Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 20
This is a lists selected August 20 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.
Please note:
- Events listed on the Main Page are selected based on article quality and to provide a diverse range of topics, rather than solely on the importance or significance of the events.
- Only four or five events are featured each day; therefore, not all important or significant events can be included.
- An event is generally excluded if it is already the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error in content currently on the Main Page, see Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. If a listed event is inaccurate, please first seek consensus and update the corresponding article before making changes here.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
-
"Anonymous" seal of Simeon I -
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky -
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky -
1812 Overture
-
Statue of St. Stephen of Hungary -
NS Savannah -
Voyager Spacecraft -
Yellowstone fires -
Pluto -
Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory -
Silent Sam
.jpg)
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Ghost Festival (Chinese calendar, 2013); | refimprove |
| 636 – Rashidun forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid took control of Syria and Palestine in the Battle of the Yarmuk, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests. | Too much uncited, lots of verification needed tags |
| 1794 – American troops defeated the Northwestern Confederacy, a Native American alliance, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, the decisive battle of the Northwest Indian War. | Too much uncited |
| 1882 – The 1812 Overture by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky debuted in Moscow, conducted by Ippolit Al'tani. | citations needed |
| 1905 – Sun Yat-sen (pictured), Song Jiaoren, and others founded the Tongmenghui, a secret society dedicated to overthrowing the Qing dynasty of China. | refimprove |
| 1940 – In the midst of the Battle of Britain, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered a speech thanking the Royal Air Force, declaring, "Never was so much owed by so many to so few." | refimprove section |
| 1944 – World War II: The Gestapo transported 168 Allied airmen, who had been classified as spies and criminals so as not to warrant prisoner of war treatment, to Buchenwald concentration camp. | page numbers needed |
| 1962 – NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, made her maiden voyage. | Overwhelmingly single sourced, several unsourced paragraphs |
| 1971 – The Stanford prison experiment, one of the most infamous psychological studies, was ended after six days, when the simulation became too abusive. | Tagged primary sources |
| 1977 – NASA's Voyager 2 lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, on a mission to explore the outer planets of the Solar System. | unreferenced section |
| 1993 – Oslo Accords | Moved to September 13 |
| 1998 – The Supreme Court of Canada delivered its decision in Reference Re Secession of Quebec, ruling that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval. | refimprove |
| Eadberht of Northumbria |d|768| | date of death uncertain; might be 19th or 20th;[1] |
| Henry Every |b|1659| | Too much uncited |
| Leona Helmsley |d|2007| | Mulitple cn tags |
Eligible
- 917 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: Bulgarian forces led by Tsar Simeon I drove the Byzantines out of Thrace with a decisive victory at the Battle of Achelous.
- 1707 – The first Siege of Pensacola came to an end with the British and Creek abandoning their attempt to capture Pensacola in Spanish Florida.
- 1892 – Celtic Park, the largest football stadium in Scotland and home of Celtic F.C., opened.
- 1909 – Pluto (pictured) was photographed for the first time at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, U.S., 21 years before it was officially discovered by Clyde Tombaugh.
- 1910 – Hurricane-force winds combined hundreds of small fires in the U.S. states of Washington and Idaho into the Devil's Broom fire, which burned about 4,700 square miles (12,100 km²), the largest fire in recorded U.S. history.
- 1950 – Korean War: United Nations forces repelled an attempt by North Korea to capture the city of Taegu.
- 1988 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed a bus carrying British Army soldiers in Northern Ireland, killing eight of them and wounding twenty-eight.
- 1989 – After colliding with the dredger Bowbelle on the River Thames in London, the pleasure boat Marchioness sank in thirty seconds, killing 51 people.
- 1998 – The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory (pictured) in Sudan was destroyed by a missile attack launched by the United States in retaliation for the August 7 U.S. embassy bombings.
- 2008 – Spanair Flight 5022 crashed just after take-off from Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 154 people.
- Born/died: | Jeremi Wiśniowiecki |d|1651| James Prinsep |b|1799| Benjamin Harrison |b|1833| Bolesław Prus |b|1847| Rudolf Bultmann |b|1884| H. P. Lovecraft |b|1890| Terry Sanford |b|1917| Agnes Giberne |d|1939| Phil Lynott |b|1949| Percy Williams Bridgman |d|1961| Amy Adams |b|1974| Andrew Garfield |b|1983| Jack King |b|1985| Linus Sebastian |b|1986| Oliver Darcy |b|1990| Mika Yamamoto |d|2012| Narendra Dabholkar |d|2013| B. K. S. Iyengar |d|2014|
Notes
- 1998 United States embassy bombings appears on August 7, so Operation Infinite Reach should not appear in the same year
- The Hardest Day appears on August 18, so Churchill's speech should not appear in the same year
- Omagh bombing appears on August 19, so Ballygawley bus bombing should not appear in the same year
.jpg)
Mercedes-Benz O305 on the O-Bahn
- 1710 – War of the Spanish Succession: A Spanish Bourbon army commanded by the Marquis de Bay was soundly defeated by a multinational army led by the Austrian commander Guido Starhemberg.
- 1920 – The American Professional Football Association, a predecessor of the National Football League, was founded.
- 1988 – Fires in the United States' Yellowstone National Park ravaged more than 150,000 acres (610 km2), the single-worst day of the conflagration.
- 1989 – The final stage of the O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, South Australia, was completed, at the time the world's longest and fastest guided busway with buses (example pictured) travelling a total of 12 km (7.5 mi) at maximum speeds of up to 100 km/h (62 mph).
- 2018 – Silent Sam, a Confederate monument on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was toppled by protestors.
- George Tucker (b. 1775)
- William Booth (d. 1912)
- Ron Paul (b. 1935)
- Hua Guofeng (d. 1978)