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22 July 1990 – Greg LeMond, an American road racing cyclist, wins his third Tour de France after leading the majority of the race. It was LeMond's second consecutive Tour de France victory.

Greg LeMond

American racing cyclist

"LeMond" redirects here. For other uses, see LeMond (disambiguation).

Gregory James LeMond (born June 26, 1961) is an American former road racing cyclist. He won the Tour de France three times, and the Road Race World Championship twice, becoming the only American male to win the former.

LeMond began his professional cycling career in 1981. Two years later, LeMond became the first American male cyclist to win the Road World Championship. He won the Tour de France in 1986, becoming the first non-European professional cyclist to win the men's Tour. LeMond was accidentally shot with pellets and seriously injured while hunting in 1987. Following the shooting, he underwent two surgeries and missed the next two Tours. At the 1989 Tour, LeMond completed an improbable comeback to win in dramatic fashion on the race's final stage. He successfully defended his Tour title the following year, becoming one of only nine riders to win three or more Tours. LeMond retired from competition in December 1994 and was inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame in 1996. He was the first professional cyclist to sign a million-dollar contract and the first cyclist to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

During his career, LeMond championed several technological advancements in pro cycling, including the introduction of aerodynamic "triathlon" handlebars and carbon fiber bicycle frames,^[4] which he later marketed through his company LeMond Bicycles. LeMond's other business interests have included restaurants, real estate, and consumer fitness equipment.^[5] He is also a vocal opponent of performance-enhancing drug use in cycling and is a founding board member of 1in6, a nonprofit charity that assists male victims of child sex abuse.

1. ^ Moore 2012, p. 67.
2. ^ Andrews 2016, p. 252.
3. ^ ^{a b} "Greg LeMond". ProCyclingStats. Retrieved April 14, 2025.
4. ^ Walsh, Matt. "A Meeting of Minds" (PDF). Cycle Sport. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 16, 2012. Retrieved December 10, 2012.
5. ^ "That's Tim as in timber". Denver Westword News. January 12, 1994. Archived from the original on April 26, 2010. Retrieved April 26, 2011.

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23 July 1962 – The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos is signed

International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos

1962 agreement of Laotian neutrality

The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos was an international agreement signed in Geneva on July 23, 1962, between 14 states, including Laos, as a result of the International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian Question, which lasted from May 16, 1961, to July 23, 1962.

The Union of Burma, the Kingdom of Cambodia, Canada, the People's Republic of China, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, France, India, the Polish People's Republic, the Republic of Vietnam, Thailand, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the declaration. It and the statement of neutrality by the Royal Government of Laos of July 9, 1962 came into force as an international agreement on July 23, the date of signature.^[1]

1. ^ Czyzak, John J.; Salans, Carl F. (1963-01-01). "The International Conference on the Settlement of the Laotian Question and the Geneva Agreements of 1962". The American Journal of International Law. 57 (2): 300–317. doi:10.2307/2195983. JSTOR 2195983. S2CID 144635134.

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24 July 1910 – The Ottoman Empire captures the city of Shkodër, putting down the Albanian Revolt of 1910.

Ottoman Empire

Former empire (c. 1299–1922)

This article is about the empire. For the associated caliphate, see Ottoman Caliphate.

The Ottoman Empire,^[l] historically also known as the Turkish Empire or Turkey,^[26][27][m] was a state that spanned much of Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.^[28][29][30]

The empire emerged from a beylik, or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in c. 1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. Further conquests by Selim I led the Sultans to adopt the title of caliph. With its capital at Constantinople and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. Ruling over diverse peoples, the empire granted varying levels of autonomy to its many confessional communities, or millets, to manage their own affairs per Islamic law. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire became a global power.^[31]

Modern academic consensus posits that the empire began to decline after defeat in the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, but continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. The Ottoman Empire fell behind technologically from the rest of Europe by the late 18th century as imperial authority fragmented. Further defeats from Austria and Russia culminated in the loss of territory, and with rising nationalism after the French Revolution, a number of new states emerged in the Balkans. Following Mahmud II's reign and the Tanzimat reforms over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became more powerful and organised internally as a new Ottoman identity took hold. In the 1876 revolution, the Ottoman Empire attempted constitutional monarchy, before reverting to an absolute monarchy under Abdul Hamid II, following the Great Eastern Crisis.

Over the course of the late 19th century, Ottoman intellectuals known as Young Turks sought to liberalise and rationalise society and politics along Western lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which reestablished a constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars, the CUP became increasingly radicalised and embraced Turkish nationalism, leading to a coup d'état in 1913 that established a dictatorship.

In the 19th and in the start of 20th centuries, persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction and in the Russian Empire resulted in large-scale loss of life and mass migration into modern-day Turkey from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Crimea.^[32] The CUP joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. It struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt, and engaged in genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against the occupying Allies, led to the end of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922.

