Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August

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August 1: Lughnasadh in the Northern Hemisphere; Buwan ng Wika begins in the Philippines; PLA Day in China (1927)

• 30 BC – War of Actium: Octavian defeated the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at Alexandria, establishing Roman Egypt.
• 902 – Arab–Byzantine wars: Led by Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya, Aghlabid forces captured the Byzantine stronghold of Taormina, concluding the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
• 1774 – British scientist Joseph Priestley (pictured) liberated oxygen gas, corroborating the discovery of the element by the German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
• 1892 – Jef Denyn hosted the world's first carillon concert at St. Rumbold's Cathedral in Mechelen, Belgium.
• 1911 – Harriet Quimby became the first woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator certificate.

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August 2: Roma Holocaust Memorial Day

• 461 – Unpopular among the Senate aristocracy for his reforming efforts, Roman emperor Majorian was deposed by Ricimer and executed five days later.
• 1100 – While on a hunting trip in the New Forest, King William II of England was killed by an arrow through the lung loosed by one of his own men.
• 1790 – The first United States census was officially completed, with the nation's residential population enumerated to be 3,929,214.
• 1920 – Nepalese author Krishna Lal Adhikari (pictured) was sentenced to nine years in prison for publishing a book about the cultivation of corn alleged to contain attacks on the ruling dynasty.
• 1973 – A flash fire killed 50 people at a leisure centre in Douglas, Isle of Man.

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August 3

• 1347 – Hundred Years' War: The French town of Calais capitulated to English forces after an eleven-month siege, ending the Crécy campaign.
• 1903 – Macedonian rebels in Kruševo proclaimed a republic, which existed for ten days before Ottoman forces destroyed the town.
• 1936 – African-American athlete Jesse Owens won the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, dashing Nazi leaders' hopes of Aryan domination at the games.
• 1971 – Fighting Dinosaurs, a fossil specimen featuring a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops in combat, was unearthed in the Djadochta Formation of Mongolia.
• 1997 – The Sky Tower, then the tallest free-standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere at 328 m (1,076 ft), opened in Auckland, New Zealand.

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August 4

• 1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: A combined Anglo-Dutch fleet under the command of George Rooke and allied with Archduke Charles captured Gibraltar from Spain.
• 1914 – World War I: Adhering to the terms of the Treaty of London, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany in response to the latter's invasion of Belgium.
• 1953 – Alfred C. Glassell Jr. caught a black marlin weighing 1,560 lb (710 kg) (pictured) off the coast of Peru, setting the record for the largest bony fish caught by hand.
• 1997 – French supercentenarian Jeanne Calment died at the age of 122 years, 164 days, with the longest confirmed human lifespan in history.
• 2014 – Julieka Ivanna Dhu, an Aboriginal Australian woman, died in police custody after her deteriorating condition was mocked and ignored.

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August 5: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day in Croatia (1995)

• 1100 – Henry I (pictured) was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.
• 1716 – Austro-Turkish War: The Ottoman army were defeated in their attempt to capture the Habsburgs-controlled Petrovaradin Fortress despite having double the number of soldiers.
• 1816 – Sir John Barrow, secretary at the Admiralty, rejected a proposal to use Francis Ronalds's electrical telegraph, deeming it "wholly unnecessary".
• 1888 – Bertha Benz made the first long-distance automobile trip, driving 106 km (66 mi) from Mannheim to Pforzheim, Germany, in a Benz Patent-Motorwagen.
• 1949 – An earthquake registering 6.4 M_s struck near Ambato, Ecuador, killing 5,050 people.
• 1984 – A Biman Bangladesh Airlines aircraft crashed while attempting to land in Dhaka, killing 49 people in the deadliest aviation accident in Bangladeshi history.
• 2012 – An American white supremacist carried out a mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, killing six people and wounding four others.

