch, Imperial, and Spanish force under William of Orange; both sides suffer heavy casualties with neither gaining a clear advantage
• 1695 English and Dutch fleets capture Dunkirk
• 1718 Battle of Cape Passaro: British fleet destroys Spanish off Sicily
• 1772 Explosive eruption blows 4,000 feet off Papandayan, Java, killing 3,000
• 1786 Captain Francis Light establishes the British colony of Penang in Malaysia
• 1804 Francis II assumes the title of first Emperor of Austria
• 1835 George B. Airy begins a 46-year tenure as England's Astronomer Royal
• 1858 First ascent of Eiger in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland
• 1860 US's first successful silver mill in Virginia City, Nevada
• 1863 Cambodia becomes a French protectorate
• 1866 World's first roller rink opens in Newport, Rhode Island
• 1874 Harry S. Parmelee patents the sprinkler head
• 1877 American astronomer Asaph Hall discovers Mars's moon Deimos
• 1884 First double-century stand in Test cricket; Percy McDonnell (103) and Billy Murdoch (211) for Australia in drawn third Test vs. England in London

1885 $100,000 is raised in the US for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty

• 1888 California Theatre in San Francisco closes, built in 1869, it was replaced by a more modern facility in 1889 (later destroyed in the 1907 earthquake)
• 1896 Harvey Hubbell patents an electric light bulb socket with a pull chain
• 1904 German-Italian General Von Trotha defeats the Herero in Southwest Africa
• 1904 The Russian fleet in the harbor at Port Arthur is exposed to Japanese guns on the hill above the harbor; Russian ships attempt to escape, but most are forced back into the harbor by Japanese ships
• 1907 St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Ed Karger throws a perfect game against the Boston Doves, winning 4-0 in 7 innings at Robison Field, St. Louis

1908 King Edward VII of Britain meets with Emperor Wilhelm of Friedrichshof, Germany; the main point of contention is the increasing size of Germany's navy

• 1909 SOS is first used by an American ship, SS Arapahoe, off Cape Hatteras, NC
• 1909 Warren Bardsley (136 and 130) is the first to score twin centuries in a Test
• 1914 Jews are expelled from Mitchenick, Poland
• 1914 John Bray patents animation

1919 Green Bay Packers football club is founded by George Calhoun and Curly Lambeau and is named after sponsor Indian Packing Company

• 1919 Weimar Republic begins in Germany
• 1920 First Peace of Riga: Soviet Union recognizes independence of Latvia
• 1923 Dutch Premier de Geer resigns
• 1924 First newsreel pictures of US presidential candidates are taken

1926 Cleveland Indians future Baseball Hall of Fame outfielder Tris Speaker hits his 700th double in a 7-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox at Dunn Field, Cleveland

1928 NY Giants future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Carl Hubbell registers first MLB victory, a 4-0 shutout of Philadelphia Phillies at the Polo Grounds, NYC

1929 New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth becomes the first MLB player to hit 500 home runs (off Willis Hudlin) in a 6-5 loss to the Indians at League Park, Cleveland

• 1929 Persia and Iraq sign a friendship treaty
• 1929 Russian-Chinese border fights
• 1934 Alcatraz officially opens as a federal penitentiary
• 1934 First federal prisoners arrive at Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay
• 1935 Nazi mass demonstration against German Jews

1936 Chiang Kai-shek's troops conquer Canton

1937 "The Life of Émile Zola," directed by William Dieterle and starring Paul Muni, premieres in New York (Best Picture 1938)

1939 Sergei Rachmaninoff's last appearance in Europe

• 1940 38 German aircraft are shot down over England
• 1940 German air raid on the British ports of Portland and Weymouth
• 1942 999 Jews are taken from the Mechelen transit camp in Belgium
• 1942 British aircraft carrier HMS Eagle is hit by four German torpedoes and sinks in the Mediterranean Sea, 81 miles south of Mallorca

1942 British Army Lt. Gen. Bernard Montgomery lands on Gibraltar

• 1942 SS begins exterminating 3,500 Jews in Zgierz, near Łódź, Poland
• 1943 Red Army recaptures Chuhuiv, near Kharkiv