1. ^ McDonald, Sean; Moore, Simon (20 October 2015). "Communicating Identity in the Ottoman Empire and Some Implications for Contemporary States". Atlantic Journal of Communication. 23 (5): 269–283. doi:10.1080/15456870.2015.1090439. ISSN 1545-6870. S2CID 146299650. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
2. ^ Shaw, Stanford; Shaw, Ezel (1977). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. I. Cambridge University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-521-29166-8.
3. ^ Atasoy & Raby 1989, p. 19–20.
4. ^ Gökbilgin, M. Tayyib (1988–2016). "Edirne". TDV Encyclopedia of Islam (44+2 vols.) (in Turkish). Istanbul: Presidency of Religious Affairs, Centre for Islamic Studies.
5. ^ Edhem, Eldem (21 May 2010). "Istanbul". In Gábor, Ágoston; Masters, Bruce Alan (eds.). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase. p. 286. ISBN 978-1-4381-1025-7. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, all previous names were abandoned and Istanbul came to designate the entire city.
6. ^ Shaw, Stanford J.; Shaw, Ezel Kural (1977b). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808–1975. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511614972. ISBN 9780511614972.
7. ^
   • Shaw & Shaw 1977b, p. 386, volume 2
   • Robinson, Richard D. (1963). The First Turkish Republic. Vol. 2. Harvard University Press. p. 298. ISBN 0674304500. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
   • Society (4 March 2014). "Mar 28, 1930 CE: Istanbul, not Constantinople". National Geographic Resource Library. National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on 14 January 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019.)
8. ^ Ihsanoglu, Ekmeleddin (28 October 2024). Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire: Western Influence, Local Institutions, and the Transfer of Knowledge. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-24461-6.
9. ^ Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. pp. 88–89. As the Ottoman Turks learned Persian, the language and the culture it carried seeped not only into their court and imperial institutions but also into their vernacular language and culture. The appropriation of Persian, both as a second language and as a language to be steeped together with Turkish, was encouraged notably by the sultans, the ruling class, and leading members of the mystical communities.
10. ^ Tezcan, Baki (2012). "Ottoman Historical Writing". In Rabasa, José (ed.). The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Vol. 3: 1400–1800. Oxford University Press. pp. 192–211. Persian served as a 'minority' prestige language of culture at the largely Turcophone Ottoman court.
11. ^ Flynn, Thomas O. (2017). The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c. 1760 – c. 1870. Brill. p. 30. ISBN 978-90-04-31354-5. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
12. ^ Fortna, B. (2012). Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic. Springer. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-230-30041-5. Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022. Although in the late Ottoman period Persian was taught in the state schools ...
13. ^ Spuler, Bertold (2003). Persian Historiography and Geography. Pustaka Nasional. p. 68. ISBN 978-9971-77-488-2. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022. On the whole, the circumstance in Turkey took a similar course: in Anatolia, the Persian language had played a significant role as the carrier of civilization. [...] where it was at time, to some extent, the language of diplomacy [...] However Persian maintained its position also during the early Ottoman period in the composition of histories and even Sultan Salim I, a bitter enemy of Iran and the Shi'ites, wrote poetry in Persian. Besides some poetical adaptations, the most important historiographical works are: Idris Bidlisi's flowery 'Hasht Bihist', or Seven Paradises, begun in 1502 by the request of Sultan Bayazid II and covering the first eight Ottoman rulers ...
14. ^ Fetvacı, Emine (2013). Picturing History at the Ottoman Court. Indiana University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-253-00678-3. Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022. Persian literature, and belles-lettres in particular, were part of the curriculum: a Persian dictionary, a manual on prose composition; and Sa'dis 'Gulistan', one of the classics of Persian poetry, were borrowed. All these titles would be appropriate in the religious and cultural education of the newly converted young men.
15. ^ Yarshater, Ehsan; Melville, Charles, eds. (2012). Persian Historiography: A History of Persian Literature. Vol. 10. Bloomsbury. p. 437. ISBN 978-0-85773-657-4. Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022. Persian held a privileged place in Ottoman letters. Persian historical literature was first patronized during the reign of Mehmed II and continued unabated until the end of the 16th century.
16. ^ Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. p. 92 (note 27). Though Persian, unlike Arabic, was not included in the typical curriculum of an Ottoman madrasa, the language was offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas. For those Ottoman madrasa curricula featuring Persian, see Cevat İzgi, Osmanlı Medreselerinde İlim, 2 vols. (Istanbul: İz, 1997),1: 167–169.
17. ^ Ayşe Gül Sertkaya (2002). "Şeyhzade Abdurrezak Bahşı". In György Hazai (ed.). Archivum Ottomanicum. Vol. 20. pp. 114–115. Archived from the original on 24 October 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2022. As a result, we can claim that Şeyhzade Abdürrezak Bahşı was a scribe lived in the palaces of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror and his son Bayezid-i Veli in the 15th century, wrote letters (bitig) and firmans (yarlığ) sent to Eastern Turks by Mehmed II and Bayezid II in both Uighur and Arabic scripts and in East Turkestan (Chagatai) language.
18. ^ ^{a b} Strauss, Johann (2010). "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire: Translations of the Kanun-ı Esasi and Other Official Texts into Minority Languages". In Herzog, Christoph; Malek Sharif (eds.). The First Ottoman Experiment in Democracy. Würzburg: Orient-Institut Istanbul. pp. 21–51. Archived from the original on 11 October 2019. Retrieved 15 September 2019. (info page on book Archived 20 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine at Martin Luther University) // CITED: p. 26 (PDF p. 28): "French had become a sort of semi-official language in the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the Tanzimat reforms. [...] It is true that French was not an ethnic language of the Ottoman Empire. But it was the only Western language which would become increasingly widespread among educated persons in all linguistic communities."
19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lambton-1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
20. ^ Pamuk, Şevket (2000). A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN 0-521-44197-8. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022. The Ottomans began to strike coins in the name of Orhan Bey in 1326. These earliest coins carried inscriptions such as 'the great Sultan, Orhan son of Osman' [...] Ottoman historiography has adopted 1299 as the date for the foundation of the state. 1299 might represent the date at which the Ottomans finally obtained their independence from the Seljuk sultan at Konya. Probably, they were forced at the same time, or very soon thereafter, to accept the overlordship of the Ilkhanids [...] Numismatic evidence thus suggest that independence did not really occur until 1326.
21. ^ ^{a b c d} Rein Taagepera (September 1997). "Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia". International Studies Quarterly. 41 (3): 498. doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00053. ISSN 0020-8833. JSTOR 2600793. Archived from the original on 19 November 2018. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
22. ^ Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires". Journal of World-Systems Research. 12 (2): 223. ISSN 1076-156X. Archived from the original on 20 May 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
23. ^ Bang, Peter Fibiger; Bayly, C. A.; Scheidel, Walter (2020). The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume One: The Imperial Experience. Oxford University Press. pp. 92–94. ISBN 978-0-19-977311-4.
24. ^ Erickson, Edward J. (2003). Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913. Greenwood. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-275-97888-4.
25. ^ Roy 2015, p. 134 "Around circa 1600, the Mughal Empire controlled 3.2 million square kilometres with a population of about 150 million. The Ottoman Empire's population at that time was 22 million and the Safavid Empire had 10 million inhabitants."
26. ^ P., E. A. (1916). "Review of The Caliph's Last Heritage: A Short History of the Turkish Empire". The Geographical Journal. 47 (6): 470–472. doi:10.2307/1779249. ISSN 0016-7398. JSTOR 1779249. Archived from the original on 10 July 2022. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
27. ^ Baykara, Tuncer (2017). "A Study into the Concepts of Turkey and Turkistan which were used for the Ottoman State in XIXth Century". Journal of Atatürk and the History of Turkish Republic. 1: 179–190. Archived from the original on 26 January 2024. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
28. ^ Ingrao, Charles; Samardžić, Nikola; Pešalj, Jovan, eds. (12 August 2011). The Peace of Passarowitz, 1718. Purdue University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt6wq7kw.12. ISBN 978-1-61249-179-0. JSTOR j.ctt6wq7kw. Archived from the original on 20 December 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
29. ^ Szabó, János B. (2019). "The Ottoman Conquest in Hungary: Decisive Events (Belgrade 1521, Mohács 1526, Vienna 1529, Buda 1541) and Results". The Battle for Central Europe. Brill. pp. 263–275. doi:10.1163/9789004396234_013. ISBN 978-90-04-39623-4. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
30. ^ Moačanin, Nenad (2019). "The Ottoman Conquest and Establishment in Croatia and Slavonia". The Battle for Central Europe. Brill. pp. 277–286. doi:10.1163/9789004396234_014. ISBN 978-90-04-39623-4. Archived from the original on 15 January 2024. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
31. ^
    • Howard 2016, p. 45
    • Somel 2010, p. xcvii
32. ^
    • Kaser 2011, p. 336: "The emerging Christian nation states justified the prosecution of their Muslims by arguing that they were their former 'suppressors'. The historical balance: between about 1820 and 1920, millions of Muslim casualties and refugees back to the remaining Ottoman Empire had to be registered; estimations speak about 5 million casualties and the same number of displaced persons"
    • Fábos 2005, p. 437: "Muslims had been the majority in Anatolia, the Crimea, the Balkans, and the Caucasus and a plurality in southern Russia and sections of Romania. Most of these lands were within or contiguous with the Ottoman Empire. By 1923, 'only Anatolia, eastern Thrace, and a section of the southeastern Caucasus remained to the Muslim land ... Millions of Muslims, most of them Turks, had died; millions more had fled to what is today Turkey. Between 1821 and 1922, more than five million Muslims were driven from their lands. Five and one-half million Muslims died, some of them killed in wars, others perishing as refugees from starvation and disease' (McCarthy 1995, 1). Since people in the Ottoman Empire were classified by religion, Turks, Albanians, Bosnians, and all other Muslim groups were recognised—and recognised themselves—simply as Muslims. Hence, their persecution and forced migration is of central importance to an analysis of 'Muslim migration'."
    • Schayegh, Cyrus (2024). "A Late/Post-Imperial Region of Difference: The Ottoman Empire and its Successor Polities in Southeastern Europe, Turkey, and the Arab East, c. 1850s–1940s". Journal of World History. 35 (4): 579–622. doi:10.1353/jwh.2024.a943172. Between 1821 and the 1919–1922 Turko-Greek War, about five and a half million Muslims died of religious-ethnic war-related causes, including disease and hunger during forced migration, in southeastern Europe and the Crimea and Caucasus.
    • Findley 2008, pp. 16, 35
    • Kirişci 2008, pp. 175–177
    • Karpat 2001, p. 343: "The main migrations started from Crimea in 1856 and were followed by those from the Caucasus and the Balkans in 1862 to 1878 and 1912 to 1916. These have continued to our day. The quantitative indicators cited in various sources show that during this period a total of about 7 million migrants from Crimea, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands settled in Anatolia. These immigrants were overwhelmingly Muslim, except for a number of Jews who left their homes in the Balkans and Russia in order to live in the Ottoman lands. By the end of the century the immigrants and their descendants constituted some 30 to 40 percent of the total population of Anatolia, and in some western areas their percentage was even higher. ... The immigrants called themselves Muslims rather than Turks, although most of those from Bulgaria, Macedonia, and eastern Serbia descended from the Turkish Anatolian stock who settled in the Balkans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries."
    • Karpat 2004, pp. 5–6: "Migration was a major force in the social and cultural reconstruction of the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century. While some seven to nine million, mostly Muslim, refugees from lost territories in the Caucasus, Crimea, Balkans and Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, during the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries ..."
    • Pekesen 2012: "The immigration had far-reaching social and political consequences for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. ... Between 1821 and 1922, some 5.3 million Muslims migrated to the Empire.50 It is estimated that in 1923, the year the republic of Turkey was founded, about 25 per cent of the population came from immigrant families."
    • Biondich 2011, p. 93: "The road from Berlin to Lausanne was littered with millions of casualties. In the period between 1878 and 1912, as many as two million Muslims emigrated voluntarily or involuntarily from the Balkans. When one adds those who were killed or expelled between 1912 and 1923, the number of Muslim casualties from the Balkans far exceeds three million. By 1923 fewer than one million remained in the Balkans"
    • Armour 2012, p. 213: "To top it all, the Empire was host to a steady stream of Muslim refugees. Russia between 1854 and 1876 expelled 1.4 million Crimean Tartars, and in the mid-1860s another 600,000 Circassians from the Caucasus. Their arrival produced further economic dislocation and expense."
    • Bosma, Lucassen & Oostindie 2012a, p. 17: "In total, many millions of Turks (or, more precisely, Muslim immigrants, including some from the Caucasus) were involved in this 'repatriation' – sometimes more than once in a lifetime – the last stage of which may have been the immigration of seven hundred thousand Turks from Bulgaria between 1940 and 1990. Most of these immigrants settled in urban north-western Anatolia. Today between a third and a quarter of the Republic's population are descendants of these Muslim immigrants, known as Muhacir or Göçmen"

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

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24 July 1910 – The Ottoman Empire captures the city of Shkodër, putting down the Albanian Revolt of 1910.

Ottoman Empire

Former empire (c. 1299–1922)

This article is about the empire. For the associated caliphate, see Ottoman Caliphate.

The Ottoman Empire,^[l] historically also known as the Turkish Empire or Turkey,^[26][27][m] was a state that spanned much of Southeastern Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.^[28][29][30]

The empire emerged from a beylik, or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in c. 1299 by the Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. Further conquests by Selim I led the Sultans to adopt the title of caliph. With its capital at Constantinople and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Middle East and Europe for six centuries. Ruling over diverse peoples, the empire granted varying levels of autonomy to its many confessional communities, or millets, to manage their own affairs per Islamic law. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire became a global power.^[31]

Modern academic consensus posits that the empire began to decline after defeat in the Second Siege of Vienna in 1683, but continued to maintain a flexible and strong economy, society and military into much of the 18th century. The Ottoman Empire fell behind technologically from the rest of Europe by the late 18th century as imperial authority fragmented. Further defeats from Austria and Russia culminated in the loss of territory, and with rising nationalism after the French Revolution, a number of new states emerged in the Balkans. Following Mahmud II's reign and the Tanzimat reforms over the course of the 19th century, the Ottoman state became more powerful and organised internally as a new Ottoman identity took hold. In the 1876 revolution, the Ottoman Empire attempted constitutional monarchy, before reverting to an absolute monarchy under Abdul Hamid II, following the Great Eastern Crisis.