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August 6

• 686 – Second Fitna: Pro-Alid forces defeated the Umayyad Caliphate in the Battle of Khazir, allowing them to take control of Mosul in present-day Iraq.
• 1623 – After the death of Gregory XV, a papal conclave in Rome elected Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII.
• 1944 – World War II: Allied forces attacked German fortifications at Saint-Malo, France, beginning the Battle of Saint-Malo (pictured).
• 1979 – An earthquake struck along the Calaveras Fault near Coyote Lake, California, injuring sixteen people.
• 1997 – Korean Air Flight 801 crashed into a hill on approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport in Guam, killing 228 of the 254 people aboard.
• 2011 – A series of riots broke out in several London boroughs and in cities and towns across England in response to the shooting of Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police officers.

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August 7: Assyrian Martyrs Day (1933)

• 1744 – Prussia declared its intervention in the War of the Austrian Succession on behalf of Charles VII, beginning the Second Silesian War.
• 1909 – Fifty-nine days after leaving New York City with three passengers, Alice Huyler Ramsey arrived in San Francisco to become the first woman to drive an automobile across the contiguous United States.
• 1944 – IBM presented the first program-controlled calculator to Harvard University, after which it became known as the Mark I (pictured).
• 1998 – Car bombs exploded simultaneously at the American embassies in the East African capital cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killing more than 200 people and injuring more than 4,000 others.

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August 8

• 1264 – Reconquista: In the early stages of the Mudéjar revolt, Muslim rebels captured the Alcázar of Jerez de la Frontera in present-day Spain, holding it for about two months.
• 1919 – The Third Anglo-Afghan War ended with the United Kingdom signing a treaty to recognise the independence of the Emirate of Afghanistan.
• 1929 – The German airship Graf Zeppelin (pictured) departed Lakehurst, New Jersey, on a flight to circumnavigate the world.
• 2009 – Nine people died when a tour helicopter and a small private airplane collided over the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey.
• 2014 – The World Health Organization declared the Western African Ebola epidemic, which began in December 2013, to be a public health emergency of international concern.

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August 9: International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples; National Women's Day in South Africa (1956)

• 1821 – The statue of A'a from Rurutu was presented to members of the London Missionary Society on the south Pacific island of Ra'iatea.
• 1934 – The Blue Lotus, the fifth volume of The Adventures of Tintin by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé and noted for its emphasis on countering negative misconceptions of Chinese people, began serialisation.
• 1944 – The United States Forest Service authorized the use of Smokey Bear (pictured) as its mascot to replace Bambi.
• 1974 – On the verge of an impeachment and removal from office amid the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon became the first president of the United States to resign.
• 2014 – Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American man, was killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, resulting in widespread protests and unrest.

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August 10: Qixi Festival in China (2024)

• 1792 – French Revolution: Insurrectionists in Paris stormed the Tuileries Palace (depicted), effectively ending the French monarchy until it was restored in 1814.
• 1864 – José Antônio Saraiva announced that the Brazilian military would exact reprisals after Uruguay's governing Blanco Party refused Brazil's demands, beginning the Uruguayan War.
• 1953 – First Indochina War: The French Union withdrew its forces from Operation Camargue against the Việt Minh in central modern-day Vietnam.
• 2019 – Having already caused severe flooding in the Philippines, Typhoon Lekima made landfall in Zhejiang, China, killing 45 people in the province.

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August 11

• 1309 – Reconquista: Aragonese forces led by King James II landed on the coast of Almería, beginning an ultimately unsuccessful siege of the city, then held by the Emirate of Granada.
• 1786 – Francis Light founded George Town (city hall pictured), the first British settlement in Southeast Asia and the present-day capital of the Malaysian state of Penang.
• 1979 – Two Aeroflot passenger jets collided in mid-air near Dniprodzerzhynsk in the Ukrainian SSR, killing all 178 people on both aircraft.
• 1999 – Ken Levine's System Shock 2 was released to mediocre sales, but later received critical acclaim and influenced subsequent first-person shooter game design.
• 2012 – At least 306 people were killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.

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August 12

• 1834 – A race riot in Philadelphia destroyed African-American businesses and killed two people.
• 1883 – The last known quagga (example pictured), a subspecies of the plains zebra, died at Natura Artis Magistra, a zoo in Amsterdam.
• 1914 – World War I: Belgian troops won a victory at the Battle of Halen, but were ultimately unable to stop the German invasion of Belgium.
• 1944 – World War II: In Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Italy, the Waffen-SS and the Brigate Nere murdered about 560 local villagers and refugees and burned their bodies.