1943 Richard Strauss's Second Horn Concerto premieres at the Salzburg Festival with Gottfried von Freiberg as the soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm

• 1943 US forces conduct an amphibious landing at Brolo as part of Operation Husky on the north coast of Sicily

1944 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Italy

• 1944 French 5th Armored Division recaptures Sées

1944 Klaus Barbie, Gestapo head of Lyon, France, leaves for Auschwitz

• 1944 US air raid on Palembang

1945 Allies refuse Japan's offer to surrender on the condition that Emperor Hirohito retains his status

• 1948 The weightlifting competition at the London Olympics concludes with the US (4) and Egypt (2) dominating, combining to win all 6 gold medals

1949 Gaston Eyskens forms the Belgian government

• 1949 Giovanni Gambi is the first person to swim from Naples to Capri, a distance of 17 miles (27 km)
• 1950 17th NFL Chicago All-Star Game: All-Stars 17, Philadelphia 7 (88,885 attendees)
• 1950 Boston Braves pitcher Vern Bickford no-hits Brooklyn Dodgers, 7-0 at Braves Field

1950 Ethel Rosenberg testifies before grand jury on allegations of spying for the Soviet Union

1950 In a 4-for-38 slump, New York Yankees great Joe DiMaggio is benched for the first time; replacement Cliff Mapes hits a home run in a 7-6 win over the Philadelphia Athletics

• 1950 King Baudouin I takes the oath as the royal prince of Belgium
• 1951 First televised baseball game in color airs on WCBS in New York City; Boston Braves beat Brooklyn Dodgers 8-1
• 1951 New York Giants (NFL) beat Ottawa Rough Riders (CFL) 38-6 in Ottawa
• 1951 NY Giants lose 4-0 to Philadelphia Phillies at the Polo Grounds, NYC, to fall 13½ games behind Brooklyn Dodgers; go on to win NL pennant with a 98-59-0 record
• 1952 Parliament of Jordan forces King Talal bin Abdullah (43) to abdicate due to concerns about his mental health; Hussein bin Talal (16) is proclaimed as new King of Jordan
• 1954 Formal peace treaty ends over seven years of fighting in Indochina between the French and the Communist Viet Minh
• 1955 Indonesian government of Harahap forms
• 1956 First flight of the four-motor Cessna 620
• 1957 Canada's first major commercial airline disaster occurs when a Maritime Central Airways DC-4 crashes in a thunderstorm near Québec City, killing all 79 aboard [1]

1957 Paul Hindemith's opera "Harmonie der Welt" premieres in Munich, Germany

• 1960 Chad declares Independence from France
• 1961 Milwaukee Braves future Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Warren Spahn records career victory number 300, beating the Cubs 2-1 at County Stadium, Milwaukee
• 1962 Andrian Nikolayev becomes the third Russian in space aboard Vostok 3
• 1962 Bolotnikov runs the 10 km in a world record time of 28:18.2

1962 LA Dodgers protest as San Francisco manager Alvin Dark orders Candlestick Park ground crew to water down base paths to hinder MLB All-Star Maury Wills' base-stealing attempts; Giants win 5-4

• 1962 Vostok 3 is launched, followed by Vostok 4 on August 12, 1962, marking the first time two spacecraft fly in orbit at the same time
• 1963 Four ANC political detainees escape from Pretoria Central Prison in South Africa
• 1963 Kingston Trio are the mystery guests on "What's My Line?"
• 1964 Race riot in Paterson, New Jersey
• 1964 US premiere of The Beatles' debut film "A Hard Day's Night" in New York City [1]
• 1965 "Help!" a musical comedy film featuring the Beatles is released in the US
• 1965 Watts riots begin in Southeast Los Angeles and last six days
• 1966 The Beatles arrive in Chicago, Illinois for their third (and final) US tour
• 1967 Al Downing becomes the 12th pitcher to strike out the side on nine pitches
• 1968 Beatles launch "Apple Records" label