Over the course of the late 19th century, Ottoman intellectuals known as Young Turks sought to liberalise and rationalise society and politics along Western lines, culminating in the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 led by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which reestablished a constitutional monarchy. However, following the disastrous Balkan Wars, the CUP became increasingly radicalised and embraced Turkish nationalism, leading to a coup d'état in 1913 that established a dictatorship.

In the 19th and in the start of 20th centuries, persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction and in the Russian Empire resulted in large-scale loss of life and mass migration into modern-day Turkey from the Balkans, Caucasus, and Crimea.^[32] The CUP joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers. It struggled with internal dissent, especially the Arab Revolt, and engaged in genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. In the aftermath of World War I, the victorious Allied Powers occupied and partitioned the Ottoman Empire, which lost its southern territories to the United Kingdom and France. The successful Turkish War of Independence, led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk against the occupying Allies, led to the end of the Ottoman sultanate in 1922.

1. ^ McDonald, Sean; Moore, Simon (20 October 2015). "Communicating Identity in the Ottoman Empire and Some Implications for Contemporary States". Atlantic Journal of Communication. 23 (5): 269–283. doi:10.1080/15456870.2015.1090439. ISSN 1545-6870. S2CID 146299650. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 24 March 2021.
2. ^ Shaw, Stanford; Shaw, Ezel (1977). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. I. Cambridge University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-521-29166-8.
3. ^ Atasoy & Raby 1989, p. 19–20.
4. ^ Gökbilgin, M. Tayyib (1988–2016). "Edirne". TDV Encyclopedia of Islam (44+2 vols.) (in Turkish). Istanbul: Presidency of Religious Affairs, Centre for Islamic Studies.
5. ^ Edhem, Eldem (21 May 2010). "Istanbul". In Gábor, Ágoston; Masters, Bruce Alan (eds.). Encyclopedia of the Ottoman Empire. Infobase. p. 286. ISBN 978-1-4381-1025-7. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, all previous names were abandoned and Istanbul came to designate the entire city.
6. ^ Shaw, Stanford J.; Shaw, Ezel Kural (1977b). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2: Reform, Revolution, and Republic: The Rise of Modern Turkey 1808–1975. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511614972. ISBN 9780511614972.
7. ^
   • Shaw & Shaw 1977b, p. 386, volume 2
   • Robinson, Richard D. (1963). The First Turkish Republic. Vol. 2. Harvard University Press. p. 298. ISBN 0674304500. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)
   • Society (4 March 2014). "Mar 28, 1930 CE: Istanbul, not Constantinople". National Geographic Resource Library. National Geographic Society. Archived from the original on 14 January 2019. Retrieved 28 March 2019.)
8. ^ Ihsanoglu, Ekmeleddin (28 October 2024). Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire: Western Influence, Local Institutions, and the Transfer of Knowledge. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-040-24461-6.
9. ^ Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian Learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World: The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. pp. 88–89. As the Ottoman Turks learned Persian, the language and the culture it carried seeped not only into their court and imperial institutions but also into their vernacular language and culture. The appropriation of Persian, both as a second language and as a language to be steeped together with Turkish, was encouraged notably by the sultans, the ruling class, and leading members of the mystical communities.
10. ^ Tezcan, Baki (2012). "Ottoman Historical Writing". In Rabasa, José (ed.). The Oxford History of Historical Writing. Vol. 3: 1400–1800. Oxford University Press. pp. 192–211. Persian served as a 'minority' prestige language of culture at the largely Turcophone Ottoman court.
11. ^ Flynn, Thomas O. (2017). The Western Christian Presence in the Russias and Qājār Persia, c. 1760 – c. 1870. Brill. p. 30. ISBN 978-90-04-31354-5. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
12. ^ Fortna, B. (2012). Learning to Read in the Late Ottoman Empire and the Early Turkish Republic. Springer. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-230-30041-5. Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022. Although in the late Ottoman period Persian was taught in the state schools ...
13. ^ Spuler, Bertold (2003). Persian Historiography and Geography. Pustaka Nasional. p. 68. ISBN 978-9971-77-488-2. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022. On the whole, the circumstance in Turkey took a similar course: in Anatolia, the Persian language had played a significant role as the carrier of civilization. [...] where it was at time, to some extent, the language of diplomacy [...] However Persian maintained its position also during the early Ottoman period in the composition of histories and even Sultan Salim I, a bitter enemy of Iran and the Shi'ites, wrote poetry in Persian. Besides some poetical adaptations, the most important historiographical works are: Idris Bidlisi's flowery 'Hasht Bihist', or Seven Paradises, begun in 1502 by the request of Sultan Bayazid II and covering the first eight Ottoman rulers ...
14. ^ Fetvacı, Emine (2013). Picturing History at the Ottoman Court. Indiana University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-253-00678-3. Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022. Persian literature, and belles-lettres in particular, were part of the curriculum: a Persian dictionary, a manual on prose composition; and Sa'dis 'Gulistan', one of the classics of Persian poetry, were borrowed. All these titles would be appropriate in the religious and cultural education of the newly converted young men.
15. ^ Yarshater, Ehsan; Melville, Charles, eds. (2012). Persian Historiography: A History of Persian Literature. Vol. 10. Bloomsbury. p. 437. ISBN 978-0-85773-657-4. Archived from the original on 21 October 2022. Retrieved 21 October 2022. Persian held a privileged place in Ottoman letters. Persian historical literature was first patronized during the reign of Mehmed II and continued unabated until the end of the 16th century.
16. ^ Inan, Murat Umut (2019). "Imperial Ambitions, Mystical Aspirations: Persian learning in the Ottoman World". In Green, Nile (ed.). The Persianate World The Frontiers of a Eurasian Lingua Franca. University of California Press. p. 92 (note 27). Though Persian, unlike Arabic, was not included in the typical curriculum of an Ottoman madrasa, the language was offered as an elective course or recommended for study in some madrasas. For those Ottoman madrasa curricula featuring Persian, see Cevat İzgi, Osmanlı Medreselerinde İlim, 2 vols. (Istanbul: İz, 1997),1: 167–169.
17. ^ Ayşe Gül Sertkaya (2002). "Şeyhzade Abdurrezak Bahşı". In György Hazai (ed.). Archivum Ottomanicum. Vol. 20. pp. 114–115. Archived from the original on 24 October 2022. Retrieved 23 October 2022. As a result, we can claim that Şeyhzade Abdürrezak Bahşı was a scribe lived in the palaces of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror and his son Bayezid-i Veli in the 15th century, wrote letters (bitig) and firmans (yarlığ) sent to Eastern Turks by Mehmed II and Bayezid II in both Uighur and Arabic scripts and in East Turkestan (Chagatai) language.
18. ^ ^{a b} Strauss, Johann (2010). "A Constitution for a Multilingual Empire: Translations of the Kanun-ı Esasi and Other Official Texts into Minority Languages". In Herzog, Christoph; Malek Sharif (eds.). The First Ottoman Experiment in Democracy. Würzburg: Orient-Institut Istanbul. pp. 21–51. Archived from the original on 11 October 2019. Retrieved 15 September 2019. (info page on book Archived 20 September 2019 at the Wayback Machine at Martin Luther University) // CITED: p. 26 (PDF p. 28): "French had become a sort of semi-official language in the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the Tanzimat reforms. [...] It is true that French was not an ethnic language of the Ottoman Empire. But it was the only Western language which would become increasingly widespread among educated persons in all linguistic communities."
19. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lambton-1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
20. ^ Pamuk, Şevket (2000). A Monetary History of the Ottoman Empire. Cambridge University Press. pp. 30–31. ISBN 0-521-44197-8. Archived from the original on 14 January 2023. Retrieved 21 October 2022. The Ottomans began to strike coins in the name of Orhan Bey in 1326. These earliest coins carried inscriptions such as 'the great Sultan, Orhan son of Osman' [...] Ottoman historiography has adopted 1299 as the date for the foundation of the state. 1299 might represent the date at which the Ottomans finally obtained their independence from the Seljuk sultan at Konya. Probably, they were forced at the same time, or very soon thereafter, to accept the overlordship of the Ilkhanids [...] Numismatic evidence thus suggest that independence did not really occur until 1326.
21. ^ ^{a b c d} Rein Taagepera (September 1997). "Expansion and Contraction Patterns of Large Polities: Context for Russia". International Studies Quarterly. 41 (3): 498. doi:10.1111/0020-8833.00053. ISSN 0020-8833. JSTOR 2600793. Archived from the original on 19 November 2018. Retrieved 8 July 2019.
22. ^ Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires". Journal of World-Systems Research. 12 (2): 223. ISSN 1076-156X. Archived from the original on 20 May 2019. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
23. ^ Bang, Peter Fibiger; Bayly, C. A.; Scheidel, Walter (2020). The Oxford World History of Empire: Volume One: The Imperial Experience. Oxford University Press. pp. 92–94. ISBN 978-0-19-977311-4.
24. ^ Erickson, Edward J. (2003). Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913. Greenwood. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-275-97888-4.
25. ^ Roy 2015, p. 134 "Around circa 1600, the Mughal Empire controlled 3.2 million square kilometres with a population of about 150 million. The Ottoman Empire's population at that time was 22 million and the Safavid Empire had 10 million inhabitants."
26. ^ P., E. A. (1916). "Review of The Caliph's Last Heritage: A Short History of the Turkish Empire". The Geographical Journal. 47 (6): 470–472. doi:10.2307/1779249. ISSN 0016-7398. JSTOR 1779249. Archived from the original on 10 July 2022. Retrieved 10 July 2022.
27. ^ Baykara, Tuncer (2017). "A Study into the Concepts of Turkey and Turkistan which were used for the Ottoman State in XIXth Century". Journal of Atatürk and the History of Turkish Republic. 1: 179–190. Archived from the original on 26 January 2024. Retrieved 26 March 2024.
28. ^ Ingrao, Charles; Samardžić, Nikola; Pešalj, Jovan, eds. (12 August 2011). The Peace of Passarowitz, 1718. Purdue University Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt6wq7kw.12. ISBN 978-1-61249-179-0. JSTOR j.ctt6wq7kw. Archived from the original on 20 December 2023. Retrieved 26 December 2023.
29. ^ Szabó, János B. (2019). "The Ottoman Conquest in Hungary: Decisive Events (Belgrade 1521, Mohács 1526, Vienna 1529, Buda 1541) and Results". The Battle for Central Europe. Brill. pp. 263–275. doi:10.1163/9789004396234_013. ISBN 978-90-04-39623-4. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
30. ^ Moačanin, Nenad (2019). "The Ottoman Conquest and Establishment in Croatia and Slavonia". The Battle for Central Europe. Brill. pp. 277–286. doi:10.1163/9789004396234_014. ISBN 978-90-04-39623-4. Archived from the original on 15 January 2024. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
31. ^
    • Howard 2016, p. 45
    • Somel 2010, p. xcvii
32. ^
    • Kaser 2011, p. 336: "The emerging Christian nation states justified the prosecution of their Muslims by arguing that they were their former 'suppressors'. The historical balance: between about 1820 and 1920, millions of Muslim casualties and refugees back to the remaining Ottoman Empire had to be registered; estimations speak about 5 million casualties and the same number of displaced persons"
    • Fábos 2005, p. 437: "Muslims had been the majority in Anatolia, the Crimea, the Balkans, and the Caucasus and a plurality in southern Russia and sections of Romania. Most of these lands were within or contiguous with the Ottoman Empire. By 1923, 'only Anatolia, eastern Thrace, and a section of the southeastern Caucasus remained to the Muslim land ... Millions of Muslims, most of them Turks, had died; millions more had fled to what is today Turkey. Between 1821 and 1922, more than five million Muslims were driven from their lands. Five and one-half million Muslims died, some of them killed in wars, others perishing as refugees from starvation and disease' (McCarthy 1995, 1). Since people in the Ottoman Empire were classified by religion, Turks, Albanians, Bosnians, and all other Muslim groups were recognised—and recognised themselves—simply as Muslims. Hence, their persecution and forced migration is of central importance to an analysis of 'Muslim migration'."
    • Schayegh, Cyrus (2024). "A Late/Post-Imperial Region of Difference: The Ottoman Empire and its Successor Polities in Southeastern Europe, Turkey, and the Arab East, c. 1850s–1940s". Journal of World History. 35 (4): 579–622. doi:10.1353/jwh.2024.a943172. Between 1821 and the 1919–1922 Turko-Greek War, about five and a half million Muslims died of religious-ethnic war-related causes, including disease and hunger during forced migration, in southeastern Europe and the Crimea and Caucasus.
    • Findley 2008, pp. 16, 35
    • Kirişci 2008, pp. 175–177
    • Karpat 2001, p. 343: "The main migrations started from Crimea in 1856 and were followed by those from the Caucasus and the Balkans in 1862 to 1878 and 1912 to 1916. These have continued to our day. The quantitative indicators cited in various sources show that during this period a total of about 7 million migrants from Crimea, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean islands settled in Anatolia. These immigrants were overwhelmingly Muslim, except for a number of Jews who left their homes in the Balkans and Russia in order to live in the Ottoman lands. By the end of the century the immigrants and their descendants constituted some 30 to 40 percent of the total population of Anatolia, and in some western areas their percentage was even higher. ... The immigrants called themselves Muslims rather than Turks, although most of those from Bulgaria, Macedonia, and eastern Serbia descended from the Turkish Anatolian stock who settled in the Balkans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries."
    • Karpat 2004, pp. 5–6: "Migration was a major force in the social and cultural reconstruction of the Ottoman state in the nineteenth century. While some seven to nine million, mostly Muslim, refugees from lost territories in the Caucasus, Crimea, Balkans and Mediterranean islands migrated to Anatolia and Eastern Thrace, during the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth centuries ..."
    • Pekesen 2012: "The immigration had far-reaching social and political consequences for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. ... Between 1821 and 1922, some 5.3 million Muslims migrated to the Empire.50 It is estimated that in 1923, the year the republic of Turkey was founded, about 25 per cent of the population came from immigrant families."
    • Biondich 2011, p. 93: "The road from Berlin to Lausanne was littered with millions of casualties. In the period between 1878 and 1912, as many as two million Muslims emigrated voluntarily or involuntarily from the Balkans. When one adds those who were killed or expelled between 1912 and 1923, the number of Muslim casualties from the Balkans far exceeds three million. By 1923 fewer than one million remained in the Balkans"
    • Armour 2012, p. 213: "To top it all, the Empire was host to a steady stream of Muslim refugees. Russia between 1854 and 1876 expelled 1.4 million Crimean Tartars, and in the mid-1860s another 600,000 Circassians from the Caucasus. Their arrival produced further economic dislocation and expense."
    • Bosma, Lucassen & Oostindie 2012a, p. 17: "In total, many millions of Turks (or, more precisely, Muslim immigrants, including some from the Caucasus) were involved in this 'repatriation' – sometimes more than once in a lifetime – the last stage of which may have been the immigration of seven hundred thousand Turks from Bulgaria between 1940 and 1990. Most of these immigrants settled in urban north-western Anatolia. Today between a third and a quarter of the Republic's population are descendants of these Muslim immigrants, known as Muhacir or Göçmen"

