Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 20
This is a list of 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. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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"Anonymous" seal of Simeon I -
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky -
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky -
1812 Overture
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Statue of St. Stephen of Hungary -
NS Savannah -
Voyager Spacecraft -
Yellowstone fires -
Mercedes-Benz O305 on the O-Bahn
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Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Ghost Festival (Chinese calendar, 2013); | refimprove |
| 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 |
| 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 |
| 1882 – The 1812 Overture by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky debuted in Moscow, conducted by Ippolit Al'tani. | citations needed |
| 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] |
Eligible
- 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.
- 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.
- 1909 – Pluto 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 three million acres (12,140 km²), the largest fire in recorded U.S. history.
- 1920 – The American Professional Football Association, a predecessor of the National Football League, was founded.
- 1950 – Korean War: United Nations forces repelled an attempt by North Korea to capture the city of Taegu.
- 1962 – NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered cargo-passenger ship, made her maiden voyage.
- 1988 – Fires in the United States' Yellowstone National Park ravaged more than 150,000 acres (610 km2), the single-worst day of the conflagration.
- 1988 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed a bus carrying British Army soldiers in Northern Ireland, killing eight of them and wounding another twenty-eight.
- 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 travelling a total of 12 km (7.5 mi) at maximum speeds of up to 100 km/h (62 mph).
- 1998 – The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory 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: | Henry Every |b|1659| George Tucker |b|1775| James Prinsep |b|1799| Bolesław Prus |b|1847 | Rudolf Bultmann |b|1884| Terry Sanford |b|1917| Ron Paul |b|1935|Agnes Giberne |d|1939| Phil Lynott |b|1949| Amy Adams |b|1974| Andrew Garfield |b|1983| Jack King |b|1985| Leona Helmsley |d|2007| Mika Yamamoto |d|2012| Narendra Dabholkar |d|2013| Kelsey Weems |d|2019
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
Pluto
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 1971 – The Stanford prison experiment, one of the most infamous psychological studies, was ended after six days, when the simulation became too abusive.
- 1989 – After colliding with a dredger on the River Thames in London, the pleasure steamer Marchioness sank in just thirty seconds, killing 51 people.
- Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (d. 1651)
- H. P. Lovecraft (b. 1890)
- B. K. S. Iyengar (d. 2014)