1968 Satchel Paige, at 62 and needing 158 days on an MLB payroll to qualify for a pension, is signed by the Atlanta Braves, doesn't pitch, and becomes a coach

• 1968 The Fifteen Guinea Special is the last main-line steam passenger train service in Britain. A selection of British Rail steam locomotives makes a return 120-mile journey from Liverpool to Carlisle before having their fires dropped for the last time

1969 Future Baseball Hall of Famer pitcher Don Drysdale, the last Los Angeles Dodger to play in Brooklyn, retires because of damage to his right pitching shoulder

• 1970 Cincinnati Reds slugger Tony Perez becomes the first hitter to launch a home run into the red seats at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio
• 1970 Two Royal Ulster Constabulary officers are killed by the Irish Republican Army when they set off a booby trap bomb planted in a car near Crossmaglen, County Armagh
• 1971 Construction begins on the Louisiana Superdome
• 1971 Four people are shot dead in separate incidents in Belfast, three of them by the British Army, as violence continues following the introduction of internment and Operation Demetrius

1971 Harmon Killebrew hits home runs #500 and 501

• 1972 "Cheech & Chong Day" in San Antonio Texas
• 1972 Two IRA members are killed when a bomb they are transporting explodes prematurely

1973 "American Graffiti", directed by George Lucas, opens in cinemas across the United States

• 1973 The birth of hip-hop: DJ Kool Herc uses two turntables, playing the same record simultaneously to create the “merry-go-round” technique, at a party in the Bronx [1]
• 1974 Coup in East Timor under União Democrática Timorense (Timorese Democratic Union)
• 1974 Head-on collision between two buses kills 21 in Ankara, Turkey
• 1975 Expos' José Mangual strikes out five times in a game
• 1975 The US vetoes the proposed admission of North and South Vietnam to the UN

1976 "The Who" drummer Keith Moon collapses and is hospitalized in Miami, Florida

• 1976 Race riot in Cape Town, South Africa; 17 people die
• 1977 Geoff Boycott scores his 100th first-class century against Australia at Headingley

1978 Funeral of Pope Paul VI is held in Vatican

• 1978 Legionnaires' disease bacteria isolated in Atlanta
• 1978 Second studio album by Chic, "C'est Chic," is released, featuring the single "Le Freak" (Billboard Album of the Year 1979)
• 1979 28°F (-2.22°C) in Embarrass, Minnesota
• 1979 British rock band Led Zeppelin performs for what becomes their final time in England at Knebworth Park, Hertfordshire, before over 200,000 fans
• 1979 Phillies' Tug McGraw gives up a record fourth grand slam of the year
• 1980 Angola revises its constitution

1980 MLB New York Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson hits his 400th home run off of Britt Burns of the Chicago White Sox at Yankee Stadium

• 1980 Mohammed Ali Radjai is appointed premier of Iran
• 1982 The South African Defence Force (SADF) raids Southern Angola
• 1982 US performs a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
• 1984 101,799 fans attend the soccer match between Brazil and France

1984 A British 1-2 in the 1,500 m at the Los Angeles Olympics with Sebastian Coe edging teammate Steve Cram to become the only man to successfully defend his Olympic 1,500m title

1984 Carl Lewis duplicates Jesse Owens' 1936 feat, winning his fourth Olympic gold medal as part of the US 4 x 100 m relay team in a world record time of 37.83

1984 Cincinnati Reds retire Johnny Bench's #5 uniform

1984 During a radio voice test, US President Reagan jokes that he "signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

• 1984 Future four-weight world boxing champion Pernell Whitaker wins the lightweight gold medal at the Los Angeles Olympics
• 1984 Ian Ferguson of New Zealand wins his third canoeing gold medal of the LA Olympics, taking the K-4 1000 a day after victories in the K-1 500 and K-2 500
• 1984 Men's choir Maranatha Netherlands forms
• 1984 USSR performs an underground nuclear test
• 1985 Challenger flies to Kennedy Space Center via Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona
• 1985 Rudolf Povarnitsyn of the USSR sets a new high jump world record of 7'10¼" (2.40 m)
• 1987 France and Great Britain send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf
• 1988 225 at-bats after #299, Met Gary Carter becomes the 59th player to hit his 300th home run