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25 July 1973 – Soviet Mars 5 space probe is launched.

Soviet Mars program

Space program of the Soviet Union

This article is about the Soviet program. For other Mars exploration programs, see Exploration of Mars. For programs called Mars, see Mars (disambiguation).

The Mars program was a series of uncrewed spacecraft launched by the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1973. The spacecraft were intended to explore Mars, and included flyby probes, landers and orbiters.

Early Mars spacecraft were small, and launched by Molniya rockets. Starting with two failures in 1969, the heavier Proton-K rocket was used to launch larger 5 tonne spacecraft, consisting of an orbiter and a lander to Mars. The orbiter bus design was likely somewhat rushed into service and immature,^{[citation needed]} considering that it performed very unreliably in the Venera variant after 1975. This reliability problem was common to much Soviet space hardware from the late 1960s and early 1970s and was largely corrected with a deliberate policy, implemented in the mid-1970s, of consolidating (or "debugging") existing designs rather than introducing new ones. The names of the "Mars" missions do not need to be translated, as the word "Mars" is spelled and pronounced approximately the same way in English and Russian.

In addition to the Mars program, the Soviet Union also sent a probe to Mars as part of the Zond program; Zond 2, however it failed en route. Two more spacecraft were sent during the Phobos program; both failed. In 1996, Russia launched Mars 96, its first interplanetary mission since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however it failed to depart Earth orbit.

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26 July 1945 – World War II: The Potsdam Declaration is signed in Potsdam, Germany.

Potsdam Declaration

Allied call for the surrender of all of the armed forces of Japan during World War II

Not to be confused with Potsdam Agreement.

The Potsdam Declaration, or the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, was a statement that called for the surrender of all Japanese armed forces during World War II. On July 26, 1945, United States President Harry S. Truman, United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and President of China Chiang Kai-shek issued the document, which outlined the terms of surrender for the Empire of Japan, as agreed upon at the Potsdam Conference. The ultimatum stated that, if Japan did not surrender, it would face "prompt and utter destruction."^[1][2]

1. ^ "Potsdam Declaration: Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender Issued, at Potsdam, July 26, 1945". National Science Digital Library.
2. ^ "Milestones: 1937–1945 / The Potsdam Conference, 1945". United States Department of State, Office of the Historian.

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27 July 1890 – Vincent van Gogh shoots himself and dies two days later.

Vincent van Gogh

Dutch painter (1853–1890)

In this article, Dutch capitalization is used for tussenvoegsels in Dutch family names. The first letter in Van Gogh is capitalized unless it is preceded by a name, initial or title of nobility.

Vincent Willem van Gogh^{[note 1]} (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsɛnt ˈʋɪləɱ vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] ^ⓘ;^{[note 2]} 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. His suicide at age 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty.

Born into an upper-middle-class family in Zundert, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet and thoughtful. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept up a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.

Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor, when in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homoeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a revolver. He died from his injuries two days later.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge".^[5] His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist.

Cite error: There are <ref group=note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=note}} template (see the help page).

1. ^ "BBC – Magazine Monitor: How to Say: Van Gogh". BBC. 22 January 2010. Archived from the original on 26 September 2016. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
2. ^ Sweetman (1990), 7.
3. ^ Davies (2007), p. 83.
4. ^ Veltkamp, Paul. "Pronunciation of the Name 'Van Gogh'". vggallery.com. Archived from the original on 22 September 2015.
5. ^ McQuillan (1989), 9.

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28 July 1935 – First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

American heavy bomber aircraft

"B-17", "B-17 Bomber", "B-17 Flying Fortress", and "Flying Fortress" redirect here. For other uses, see B17 (disambiguation). For the video games, see B-17 Bomber (video game) and B-17 Flying Fortress (video game). For the film, see Flying Fortress (film).

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is an American four-engined heavy bomber aircraft that was developed in the mid-1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). A fast and high-flying bomber used primarily in the European Theater of Operations, the B-17 dropped more bombs than any other aircraft during World War II. It is the third-most produced bomber in history, behind the American four-engined Consolidated B-24 Liberator and the German multirole, twin-engined Junkers Ju 88. The B-17 was also employed in transport, anti-submarine warfare, and search and rescue roles.