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August 13

• 1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: The Duke of Marlborough led Allied forces to a crucial victory at the Battle of Blenheim.
• 1724 – Bach led the Thomanerchor in Leipzig in the first performance of the chorale cantata, Nimm von uns, Herr, du treuer Gott, BWV 101.
• 1999 – The Act on National Flag and Anthem was adopted, formally establishing the Hinomaru and "Kimigayo" as the Japanese national flag and anthem, respectively.
• 2004 – Merely 22 hours after Tropical Storm Bonnie struck the U.S. state of Florida, Hurricane Charley inflicted further damage to the region (example pictured).

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August 14: Independence Day in Pakistan (1947)

• 1264 – War of Saint Sabas: A Genoese fleet captured or sank most of the ships of a Venetian trade convoy off the Albanian coast.
• 1816 – The United Kingdom formally annexed the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, administering the islands from the Cape Colony in South Africa.
• 1941 – After a secret meeting in Newfoundland, British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt (both pictured) issued the Atlantic Charter, establishing a vision for a post–World War II world.
• 2021 – A magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck in Haiti, killing at least 2,248 people and causing $1.5 billion in damages and economic loss.

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August 15: Independence Day in India (1947); National Liberation Day of Korea (1945)

• 718 – Forces of the Umayyad Caliphate abandoned a year-long siege of Constantinople, ending their goal of conquering the Byzantine Empire.
• 1038 – Upon the death of his uncle Stephen I, Peter (depicted) became the second king of Hungary.
• 1909 – A military coup against the government of Dimitrios Rallis began in the neighbourhood of Goudi in Athens, Greece.
• 1944 – World War II: Allied forces began Operation Dragoon, their invasion of southern France.
• 1998 – The Troubles: A car bomb attack carried out by the Real Irish Republican Army killed 29 people and injured approximately 220 others in Omagh, Northern Ireland.

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August 16

• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces routed British and German troops at the Battle of Bennington in Walloomsac, New York.
• 1819 – Around 15 people were killed and 400 to 700 others injured when cavalry charged into a crowd demanding the reform of parliamentary representation in Manchester, England.
• 1891 – San Sebastian Church (pictured), an all-iron church in Manila, was officially consecrated.
• 1920 – Ray Chapman of the Cleveland Indians was hit by a pitch and died the following day, becoming the only Major League Baseball player to die directly as a result of injuries sustained during a game.
• 1929 – A long-running dispute between Muslims and Jews over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem escalated into a week-long period of violent riots throughout Palestine.

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August 17

• 1668 – An earthquake struck the North Anatolia region, killing over 8,000 people.
• 1876 – The premiere of Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner (pictured) closed the first Bayreuth Festival.
• 1914 – World War I: Ignoring orders to retreat, Hermann von François led a successful counterattack defending East Prussia at the Battle of Stallupönen and scored the first German victory in the Eastern Front.
• 1943 – World War II: The Royal Air Force began a strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany's V-weapon programme by attacking the Peenemünde Army Research Center.

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August 18: Ghost Festival in China (2024)

• 684 – Second Fitna: Umayyad partisans defeated the supporters of Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr near Damascus, cementing Umayyad control of Syria.
• 1823 – At least 9,000 enslaved people rebelled in the British colony in Demerara-Essequibo (in present-day Guyana), demanding emancipation.
• 1864 – American Civil War: At the Battle of Globe Tavern, Union forces attempted to sever the Weldon Railroad during the siege of Petersburg.
• 1937 – A lightning strike started the Blackwater Fire (pictured) in Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming, consuming 1,700 acres (7 km²) of old-growth forest and killing 15 firefighters.
• 2017 – Two people were fatally stabbed and eight others wounded by a rejected asylum seeker in an Islamist terrorist attack in Turku, Finland.