1988 Al-Qaeda is formed at a meeting between Osama Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Dr. Fadl in Peshawar, Pakistan

• 1988 Charlotte Coliseum in Charlotte, NC, opens
• 1988 Meir Kahane renounces US citizenship to stay in Israeli Parliament
• 1989 "Nightmare on Elm Street 5: Dream Child" premieres
• 1989 Geoff Marsh and Mark Taylor complete a 329-run opening stand against England

1989 Voyager 2 discovers two partial rings of Neptune

• 1990 ArenaBowl IV takes place at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit where the Detroit Drive defeats the Dallas Texans 51-27, with Art Schlichter named MVP
• 1990 Egyptian and Moroccan troops land in Saudi Arabia to prevent an Iraqi invasion
• 1991 400,000 demonstrate for democracy in Madagascar; 31 are killed
• 1991 Chicago WS Venezuelan pitcher Wilson Álvarez hurls a no-hitter in a 7-0 win over the Orioles in Baltimore
• 1991 Shiite Muslims release US hostage Edward Tracy
• 1991 Space Shuttle STS-43 (Atlantis 9) lands

1992 Oakland A's criticize Jose Canseco for leaving the stadium before the end of the game

• 1993 NY Islander Brian Mullen, 31, suffers a mild stroke

1993 Pope John Paul II visits Mexico

1993 Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens records his 2,000th strikeout against Danny Tartabull of the New York Yankees

• 1994 João Bernardo "Nino" Vieira is elected President of Guinea-Bissau
• 1997 Benin legalizes January 10 as a Voodoo holiday

1998 Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian National Authority president, Yasser Arafat, arrives in Cape Town on his first state visit to South Africa at the invitation of President Nelson Mandela

• 1999 American rock group "KISS" receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
• 1999 The Salt Lake City Tornado tears through the downtown district of the city, killing one
• 1999 Total solar eclipse in India and northern France (2 minutes and 23 seconds)
• 2003 A heatwave in Paris results in temperatures rising to 112°F (44°C), leaving approximately 144 people dead
• 2003 Jemaah Islamiyah leader Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, is arrested in Bangkok, Thailand
• 2003 NATO takes over command of the peacekeeping force in Afghanistan in its first major operation outside Europe in its 54-year history

2007 Jason Koumas makes his Wigan Athletic debut

• 2008 Abhinav Bindra wins the men's 10 m air rifle at the Beijing Olympics, achieving the first individual Olympic gold medal for India and the country's first gold medal in any Olympic event since 1980

2008 Airbnb is founded by Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk

• 2008 Japanese swimmer Kosuke Kitajima repeats the first leg of his Athens Olympics 100/200 m breaststroke double at the Beijing Games, winning the 100 m in a world record time of 58.91; he goes on to win the 200 m event

2008 The US 4 x 100 m freestyle relay team of Michael Phelps, Garrett Weber-Gale, Cullen Jones, and Jason Lezak beats France by 0.08 seconds to win gold and smash the world record at the Beijing Olympics

• 2009 "Need You Now" album is released by Lady Antebellum (Billboard Album of the Year 2010)
• 2011 Rock group "The Go-Go's" receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in front of the former nightclub called "The Masque"
• 2012 13 people are killed and 15 injured by a lightning strike at a mosque in Bangladesh
• 2012 153 people are killed and 1,300 injured in Tabriz and Ahar, Iran, after two earthquakes with magnitudes of up to 6.4
• 2013 22 people are killed by flash floods in Kabul, Afghanistan
• 2013 Two people are killed and 30 are injured after a bus crash in the Alps of southern France