In a USAAC competition, Boeing's prototype Model 299/XB-17 outperformed two other entries but crashed, losing the initial 200-bomber contract to the Douglas B-18 Bolo. Still, the Air Corps ordered 13 more B-17s for further evaluation, which were introduced into service in 1938. The B-17 evolved through numerous design advances^[4][5] but from its inception, the USAAC (from 1941 the United States Army Air Forces, USAAF) promoted the aircraft as a strategic weapon. It was a relatively fast, high-flying, long-range bomber with heavy defensive armament at the expense of bomb load. It also developed a reputation for toughness based upon stories and photos of badly damaged B-17s safely returning to air bases.

The B-17 saw early action in the Pacific War, where it conducted air raids against Japanese shipping and airfields.^[6] However, it was primarily employed by the USAAF in the daylight component of the Allied strategic bombing campaign over Europe, complementing RAF Bomber Command's night bombers in attacking German industrial, military and civilian targets.^[7] Of the roughly 1.5 million tons of bombs dropped on Nazi Germany and its occupied territories by Allied aircraft, over 640,000 tons (42.6%) were dropped from B-17s.^[8]

As of October 2025, three aircraft remain in flying condition, with several others being worked on to bring them to operational status.^[9] About 50 survive in storage or are on static display, the oldest of which is The Swoose, a B-17D which was flown in combat in the Pacific on the first day of the United States' involvement in World War II. Several reasonably complete wrecks have been found. B-17 survivors gained national attention in 2022 in the United States, when one, Texas Raiders, was destroyed in a fatal mid-air collision with another warbird at an airshow.

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Yenne.p8 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. ^ Angelucci and Matricardi 1988, p. 46.
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference first flight was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ Parker 2013, pp. 35, 40–48.
5. ^ Herman 2012, pp. 292–299, 305, 333.
6. ^ Parker 2013, p. 41.
7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Carey Pointblank was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Yenne.p46 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
9. ^ "Surviving B-17s". Aero Vintage Books - Books and Information for the Aviation Enthusiast. 1 May 2025. Retrieved 21 October 2025.

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29 July 1148 – The Siege of Damascus ends in a decisive crusader defeat and leads to the disintegration of the Second Crusade.

Siege of Damascus (1148)

Muslim victory of the Second Crusade

The siege of Damascus took place between 24 and 28 July 1148, during the Second Crusade. It ended in a crusader defeat and led to the disintegration of the crusade. The two main Christian forces that marched to the Holy Land in response to Pope Eugene III and Bernard of Clairvaux's call for the Second Crusade were led by Kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany. Both faced disastrous marches across Anatolia in the months that followed, with most of their armies being destroyed. The original focus of the crusade was Edessa (Urfa), but in Jerusalem, the preferred target of King Baldwin III and the Knights Templar was Damascus. At the Council of Acre, magnates from France, Germany, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem decided to divert the crusade to Damascus.

The crusaders decided to attack Damascus from the west, where orchards of Ghouta would provide them with a constant food supply. Having arrived outside the walls of the city, they immediately put it to siege, using wood from the orchards. On 27 July, the crusaders decided to move to the plain on the eastern side of the city, which was less heavily fortified but had much less food and water. Afterwards, the local crusader lords refused to carry on with the siege, and the three kings had no choice but to abandon the city. The entire crusader army retreated back to Jerusalem by 28 July.

1. ^ Runciman 1952, pp. 228–229.

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30 July 1871 – The Staten Island Ferry Westfield's boiler explodes, killing over 85 people.

Staten Island Ferry

Passenger ferry service in New York City

The Staten Island Ferry is a fare-free passenger ferry route operated by the New York City Department of Transportation. The ferry's single route runs 5.2 miles (8.4 km) through New York Harbor between the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island, with ferry boats completing the trip in about 25 minutes. The ferry operates 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, with boats leaving every 15 to 20 minutes during peak hours and every 30 minutes at other times. Apart from NYC Ferry's St. George route, it is the only direct mass-transit connection between the two boroughs. Historically, the Staten Island Ferry has charged a relatively low fare compared to other modes of transit in the area; and since 1997, the route has been fare-free. The Staten Island Ferry is one of several ferry systems in the New York City area and is operated separately from systems like NYC Ferry and NY Waterway.

The Staten Island Ferry route terminates at Whitehall Terminal, on Whitehall Street in Lower Manhattan, and at St. George Terminal, in St. George, Staten Island. At Whitehall, connections are available to the New York City Subway and several local New York City Bus routes. At St. George, there are transfers to the Staten Island Railway and to the St. George Bus Terminal's many bus routes. Using OMNY fare cards, passengers from Manhattan can exit a subway or bus on Whitehall Street, take the ferry for free, and have a free second transfer to a train or bus at St. George. Conversely, passengers from Staten Island can freely transfer to a subway or bus in Manhattan after riding the ferry.

The Staten Island Ferry originated in 1817 when the Richmond Turnpike Company started a steamboat service from Manhattan to Staten Island. Cornelius Vanderbilt bought the Richmond Turnpike Company in 1838, and it was merged with two competitors in 1853. The combined company was in turn sold to the Staten Island Railroad Company in 1864. The Staten Island Ferry was then sold to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1884, and the government of New York City assumed control of the ferry in 1905.

In the early 20th century, the city and private companies also operated ferry routes from Staten Island to Brooklyn. Owing to the growth of vehicular travel, all of the routes from Staten Island to Brooklyn were decommissioned by the mid-1960s; but popular demand preserved the route to Manhattan. By 1967, the Staten Island-to-Manhattan ferry was the only commuter ferry within the entire city. A fast ferry route from Staten Island to Midtown Manhattan ran briefly from 1997 to 1998; proposals to revive the route resurfaced in the 2010s and materialized in the 2021 launch of the parallel NYC Ferry route^[2].

With 16,692,900 riders in 2025, the Staten Island Ferry is the busiest ferry route in the United States and the world's busiest passenger-only ferry system, thanks largely to the lack of other transit connections between Staten Island and the other boroughs. The ferry is also popular among tourists and visitors due to the free-of-charge views of the New York Harbor a trip provides. The ferry has been featured in several films.

1. ^ "Transit Ridership Report Fourth Quarter 2025" (PDF). American Public Transportation Association. February 20, 2026. Retrieved February 27, 2026.
2. ^ "A Grand Opening for Our New St. George Route!". New York City Ferry Service. Retrieved September 3, 2026.

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31 July 1856 – Christchurch, New Zealand, is chartered as a city.

Christchurch

City in Canterbury, New Zealand

"Chch" redirects here. For the Ontario TV station, see CHCH-DT.

"Christchurch City" redirects here. For other uses, see Christchurch City (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Christchurch (disambiguation).

City in South Island, New Zealand

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Christchurch (/ˈkraɪs.tʃɜːrtʃ/ ^ⓘ; Māori: Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island and the second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand.^[a] Christchurch has an urban population of 407,800, and a metropolitan population of 556,500.^[4] It is located in the Canterbury Region, near the centre of the east coast of the South Island, east of the Canterbury Plains. It is located near the southern end of Pegasus Bay, and is bounded to the east by the Pacific Ocean and to the south by the ancient volcanic complex of the Banks Peninsula. The Avon River / Ōtākaro winds through the centre of the city, with a large urban park along its banks. With the exception of the Port Hills, it is a relatively flat city, on an average about 20 m (66 ft) above sea level. Christchurch has a reputation for being an English city, with its architectural identity and nickname the 'Garden City' due to similarities with garden cities in England, but also has a historic Māori heritage. Christchurch has a temperate oceanic climate with moderate rainfall.

The area of modern-day greater Christchurch was first inhabited by the historic Māori iwi Waitaha in the mid-thirteenth century. Waitaha, who occupied the swamplands with patchworks of marshland, were invaded by Kāti Māmoe in the sixteenth century, and then were absorbed by Kāi Tahu a century later. Ōtautahi was inhabited seasonally, and a major trading centre was established at Kaiapoi Pā. British colonial settlement began in the mid-nineteenth century. The First Four Ships were chartered by the Canterbury Association and brought the Canterbury Pilgrims from Britain to Lyttelton Harbour in 1850. It became a city by letters patent on 31 July 1856, making it officially the oldest established city in New Zealand. Christchurch was heavily industrialised in the early 20th century, with the opening of the Main South Line railway and the development of state housing causing rapid growth in the city's economy and population.

Christchurch has strong cultural connections with its European elements and architectural identity. Christchurch is also home to a number of performing arts centres and academic institutions (including the University of Canterbury). Christchurch has hosted numerous international sporting events, notably the 1974 British Commonwealth Games at the purpose-built Queen Elizabeth II Park. The city has been recognised as an Antarctic gateway since 1901, and is nowadays one of the five Antarctic gateway cities hosting Antarctic support bases for several nations. Christchurch is served by the Christchurch Airport in Harewood, the country's second-busiest airport.

The city suffered a series of earthquakes from September 2010, with the most destructive occurring on 22 February 2011, in which 185 people were killed and thousands of buildings across the city suffered severe damage, with many central city buildings collapsing, leading to ongoing recovery and rebuilding projects. Christchurch later became the site of the deadliest terrorist attack in New Zealand history, which targeted two mosques on 15 March 2019.

