August 20 Historical Events
The following events took place on August 20. The list is arranged in chronological order.
Found 51 events. Showing 31 - 51.
- 1965Keene, NH Episcopal seminarian Jonathan Daniels, 26, is martyred; murdered by shotgun at point-blank range in Hayneville, Alabama, by an unpaid sheriff’s deputy, sacrificing his life for young black activist Ruby Sales whom he pushed out of the way of the blast.
- 1968Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring.
- 1975Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.
- 1977Voyager program: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
- 1986In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
- 1988“Black Saturday” of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park
- 1988Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
- 1988Iran–Iraq War: A ceasefire is agreed after almost eight years of war.
- 1988The Troubles: Eight British soldiers are killed and 28 wounded when their bus is hit by an IRA roadside bomb in Ballygawley, County Tyrone.
- 1989The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision. Fifty-one people are killed.
- 1989The O-Bahn Busway in Adelaide, the world’s longest guided busway, opens.
- 1991Dissolution 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.
- 1991Estonia, 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.
- 1993After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Accords are signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month.
- 1997Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped.
- 1998The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government’s approval.
- 1998U.S. embassy bombings: The United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
- 2002A 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.
- 2008Spanair 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.
- 2012A prison riot in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, kills at least 20 people.
- 2014Seventy-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.
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