Events on August 1 53
Year 607
Ono no Imoko is dispatched as envoy to the Sui court in China (Traditional Japanese date: July 3, 607).
Year 902
Taormina, the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily, is captured by the Aghlabids army, concluding the Muslim conquest of Sicily.
Year 1203
Isaac II Angelos, restored Eastern Roman Emperor, declares his son Alexios IV Angelos co-emperor after pressure from the forces of the Fourth Crusade.
Year 1469
Louis XI of France founds the chivalric order called the Order of Saint Michael in Amboise.
Year 1664
Ottoman forces are defeated in the battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.
Year 1714
George, Elector of Hanover, becomes King George I of Great Britain, marking the beginning of the Georgian era of British history.
Year 1759
Seven Years' War: The Battle of Minden, an allied Anglo-German army victory over the French. In Britain this was one of a number of events that constituted the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 and is celebrated as Minden Day by certain British Army regiments.
Year 1774
British scientist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen gas, corroborating the prior discovery of this element by German-Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
Year 1798
French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay): Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action.
Year 1800
The Acts of Union 1800 are passed which merge the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Year 1801
First Barbary War: The American schooner USS Enterprise captures the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli in a single-ship action off the coast of modern-day Libya.
Year 1834
Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.
Year 1907
The start of the first Scout camp on Brownsea Island, the origin of the worldwide Scouting movement.
Year 1911
Harriet Quimby takes her pilot's test and becomes the first U.S. woman to earn an Aero Club of America aviator's certificate.
Year 1914
The German Empire declares war on the Russian Empire at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilizes because of World War I.
Year 1927
The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.
Year 1933
Anti-Fascist activists Bruno Tesch, Walter Möller, Karl Wolff and August Lütgens executed by the Nazi regime in Altona.
Year 1937
Josip Broz Tito reads the resolution "Manifesto of constitutional congress of KPH" to the constitutive congress of KPH (Croatian Communist Party) in woods near Samobor.
Year 1943
World War II: Operation Tidal Wave also known as "Black Sunday", was a failed American attempt to destroy Romanian oil fields.
Year 1944
World War II: The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi German occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.
Year 1946
Leaders of the Russian Liberation Army, a force of Russian prisoners of war that collaborated with Nazi Germany, are executed in Moscow, Soviet Union for treason.
Year 1957
The United States and Canada form the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
Year 1961
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara orders the creation of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the nation's first centralized military espionage organization.
Year 1966
Charles Whitman kills 16 people at the University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
Year 1966
Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
Year 1971
The Concert for Bangladesh, organized by former Beatle George Harrison, is held at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Year 1974
Cyprus dispute: The United Nations Security Council authorizes the UNFICYP to create the "Green Line", dividing Cyprus into two zones.
Year 1980
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the world's first democratically elected female head of state.
Year 1981
MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles.
Year 1984
Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, England.
Year 2004
A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 others in Asunción, Paraguay.
Year 2007
The I-35W Mississippi River bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses during the evening rush hour.
Year 2008
The Beijing-Tianjin Intercity Railway begins operation as the fastest commuter rail system in the world.
Year 2008
Eleven mountaineers from international expeditions died on K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth in the worst single accident in the history of K2 mountaineering.
Year ?
Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.
Year ?
Batavian rebellion: The Batavians in Germania Inferior (Netherlands) revolt under the leadership of Gaius Julius Civilis.