1. ^ "Civic coats of arms". Archived from the original on 24 January 2022. Retrieved 17 March 2022.
2. ^ "Urban Rural 2020 (generalised) – GIS | | GIS Map Data Datafinder Geospatial Statistics | Stats NZ Geographic Data Service". datafinder.stats.govt.nz. Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
3. ^ "NZ Topographic Map". Land Information New Zealand. Archived from the original on 27 September 2017. Retrieved 25 September 2017.
4. ^ ^{a b c d e} "Subnational population estimates - Aotearoa Data Explorer". Statistics New Zealand. Retrieved 29 October 2025.
5. ^ Kenny, Lee (17 September 2018). "'Awkward' Christchurch without its own nickname". Stuff.
6. ^ "Yeah, Nah: Is Wellington (or Christchurch) NZ's second city?". Stuff. 2 September 2022. Archived from the original on 17 June 2023. Retrieved 22 June 2023.

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

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1 August 1936 – The Olympics opened in Berlin with a ceremony presided over by Adolf Hitler.

1936 Summer Olympics

Multi-sport event in Berlin, Germany

The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: Olympische Sommerspiele 1936), officially the Games of the XI Olympiad (Spiele der XI. Olympiade) and branded as Berlin 1936, were an international multi-sport event held from 1 to 16 August 1936 in Berlin, Germany. Berlin won the right to host the Games over Barcelona at the 29th IOC Session in 1931. The 1936 Games were the second and last occasion on which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose a host by a ballot in which the bidding cities themselves could vote; later rules barred cities that voted from being selected.^[2][3]

The Games had been awarded to Germany during the Weimar Republic, but by 1936 the country was governed by the Nazi regime, and Adolf Hitler's government treated the Olympics as an opportunity for propaganda. To project an image of a peaceful, tolerant Germany, the authorities temporarily removed antisemitic signage and softened the most visible forms of persecution for the duration of the Games.^[4] At the same time, the German Olympic authorities barred nearly all Jewish and Romani athletes from the national team; the fencer Helene Mayer, who had one Jewish parent, was the only such athlete to represent Germany.^[4] A movement to boycott or relocate the Games developed in several countries—Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—but it ultimately failed. Forty-nine nations competed, the largest number at any Olympics to that point.^[5]

These were the first Games to be televised and the first to feature a torch relay carrying the Olympic flame from Olympia to the host city—a ceremony devised for Berlin that became a permanent Olympic tradition.^[6] The filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl recorded the Games for her two-part film Olympia, which pioneered techniques still used in sports cinematography.^[7]

Jesse Owens of the United States won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events, and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin, while Germany was the most successful country overall with 101 medals (38 of them gold); the United States placed a distant second with 57 medals.^[8] These were the final Olympic Games under the IOC presidency of Henri de Baillet-Latour. For the next 12 years, no Olympic Games were held due to the immense world disruption caused by the Second World War. The next Olympic Games were held in 1948 (the Winter Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and then the Summer Games in London, England).

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference ioc-berlin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. ^ Cite error: The named reference gamesbids was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference iocbull1931 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ ^{a b} Cite error: The named reference ushmm was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
5. ^ Cite error: The named reference ushmm-boycott was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
6. ^ Cite error: The named reference bbc-torch was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. ^ Cite error: The named reference olympedia was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
8. ^ "Olympic Games Berlin 1936". International Olympic Committee.

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2 August 1274 – Edward I of England returns from the Ninth Crusade and is crowned King seventeen days later.

Lord Edward's crusade

European crusade to the Holy Land, 1271–1272

Lord Edward's Crusade,^[2] sometimes called the Ninth Crusade, was a military expedition to the Holy Land under the command of Edward Longshanks, later king of England, in 1271–1272. In practice an extension of the Eighth Crusade, it was the last of the Crusades to reach the Holy Land before the fall of Acre in 1291, which brought an end to the permanent crusader presence there.

The crusade saw Edward clash with the Egyptian Mamluk sultan Baibars, with both achieving limited victories. The Crusaders were ultimately forced to withdraw since Edward had pressing concerns at home and felt unable to resolve the internal conflicts within the remnant Outremer territories. It also foreshadowed the imminent collapse of the last remaining crusader strongholds along the Mediterranean coast.

1. ^ "Crusade of the Lord Edward (1270–1272)". erenow.org.
2. ^ Henry Summerson (2005). "Lord Edward's crusade (act. 1270–1274)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

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3 August 1972 – The United States Senate ratifies the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

1972 arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, also known as the ABM Treaty or ABMT, was a 1972 arms control treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the limitation of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems used in defending areas against strategic ballistic missiles, which are used to deliver nuclear weapons^[1] It was intended to reduce pressures to build more nuclear weapons to maintain deterrence.^[2] Signed in 1972, it was in force for the next 30 years.^[3] Citing purported risks of nuclear blackmail from a rogue state, the United States under the George W. Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from the treaty in June 2002, leading to its termination. In ICBM defense, the US has subsequently operated the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense ABM system based in Alaska and California, as well as the sea-based Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System. Russia maintains the A-135 ABM system around Moscow, and has developed the S-500 missile system.

Under the terms of the original 1972 treaty, each party was limited to two ABM complexes, one for the nation's capital and one for an intercontinental ballistic missile silo field. Each ABM complex was limited to 100 anti-ballistic missiles and their launchers, two phased-array radars, and 18 smaller radars for early-warning.^[4]: 115 ABM missiles that were not static and ground-based were prohibited. In 1974, the limit was reduced to just a single ABM complex. The USSR chose to deploy the A-35 system around its capital Moscow, the US elected to deploy the Safeguard Complex around its ICBM fields of the Twentieth Air Force, although this was only operational for a year from 1974 to 1975. A 1997 treaty addendum permitted "theater missile defense": anti-ballistic missiles used against theatre ballistic missiles, as long as they were not tested against targets with velocities over 5 km/s, typical of ICBM terminal phase. Also in 1997, five years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, its former member states Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine were established as successors to the USSR within the treaty, with one ABM system permitted between them.

1. ^ "Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty)". U.S. Department of State. Retrieved 8 July 2026.
2. ^ Acton, James M. (13 December 2021). "The U.S. Exit From the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty Has Fueled a New Arms Race". Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Archived from the original on 20 June 2022. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
3. ^ "Treaty Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems". Bureau of Arms Control. United States Department of State. 26 May 1972. Archived from the original on 9 March 2022. Retrieved 13 September 2022.
4. ^ Nash, Henry T. (1 May 1975). Nuclear Weapons and International Behaviour. Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 978-9028602656 – via Internet Archive. p. 115: Each site would consist of 100 ABMs, or a total of 200 ABMs for each country

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4 August 1995 – Operation Storm, the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence begins.

Croatian War of Independence

1991–95 war during the Yugoslav Wars

The Croatian War of Independence^[I] was an armed conflict fought in Croatia from 1991 to 1995 between Croat forces loyal to the Government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)—and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations by 1992.

A majority of Croats supported Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia, while many ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, supported by Serbia,^[30][31] opposed the secession and advocated Serb-claimed lands to be in a common state with Serbia. Most Serbs sought a new Serb state within a Yugoslav federation, including areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with ethnic Serb majorities or significant minorities,^[32][33] and attempted to conquer as much of Croatia as possible.^[34][35][36] Croatia declared independence on June 25, 1991, but agreed to postpone it with the Brioni Agreement and cut all remaining ties with Yugoslavia on October 8, 1991.

The JNA initially tried to keep Croatia within Yugoslavia by occupying all of Croatia.^[37][38] After this failed, Serb forces established the self-proclaimed proto-state Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) within Croatia, which began with the Log Revolution. After the ceasefire of January 1992 and international recognition of the Republic of Croatia as a sovereign state,^[39][40] the front lines were entrenched, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was deployed,^[41] and combat became largely intermittent in the following three years. During that time, the RSK encompassed 13,913 square kilometers (5,372 sq mi), more than a quarter of Croatia.^[42] In 1995, Croatia launched two major offensives known as Operation Flash and Operation Storm;^[12][43] these offensives effectively ended the war in its favor. The remaining United Nations Transitional Authority for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) zone was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia by 1998.^[13][19]

The war ended with Croatian victory, as it achieved the goals it had declared at the beginning of the war: independence and preservation of its borders.^[12][13] Approximately 21–25% of Croatia's economy was ruined, with an estimated US$37 billion in damaged infrastructure, lost output, and refugee-related costs.^[44] Over 20,000 people were killed in the war,^[45] and refugees were displaced on both sides. The Serbian and Croatian governments began to progressively cooperate with each other, but tensions remain, in part due to verdicts by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and lawsuits filed by each country against the other.^[46][47]

In 2007, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) returned a guilty verdict against Milan Martić, one of the Serb leaders in Croatia, for having colluded with Slobodan Milošević and others to create a "unified Serbian state".^[48] Between 2008 and 2012, the ICTY had prosecuted Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markač and Ivan Čermak for alleged involvement in the crimes related to Operation Storm. Čermak was acquitted outright, and the convictions of Gotovina and Markač were later overturned by an ICTY Appeals Panel.^[49][50] The International Court of Justice dismissed mutual claims of genocide by Croatia and Serbia in 2015. The Court reaffirmed that, to an extent, crimes against civilians had taken place, but it ruled that specific genocidal intent was not present.^[51]

