Events on August 29 50
Year 708
Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
Year 1315
Battle of Montecatini: The army of the Republic of Pisa, commanded by Uguccione della Faggiuola, wins a decisive victory against the joint forces of the Kingdom of Naples and the Republic of Florence despite being outnumbered.
Year 1350
Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer): The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.
Year 1475
The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between the kingdoms of France and England.
Year 1526
Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.
Year 1728
The city of Nuuk in Greenland is founded as the fort of Godt-Haab by the royal governor Claus Paarss.
Year 1758
The Treaty of Easton establishes the first American Indian reservation, at Indian Mills, New Jersey, for the Lenape.
Year 1778
American Revolutionary War: British and American forces battle indecisively at the Battle of Rhode Island.
Year 1786
Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
Year 1807
British troops under Sir Arthur Wellesley defeat a Danish militia outside Copenhagen in the Battle of Køge.
Year 1861
American Civil War: The Battle of Hatteras Inlet Batteries gives Federal forces control of Pamlico Sound.
Year 1869
The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first mountain-climbing rack railway.
Year 1871
Emperor Meiji orders the abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).
Year 1885
Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first internal combustion motorcycle, the Reitwagen.
Year 1910
The Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910, also known as the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty, becomes effective, officially starting the period of Japanese rule in Korea.
Year 1911
Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
Year 1914
World War I: Start of the Battle of St. Quentin in which the French Fifth Army counter-attacked the invading Germans at Saint-Quentin, Aisne.
Year 1918
World War I: Bapaume taken by the New Zealand Division in the Hundred Days Offensive.
Year 1930
The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
Year 1941
World War II: Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, is occupied by Nazi Germany following an occupation by the Soviet Union.
Year 1943
World War II: German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves the Danish government.
Year 1944
World War II: Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.
Year 1949
Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
Year 1966
The Beatles perform their last concert before paying fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.
Year 1966
Leading Egyptian thinker Sayyid Qutb is executed for plotting the assassination of President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Year 1970
Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War, East Los Angeles, California. Police riot kills three people, including journalist Rubén Salazar.
Year 1982
The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
Year 1991
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
Year 1991
Libero Grassi, an Italian businessman from Palermo, is killed by the Sicilian Mafia after taking a solitary stand against their extortion demands.
Year 1996
Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Tupolev Tu-154, crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
Year 1997
At least 98 villagers are killed by the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.
Year 2003
Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
Year 2005
Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing an estimated 1,836 people and causing over $108 billion in damage.
Year 2012
At least 26 Chinese miners are killed and 21 missing after a blast in the Xiaojiawan coal mine, located at Panzhihua, Sichuan Province.