August 15 Historical Events
The following events took place on August 15. The list is arranged in chronological order.
Found 83 events. Showing 61 - 83.
- 1962James Joseph Dresnok defects to North Korea after running across the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Dresnok still resides in the capital, Pyongyang.
- 1963Execution of Henry John Burnett, the last man to be hanged in Scotland.
- 1963President Fulbert Youlou is overthrown in the Republic of the Congo, after a three-day uprising in the capital.
- 1965The Beatles play to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, an event later regarded as the birth of stadium rock.
- 1969the Woodstock Music & Art Fair opens in upstate New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.
- 1970Patricia Palinkas becomes the first woman to play professionally in an American football game.
- 1971President Richard Nixon completes the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.
- 1971Bahrain gains independence from the United Kingdom.
- 1973Vietnam War: The United States bombing of Cambodia ends.
- 1974Yuk Young-soo, First Lady of South Korea, is killed during an apparent assassination attempt upon President, Park Chung-hee.
- 1975Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is killed along with most members of his family during a military coup.
- 1975Takeo Miki makes the first official pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine by an incumbent prime minister on the anniversary of the end of World War II.
- 1977The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the “Wow! signal” from the notation made by a volunteer on the project.
- 1984The Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Turkey starts a campaign of armed attacks upon the Turkish military with an attack on police and gendarmerie bases in Şemdinli and Eruh
- 1995In South Carolina, Shannon Faulkner becomes the first female cadet matriculated at The Citadel (she drops out less than a week later).
- 1998Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland, the worst terrorist incident of The Troubles.
- 1999Beni Ounif massacre in Algeria: Some 29 people are killed at a false roadblock near the Moroccan border, leading to temporary tensions with Morocco.
- 2005Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan to evict all Israelis from the Gaza Strip and from four settlements in the northern West Bank begins.
- 2005The Helsinki Agreement between the Free Aceh Movement and the Government of Indonesia was signed, ending 28 years of fighting.
- 2007An 8.0-magnitude earthquake off the Pacific coast devastates Ica and various regions of Peru killing 514 and injuring 1,090.
- 2013At least 27 people are killed and 226 injured in an explosion in southern Beirut near a complex used by Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon. A previously unknown Syrian Sunni group claims responsibility in an online video.
- 2013The Smithsonian announces the discovery of the olinguito, the first new carnivoran species found in the Americas in 35 years.
- 2015North Korea moves its clock back half an hour to introduce Pyongyang Time, 8.5 hours ahead of UTC.
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