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference pellet was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Declaration-26June1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Suspension-29June1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sabor-Independence-8Oct1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
5. ^ "Two Republics Transform Selves Into a New, Smaller Yugoslavia". The Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. April 28, 1992. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved January 7, 2011.
6. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Jan3-Ceasefire was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-WashingtonAgreement-19Mar1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
8. ^ Peter Maass (July 16, 1992). "Serb Artillery Hits Refugees – At Least 8 Die As Shells Hit Packed Stadium". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on November 5, 2013. Retrieved December 23, 2010.
9. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Dubrovnik-Artillery-17Aug95 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
10. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Pakrac-3Mar1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
11. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Plitvice-31Mar1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
12. ^ ^{a b c d} Cite error: The named reference LATimes-Storm-Complete was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
13. ^ ^{a b c d} Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-ErdutAgr-12Nov95 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
14. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-Cincar-4Nov1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
15. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-Winter94-12Jan1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Burg and Shoup331 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
17. ^ Marinić, Borna (October 27, 2020). "The Yugoslav People's Army attacks Barcs in Hungary". Domovinski rat.
18. ^ Williams, Carol J. (August 25, 1991). "Serbian-Croatian Conflict Spills Into Hungary: Yugoslavia: Thousands of Yugoslavs seek safety across the border. Air force planes violate Hungarian airspace". Los Angeles Times.
19. ^ ^{a b} Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-UNTAES-16Jan98 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
20. ^ Tus: U listopadu '91. HV je imao 70.000 vojnika Vecernji.hr
21. ^ "Centar domovinskog rata - 1995". Archived from the original on November 19, 2012. Retrieved July 17, 2012.
22. ^ ^{a b} Zebić, Enis (January 15, 2018). "Ljudski gubici u ratu u Hrvatskoj: 22.211 osoba" [Human Casualties in the Croatian War: 22,211 Persons]. Radio Free Europe (in Croatian). Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
23. ^ "Perković". Archived from the original on October 17, 2007.
24. ^ Phuong 2005, p. 157.
25. ^ Cite error: The named reference veritas was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
26. ^ Cite error: The named reference Meštrović77 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
27. ^ Cite error: The named reference Zanotti111 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
28. ^ Katan, David; Taibi, Mustapha (2021). Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. Routledge. p. 95. ISBN 9781000395532.
29. ^ Anna Jagiełło-Szostak (2025). ""Homeland War" as a Marker of Memory in Bilateral Relations Between Serbia and Croatia in the light of the oncological security". Central European and Balkan Studies. 34: 424. doi:10.4467/2543733XSSB.25.022.22519.
30. ^ Martić verdict, pp. 122–123
    "The Trial Chamber found that the evidence showed that the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, openly supported the preservation of Yugoslavia as a federation of which the SAO Krajina would form a part. However, the evidence established that Milošević covertly intended to create a Serb state. This state was to be created through the establishment of paramilitary forces and the provocation of incidents in order to create a situation where the JNA could intervene. Initially, the JNA would intervene to separate the parties but subsequently the JNA would intervene to secure the territories envisaged to be part of a future Serb state."
31. ^ Bassiouni, M. Cherif, ed. (December 28, 1994). "Annex IV – The policy of ethnic cleansing". Final report of the United Nations Commission of Experts established pursuant to security council resolution 780 (1992). United Nations Security Council. Archived from the original on May 4, 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2011 – via School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences (UWE).
32. ^ Babić verdict, p. 6
    "In the period of the Indictment, from circa 1 August 1991 to 15 February 1992, Serb forces consisting of JNA units, local Serb TO units, TO units from Serbia and Montenegro, local MUP police units, MUP police units from Serbia, and paramilitary units attacked and took control of towns, villages, and settlements ... These acts were intended to permanently and forcibly remove the majority of the Croat and other non-Serb populations from approximately one-third of Croatia in order to transform that territory into a Serb-dominated state."
33. ^ Chuck Sudetic (August 5, 1991). "Serbs Refuse to Negotiate in Croatia". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved January 24, 2011.
34. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Iceland was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
35. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Presidency-RumpYugPlan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
36. ^ Brown & Karim (1995), p. 120
37. ^ Kadijević (1993), pp. 134–135
38. ^ Bjelajac et al. 2009, p. 241.
39. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Germany-23Dec91 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
40. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-UN-membership was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
41. ^ Cite error: The named reference UN_SRES7431992 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
42. ^ Cite error: The named reference Profil-RSK-Dokumenti was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
43. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Flash-May2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
44. ^ Cite error: The named reference Europe-Review-2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
45. ^ Cite error: The named reference autogenerated3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
46. ^ Cite error: The named reference UNHCR-Croatia-Serbia-Refugees2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
47. ^ Cite error: The named reference BBC-Josipović-Belgrade-2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
48. ^ "Milan Martić sentenced to 35 years for crimes against humanity and war crimes". International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. June 12, 2007. Archived from the original on August 4, 2012. Retrieved August 24, 2010.
49. ^ "Judgement Summary for Gotovina et al" (PDF). The Hague: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. April 15, 2011. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 4, 2012. Retrieved April 15, 2011.
50. ^ "Hague war court acquits Croat Generals Gotovina and Markac". BBC News. November 16, 2012. Archived from the original on November 16, 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2012.
51. ^ ICJ & 3 February 2015

Cite error: There are <ref group=upper-alpha> tags or {{efn-ua}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=upper-alpha}} template or {{notelist-ua}} template (see the help page).

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4 August 1995 – Operation Storm, the last major battle of the Croatian War of Independence begins.

Croatian War of Independence

1991–95 war during the Yugoslav Wars

The Croatian War of Independence^[I] was an armed conflict fought in Croatia from 1991 to 1995 between Croat forces loyal to the Government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)—and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations by 1992.

A majority of Croats supported Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia, while many ethnic Serbs living in Croatia, supported by Serbia,^[30][31] opposed the secession and advocated Serb-claimed lands to be in a common state with Serbia. Most Serbs sought a new Serb state within a Yugoslav federation, including areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina with ethnic Serb majorities or significant minorities,^[32][33] and attempted to conquer as much of Croatia as possible.^[34][35][36] Croatia declared independence on June 25, 1991, but agreed to postpone it with the Brioni Agreement and cut all remaining ties with Yugoslavia on October 8, 1991.

The JNA initially tried to keep Croatia within Yugoslavia by occupying all of Croatia.^[37][38] After this failed, Serb forces established the self-proclaimed proto-state Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) within Croatia, which began with the Log Revolution. After the ceasefire of January 1992 and international recognition of the Republic of Croatia as a sovereign state,^[39][40] the front lines were entrenched, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was deployed,^[41] and combat became largely intermittent in the following three years. During that time, the RSK encompassed 13,913 square kilometers (5,372 sq mi), more than a quarter of Croatia.^[42] In 1995, Croatia launched two major offensives known as Operation Flash and Operation Storm;^[12][43] these offensives effectively ended the war in its favor. The remaining United Nations Transitional Authority for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium (UNTAES) zone was peacefully reintegrated into Croatia by 1998.^[13][19]

The war ended with Croatian victory, as it achieved the goals it had declared at the beginning of the war: independence and preservation of its borders.^[12][13] Approximately 21–25% of Croatia's economy was ruined, with an estimated US$37 billion in damaged infrastructure, lost output, and refugee-related costs.^[44] Over 20,000 people were killed in the war,^[45] and refugees were displaced on both sides. The Serbian and Croatian governments began to progressively cooperate with each other, but tensions remain, in part due to verdicts by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and lawsuits filed by each country against the other.^[46][47]

In 2007, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) returned a guilty verdict against Milan Martić, one of the Serb leaders in Croatia, for having colluded with Slobodan Milošević and others to create a "unified Serbian state".^[48] Between 2008 and 2012, the ICTY had prosecuted Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Mladen Markač and Ivan Čermak for alleged involvement in the crimes related to Operation Storm. Čermak was acquitted outright, and the convictions of Gotovina and Markač were later overturned by an ICTY Appeals Panel.^[49][50] The International Court of Justice dismissed mutual claims of genocide by Croatia and Serbia in 2015. The Court reaffirmed that, to an extent, crimes against civilians had taken place, but it ruled that specific genocidal intent was not present.^[51]