2015 Greek Debt Crisis: European Commission announces a bailout with Greece and its creditors is agreed "in principle"

• 2015 Japan's Sendai Nuclear Power Plant restarts the first nuclear reactor since the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
• 2015 Largest ever outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in New York: 12 dead, with over 100 cases in the South Bronx
• 2015 Spain's top matador Francisco Rivera Ordóñez Jr. is gored and injured by a bull in Huesca
• 2016 A Greenland shark is declared the longest-living vertebrate in the world at 392 years by an international team of scientists
• 2016 American super-swimmer Michael Phelps wins the men's 200 m individual medley in 1:54.66 at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, becoming the third athlete and first swimmer to win four consecutive Olympic gold medals in one event
• 2016 Fiji wins inaugural men's rugby sevens gold medal with a comfortable 43-7 rout of Great Britain at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics
• 2016 Simone Manuel of the United States and Penny Oleksiak of Canada tie for the gold medal in the coveted 100 m freestyle at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, matching the Olympic record of 52.70; Sarah Sjöström of Sweden takes bronze, her third medal of the Games
• 2017 Chinese crime writer Liu Yongbiao, after announcing a novel titled "Beautiful Writer Who Killed," is arrested for the murders of four people nearly 22 years earlier
• 2017 Fipronil-contaminated eggs now affect fifteen EU countries, Hong Kong, and Switzerland, according to the European Commission

2017 N. K. Jemisin's "The Obelisk Gate" wins her second consecutive Hugo Award for Best Novel [1]

• 2019 Argentine President Mauricio Macri suffers defeat in a preliminary election to Alberto Fernández, prompting a 20% fall in the value of the peso

2020 Belarus's opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya flees the country amid large-scale protests over disputed election results that return dictator Alexander Lukashenko to power

2020 President Vladimir Putin, in a propaganda stunt, announces Russia has become the first country to grant regulatory approval to a COVID-19 vaccine called "Sputnik V" despite no scientific data being published or phase 3 trials having even begun

2020 US Democratic candidate for President Joe Biden announces California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, the first woman of color selected by a major party

2021 Argentine soccer superstar Lionel Messi confirms signing a lucrative 2-year contract with French Ligue 1 champions Paris Saint-Germain after leaving FC Barcelona

• 2021 Sicily records the highest-ever temperature in Europe at 48.8°C (119.8°F) in the city of Syracuse (unverified)
• 2021 Torrential rain cause flash flooding in Turkey's northwestern provinces of Kastamonu, Sinop, and Bartın, killing at least 77, with more missing [1]
• 2022 "Monster" wildfire southeast of Bordeaux fought by 1,000 firefighters burns through 7,400 hectares (18,286 acres) during France's driest summer since 1961 [1]

2022 US Attorney General Merrick Garland says he personally approves the FBI search of Trump's property on the same day a Washington Post source says the FBI search is for missing documents on nuclear weapons [1]

2024 Closing ceremony for the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics at Stade de France features Tom Cruise performing a stunt jump from the roof [1]

• 2024 New Zealand track cyclist Ellesse Andrews wins the women's sprint gold following her keirin title at the Paris Olympics
• 2024 Thousands of people evacuate near the Greek capital of Athens as large wildfires threaten the city after the hottest June and July on record [1]
• 2024 XXXIII Summer Olympic Games officially close at the Stade de France, Paris
• 2025 Fictional girl group HUNTR/X from Netflix movie 'Kpop Demon Hunters' reaches number one on Billboard Hot 100, the first all-woman group to do so in 24 years (the last being Destiny's Child in 2001) [1]
• 2025 US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that "One Big Beautiful Bill" will result in budget deficit increase totaling $3.4 trillion over the 2025-2034 period, resulting from a decrease in direct spending of $1.1 trillion and decrease in revenues of $4.5 trillion. Annual resources for households in lowest tenth of the income distribution will decrease by about $1,200, households in the middle will see resources increase by about $1,200, and by about $13,600 for households in the highest tenth. [1] [2]

• 10 Aug
• Historical Events Calendar
• Aug 12

• 

  Did a Snake Kill Cleopatra?

  August 10, 0030 BC
• 

  ‘Jack The Dripper’ Paintings Sell For Millions

  August 11, 1956
• 

  Ship of Gold Sails Into Oblivion

  August 12, 1853
• 

  Defiance in the Hundred Years' War

  August 13, 1415

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