Events on August 20 57
Year 636
Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of the Levant away from the Byzantine Empire, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia.
Year 917
Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army.
Year 1000
The foundation of the Hungarian state by Saint Stephen, celebrated as a National Day in Hungary.
Year 1083
Canonization of the first King of Hungary, Saint Stephen and his son Saint Emeric.
Year 1191
Richard I of England initiates the Massacre at Ayyadieh, leaving 2,600-3,000 Muslim hostages dead.
Year 1308
Pope Clement V pardons Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, absolving him of charges of heresy.
Year 1467
The Second Battle of Olmedo takes places as part of a succession conflict between Henry IV of Castile and his half-brother Alfonso, Prince of Asturias.
Year 1519
Philosopher and general Wang Yangming defeats Zhu Chenhao, ending the Prince of Ning rebellion against the reign of the Ming dynasty's Zhengde Emperor.
Year 1672
Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.
Year 1707
The first Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida.
Year 1710
War of the Spanish Succession: A multinational army led by the Austrian commander Guido Starhemberg defeats the Spanish-Bourbon army commanded by Alexandre Maรฎtre, Marquis de Bay in the Battle of Saragossa.
Year 1775
The Spanish establish the Presidio San Augustin del Tucson in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.
Year 1794
Battle of Fallen Timbers: American troops force a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi warriors into a disorganized retreat.
Year 1852
Steamboat Atlantic sank on Lake Erie after a collision, with the loss of at least 150 lives.
Year 1858
Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.
Year 1905
Sun Yat-sen, Chinese revolutionary, forms the first chapter of T'ung Meng Hui, a union of all secret societies determined to bringing down the Manchus.
Year 1910
The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the "Big Blowup" or the "Big Burn") occurs in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana, burning approximately 3ย million acres (12,000ย km2).
Year 1920
The first commercial radio station, 8MK (now WWJ), begins operations in Detroit.
Year 1920
The National Football League is organized as the American Professional Football Conference in Canton, Ohio
Year 1926
Japan's public broadcasting company, Nippon Hลsล Kyลkai (NHK) is established.
Year 1938
Lou Gehrig hits his 23rd career grand slam, a record that stood for 75 years until it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.
Year 1940
In Mexico City, Mexico exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramรณn Mercader. He dies the next day.
Year 1940
World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".
Year 1944
World War II: 168 captured allied airmen, including Phil Lamason, accused by the Gestapo of being "terror fliers", arrive at Buchenwald concentration camp.
Year 1950
Korean War: United Nations repel an offensive by North Korean divisions attempting to cross the Nakdong River and assault the city of Taegu.
Year 1955
Battle of Philippeville: In Morocco, a force of Berbers from the Atlas Mountains region of Algeria raid two rural settlements and kill 77 French nationals.
Year 1962
The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered civilian ship, embarks on its maiden voyage.
Year 1968
Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring.
Year 1986
In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
Year 1988
The Troubles: Eight British soldiers are killed and 28 wounded when their bus is hit by an IRA roadside bomb in Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
Year 1989
The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision. Fifty-one people are killed.
Year 1991
Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Year 1991
Estonia, annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, issues a decision on the re-establishment of independence on the basis of historical continuity of its pre-World War II statehood.
Year 1993
After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Accords are signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month.
Year 1998
The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.
Year 1998
U.S. embassy bombings: The United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Year 2002
A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin, Germany for five hours before releasing their hostages and surrendering.
Year 2006
Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil politician and former MP S. Sivamaharajah is shot dead at his home in Tellippalai.
Year 2007
China Airlines Flight 120 caught fire and exploded after landing at Naha Airport in Okinawa, Japan.
Year 2008
Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid, Spain to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. Of the 172 people on board, 146 die immediately, and eight more later die of injuries sustained in the crash.
Year 2014
Seventy-two people are killed in Japan's Hiroshima Prefecture by a series of landslides caused by a month's worth of rain that fell in one day.
Year 2016
54 people are killed when a suicide bomber detonates himself at a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep, Turkey.
Year ?
Agrippa Postumus, adopted son of the late Roman emperor Augustus, is executed by his guards under mysterious circumstances while in exile.