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August 19: Afghan Independence Day; National Aviation Day in the United States

• 1274 – Shortly after his return from the Ninth Crusade, Edward I (pictured) was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey, nearly two years after his father's death.
• 1934 – A referendum supported the recent merging of the posts of chancellor and president of Germany, consolidating Adolf Hitler's assumption of supreme power.
• 2002 – Second Chechen War: A Russian Mil Mi-26 was brought down by Chechen separatists with a man-portable air-defense system near Khankala, killing 127 people in the deadliest helicopter crash in history.
• 2017 – Around 250,000 farmed non-native Atlantic salmon were accidentally released into the wild near Cypress Island, Washington.

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August 20

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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August 21

• 1689 – Jacobite clans clashed with a regiment of Covenanters in the streets of Dunkeld, Scotland.
• 1789 – The national colours of Italy first appeared on a tricolour cockade in Genoa.
• 1911 – Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa (pictured) was stolen from the Louvre by museum employee Vincenzo Peruggia and was not recovered until two years later.
• 1944 – World War II: A combined Canadian–Polish force captured the town of Falaise, France, in the final offensive of the Battle of Normandy.
• 2007 – BioShock was released in North America, becoming a critical success and a demonstration of video games as an art form.

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August 22: Madras Day in Chennai, India (1639)

• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold used a ruse to convince the British that a much larger force was arriving, causing them to abandon the siege of Fort Stanwix (reconstructed fort pictured).
• 1864 – Under the leadership of Henry Dunant and the International Committee of the Red Cross, twelve European states signed the First Geneva Convention, establishing rules for the protection of victims of armed conflict.
• 1914 – First World War: German forces captured Rossignol in Belgium, taking more than 3,800 French prisoners.
• 1962 – An assassination attempt orchestrated by the OAS takes place against Charles de Gaulle, although he is uninjured.
• 2012 – A series of ethnic clashes between the Orma and the Pokomo in Kenya's Tana River District resulted in at least 52 deaths.

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August 23: Black Ribbon Day

• 1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition, the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, departed London.
• 1914 – In their first major action of the First World War, the British Expeditionary Force engaged German troops in Mons, Belgium.
• 1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (pictured), a ten-year mutual non-aggression treaty, which also secretly divided northern and eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
• 1954 – The Cruise of the Kings, a royal cruise organised by the Queen Consort of Greece, Frederica of Hanover, departed from Marseille, France.
• 1989 – Singing Revolution: Approximately two million people joined hands to form a human chain spanning 675.5 kilometres (419.7 mi) across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics to demonstrate their desire for independence.

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August 24: Feast day of Saint Bartholomew (Western Christianity); Independence Day in Ukraine (1991)

• 1704 – War of the Spanish Succession: An Anglo-Dutch fleet engaged a French naval force at the Battle of Málaga in the Mediterranean Sea.
• 1814 – War of 1812: British forces invaded Washington, D.C., setting fire to various U.S. government buildings, including the White House (pictured).
• 1889 – The New Zealand Native football team, predominantly comprising Māori players, concluded their 107-game tour, the longest in rugby union history.
• 1914 – The Battle of Cer ended with the first Allied victory of World War I.
• 1954 – In the midst of a political crisis, Brazilian president Getúlio Vargas fatally shot himself in the Catete Palace in Rio de Janeiro.

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August 25

• 1258 – George Mouzalon, the regent of the Empire of Nicaea, was assassinated as part of a conspiracy led by nobles under the future emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos.
• 1758 – Seven Years' War: Prussian forces engaged the Russians at the Battle of Zorndorf in present-day Sarbinowo, Poland.
• 1914 – World War I: During the sack of Louvain in Belgium, German troops burned the town's Catholic university, destroying several medieval manuscripts.
• 1989 – The NASA spacecraft Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Neptune and provided definitive proof of the existence of the planet's rings (pictured).
• 2011 – Mexican drug war: Fifty-two people were killed in an arson attack at a casino in Monterrey, Mexico.

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August 26: Heroes' Day in Namibia; Women's Equality Day in the United States

• 683 – Second Fitna: The Battle of al-Harra was fought between Umayyad forces and the rebel defenders of Medina at a lava field northeast of the city.
• 1748 – The first Lutheran denomination in North America, the Pennsylvania Ministerium, was founded in Philadelphia.
• 1914 – First World War: The German colony of Togoland surrendered to French and British forces after a 20-day campaign.
• 1959 – The Coatzacoalcos earthquake struck near the Mexican state of Veracruz, killing 25 people.
• 1968 – The U.S. Democratic Party's National Convention opened in Chicago, sparking four days of clashes (pictured) between anti-Vietnam War protesters and police.

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August 27: Independence Day in Moldova (1991)

• 410 – The sacking of Rome by the Visigoths ended after three days.
• 1896 – In the shortest recorded war in history (pictured), the Sultanate of Zanzibar surrendered to the United Kingdom after less than an hour of conflict.
• 1955 – The first edition of the Guinness Book of Records was published.
• 1964 – South Vietnamese junta leader Nguyễn Khánh entered into a triumvirate power-sharing arrangement with rival generals Trần Thiện Khiêm and Dương Văn Minh, both of whom had been involved in plots to unseat Khánh.
• 2009 – The Myanmar military junta and ethnic armies began three days of violent clashes in the region of Kokang.

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August 28

• 1542 – Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts: During the Battle of Wofla, the Portuguese commander Cristóvão da Gama was captured by the Adal Sultanate and executed the next day.
• 1833 – The Slavery Abolition Act 1833, officially abolishing slavery in most of the British Empire, received royal assent.
• 1914 – In the first naval battle of the First World War, British ships ambushed a German naval patrol in the Heligoland Bight (pictured).
• 1993 – The first direct Presidential election in Singapore was held.
• 2003 – A pizza delivery man in Erie, Pennsylvania, was killed during a complex bank robbery when a bomb that was locked around his neck exploded.

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August 29: Feast of the Beheading of John the Baptist (Catholicism, Anglicanism)

• 1350 – Hundred Years' War: Led by King Edward III, a fleet of 50 English ships captured at least 14 Castilian vessels and sank several more at the Battle of Winchelsea.
• 1786 – Angered by high tax burdens and disfranchisement, farmers in western Massachusetts led by Daniel Shays began an armed uprising against the U.S. federal government.
• 1831 – Michael Faraday (pictured) first experimentally demonstrated electromagnetic induction, leading to the formulation of the law of induction named after him.
• 1960 – Air France Flight 343 crashed while attempting to land at Yoff Airport, Dakar, killing all 63 occupants.
• 2016 – Chen Quanguo became the Chinese Communist Party secretary of Xinjiang, and in that role later oversaw the creation of the Xinjiang internment camps.

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August 30: Victory Day in Turkey (1922)

• AD 70 – First Jewish–Roman War: Roman forces led by Titus set fire to the Second Temple during the siege of Jerusalem.
• 1574 – Guru Ram Das (pictured) became the fourth of the Sikh gurus, the spiritual masters of Sikhism.
• 1594 – King James VI of Scotland held a masque at the baptism of Prince Henry, his first child.
• 1959 – South Vietnamese opposition figure Phan Quang Đán was elected to the National Assembly, despite soldiers being bussed in to vote multiple times for President Ngô Đình Diệm's candidate.
• 1974 – An express train carrying foreign workers from Yugoslavia to West Germany derailed in Zagreb, killing 153 people.
• 2007 – A heavy bomber that had been unintentionally loaded with nuclear missiles flew them from North Dakota to Louisiana before they were recognized.

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August 31: Independence Day in Malaysia (1957); Romanian Language Day in Moldova and Romania

• 1218 – Al-Kamil became the fourth sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty of Egypt.
• 1888 – The body of Mary Ann Nichols, the alleged first victim of an unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper (pictured), was found in Buck's Row, London.
• 1942 – The Matagorda hurricane, the most intense and costliest tropical cyclone of the 1942 Atlantic hurricane season, dissipated after causing $26.5 million in damages and eight deaths.
• 1969 – On the final day of the Isle of Wight Festival 1969, attended by approximately 150,000 people over three days, Bob Dylan appeared in his first gig in three years.
• 2019 – A sightseeing helicopter crashed in the mountains of Skoddevarre in Alta, Norway, killing all six people on board.

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