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference pellet was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Declaration-26June1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Suspension-29June1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Sabor-Independence-8Oct1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
5. ^ "Two Republics Transform Selves Into a New, Smaller Yugoslavia". The Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. April 28, 1992. Archived from the original on March 5, 2016. Retrieved January 7, 2011.
6. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Jan3-Ceasefire was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
7. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-WashingtonAgreement-19Mar1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
8. ^ Peter Maass (July 16, 1992). "Serb Artillery Hits Refugees – At Least 8 Die As Shells Hit Packed Stadium". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on November 5, 2013. Retrieved December 23, 2010.
9. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Dubrovnik-Artillery-17Aug95 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
10. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Pakrac-3Mar1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
11. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Plitvice-31Mar1991 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
12. ^ ^{a b c d} Cite error: The named reference LATimes-Storm-Complete was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
13. ^ ^{a b c d} Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-ErdutAgr-12Nov95 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
14. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-Cincar-4Nov1994 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
15. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-Winter94-12Jan1995 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
16. ^ Cite error: The named reference Burg and Shoup331 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
17. ^ Marinić, Borna (October 27, 2020). "The Yugoslav People's Army attacks Barcs in Hungary". Domovinski rat.
18. ^ Williams, Carol J. (August 25, 1991). "Serbian-Croatian Conflict Spills Into Hungary: Yugoslavia: Thousands of Yugoslavs seek safety across the border. Air force planes violate Hungarian airspace". Los Angeles Times.
19. ^ ^{a b} Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-UNTAES-16Jan98 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
20. ^ Tus: U listopadu '91. HV je imao 70.000 vojnika Vecernji.hr
21. ^ "Centar domovinskog rata - 1995". Archived from the original on November 19, 2012. Retrieved July 17, 2012.
22. ^ ^{a b} Zebić, Enis (January 15, 2018). "Ljudski gubici u ratu u Hrvatskoj: 22.211 osoba" [Human Casualties in the Croatian War: 22,211 Persons]. Radio Free Europe (in Croatian). Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
23. ^ "Perković". Archived from the original on October 17, 2007.
24. ^ Phuong 2005, p. 157.
25. ^ Cite error: The named reference veritas was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
26. ^ Cite error: The named reference Meštrović77 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
27. ^ Cite error: The named reference Zanotti111 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
28. ^ Katan, David; Taibi, Mustapha (2021). Translating Cultures: An Introduction for Translators, Interpreters and Mediators. Routledge. p. 95. ISBN 9781000395532.
29. ^ Anna Jagiełło-Szostak (2025). ""Homeland War" as a Marker of Memory in Bilateral Relations Between Serbia and Croatia in the light of the oncological security". Central European and Balkan Studies. 34: 424. doi:10.4467/2543733XSSB.25.022.22519.
30. ^ Martić verdict, pp. 122–123
    "The Trial Chamber found that the evidence showed that the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević, openly supported the preservation of Yugoslavia as a federation of which the SAO Krajina would form a part. However, the evidence established that Milošević covertly intended to create a Serb state. This state was to be created through the establishment of paramilitary forces and the provocation of incidents in order to create a situation where the JNA could intervene. Initially, the JNA would intervene to separate the parties but subsequently the JNA would intervene to secure the territories envisaged to be part of a future Serb state."
31. ^ Bassiouni, M. Cherif, ed. (December 28, 1994). "Annex IV – The policy of ethnic cleansing". Final report of the United Nations Commission of Experts established pursuant to security council resolution 780 (1992). United Nations Security Council. Archived from the original on May 4, 2012. Retrieved March 19, 2011 – via School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences (UWE).
32. ^ Babić verdict, p. 6
    "In the period of the Indictment, from circa 1 August 1991 to 15 February 1992, Serb forces consisting of JNA units, local Serb TO units, TO units from Serbia and Montenegro, local MUP police units, MUP police units from Serbia, and paramilitary units attacked and took control of towns, villages, and settlements ... These acts were intended to permanently and forcibly remove the majority of the Croat and other non-Serb populations from approximately one-third of Croatia in order to transform that territory into a Serb-dominated state."
33. ^ Chuck Sudetic (August 5, 1991). "Serbs Refuse to Negotiate in Croatia". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 11, 2012. Retrieved January 24, 2011.
34. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Iceland was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
35. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Presidency-RumpYugPlan was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
36. ^ Brown & Karim (1995), p. 120
37. ^ Kadijević (1993), pp. 134–135
38. ^ Bjelajac et al. 2009, p. 241.
39. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Germany-23Dec91 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
40. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYT-UN-membership was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
41. ^ Cite error: The named reference UN_SRES7431992 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
42. ^ Cite error: The named reference Profil-RSK-Dokumenti was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
43. ^ Cite error: The named reference NYTimes-Flash-May2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
44. ^ Cite error: The named reference Europe-Review-2003 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
45. ^ Cite error: The named reference autogenerated3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
46. ^ Cite error: The named reference UNHCR-Croatia-Serbia-Refugees2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
47. ^ Cite error: The named reference BBC-Josipović-Belgrade-2010 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
48. ^ "Milan Martić sentenced to 35 years for crimes against humanity and war crimes". International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. June 12, 2007. Archived from the original on August 4, 2012. Retrieved August 24, 2010.
49. ^ "Judgement Summary for Gotovina et al" (PDF). The Hague: International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. April 15, 2011. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 4, 2012. Retrieved April 15, 2011.
50. ^ "Hague war court acquits Croat Generals Gotovina and Markac". BBC News. November 16, 2012. Archived from the original on November 16, 2012. Retrieved November 16, 2012.
51. ^ ICJ & 3 February 2015

Cite error: There are <ref group=upper-alpha> tags or {{efn-ua}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=upper-alpha}} template or {{notelist-ua}} template (see the help page).

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5 August 1962 – Apartheid: Nelson Mandela is jailed. He would not be released until 1990.

Nelson Mandela

President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999

"Mandela" redirects here. Not to be confused with Mandala. For other uses, see Mandela (disambiguation) and Nelson Mandela (disambiguation).

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela^[a] (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.

A Xhosa, Mandela was born in Mvezo to the Thembu royal family. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only government established apartheid—a system of racial segregation that privileged whites—he and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. Mandela was appointed President of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 and led a sabotage campaign against the government. In 1962, he was arrested for conspiring to overthrow the state and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

Mandela served 27 years in prison, initially on Robben Island, and later in Pollsmoor Prison and Victor Verster Prison. Amid growing domestic and international pressure, and with fears of a racial civil war, President F. W. de Klerk released him in 1990. Mandela and de Klerk negotiated an end to apartheid and organised the 1994 multiracial general election in which Mandela led the ANC to victory and became President. Leading a broad coalition government which promulgated a new constitution, Mandela emphasised reconciliation between the country's racial groups and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate past human rights abuses. Economically, Mandela's administration retained its predecessor's liberal framework despite his own socialist beliefs, also introducing measures to encourage land reform, combat poverty, and expand healthcare services. Internationally, he acted as mediator in the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing trial and served as Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999. He declined a second presidential term and in 1999 was succeeded by his deputy, Thabo Mbeki. Mandela became an elder statesman and focused on combating poverty and HIV/AIDS through the charitable Nelson Mandela Foundation.

Mandela was a controversial figure for much of his life. Although critics on the right denounced him as a communist terrorist and those on the radical left deemed him too eager to negotiate and reconcile with apartheid's supporters, he gained international acclaim for his activism. Widely regarded as an icon of moral leadership, democracy and social justice, he received more than 250 honours—including the Nobel Peace Prize—and became the subject of a cult of personality. He is held in deep respect within South Africa, where he is often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba, and described as the "Father of the Nation".

1. ^ "Mandela". Collins English Dictionary. Archived from the original on 5 April 2016. Retrieved 17 December 2013.

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6 August 1945 – The atomic bomb "Little Boy" is dropped by the United States B-29 Enola Gay on Hiroshima, Japan.

Little Boy

Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

This article is about the type of atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. For other uses, see Little Boy (disambiguation).

Little Boy was a type of atomic bomb created by the Manhattan Project during World War II. The name is also often used to describe the specific bomb (L-11) used in the bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay on 6 August 1945, making it the first nuclear weapon used in warfare, and the second nuclear explosion in history, after the Trinity nuclear test. It exploded with an energy of approximately 15 kilotons of TNT (63 TJ) and had an explosion radius of approximately 0.81 miles (1.3 km) which caused widespread death and destruction across the city. It was a gun-type fission weapon which used uranium that had been enriched in the fissile isotope uranium-235 to power its explosive reaction.

Little Boy was developed by Lieutenant Commander Francis Birch's group at the Los Alamos Laboratory. It was the successor to a plutonium-fueled gun-type fission design, Thin Man, which was abandoned in 1944 after technical difficulties were discovered. Little Boy used a charge of cordite to fire a hollow cylinder (the "bullet") of highly enriched uranium through an artillery gun barrel into a solid cylinder (the "target") of the same material. The design was highly inefficient: the weapon used on Hiroshima contained 64 kilograms (141 lb) of uranium, but less than a kilogram underwent nuclear fission. Unlike the implosion design developed for the Trinity test and the Fat Man bomb design that was used against Nagasaki, which required sophisticated coordination of shaped explosive charges, the simpler but inefficient gun-type design was considered almost certain to work, and was never tested prior to its use at Hiroshima.

After the war, components for additional Little Boy bombs were built. By 1950, at least five weapons were completed; all were retired by November 1950. The explosive yield of Little Boy has become a unit of energy commonly used for natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, as well as other nuclear weapons.

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7 August 1782 – George Washington orders the creation of the Badge of Military Merit to honor soldiers wounded in battle. It is later renamed to the more poetic Purple Heart.

Purple Heart

United States military decoration for injured or deceased service members

For other uses, see Purple Heart (disambiguation).

Award

The Purple Heart is a United States military decoration awarded in the name of the president to those wounded or killed while serving on or after 5 April 1917, with the U.S. military. With its forerunner, the Badge of Military Merit, which took the form of a heart made of purple cloth, the Purple Heart is the oldest military award still given to U.S. military members. The National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is located in New Windsor, New York.

1. ^ "Military Awards" (PDF). Washington D.C.: Department of the Army. 4 June 2013. Army Regulation 600–8–22. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 January 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
2. ^ "SECNAV Instruction 1650.1H" (PDF). Washington D.C.: Department of the Navy. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 February 2012. Retrieved 16 February 2012.
3. ^ "Memorandum for distribution C ALMAJCOM-FOA-DRU/CC" (PDF). Washington D.C.: Department of the Air Force. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2018. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
4. ^ "Coast Guard Military Medals and Awards Manual" (PDF). Department of Homeland Security and Coast Guard. 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 September 2017.
5. ^ "History: Purple Hearts". National Geographic (November 2008): 33.
6. ^ ^{a b} Cite error: The named reference DoDM1348.33V3 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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8 August 1876 – Thomas Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.

Mimeograph

Type of duplicating machine

This article is about the stencil-based process; not to be confused with the spirit duplicator which is sometimes incorrectly called a "mimeograph".

For the EP by Old 97's, see Mimeograph (EP).

A mimeograph machine (the term often being abbreviated to mimeo), sometimes called a stencil duplicator or stencil machine, is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper.^[1] The process is called mimeography, and a copy made by the process is a mimeograph.

Mimeographs, along with spirit duplicators and hectographs, were common technologies for printing small quantities of a document, as in office work, classroom materials, and church bulletins. For even smaller quantities, up to about five, a typist would use carbon paper. Early fanzines were printed by mimeograph because the machines and supplies were widely available and inexpensive. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing into the 1980s, photocopying gradually displaced mimeographs, spirit duplicators, and hectographs.

1. ^ "Definition of MIMEOGRAPH". www.merriam-webster.com.

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9 August 1973 – Mars 7 is launched from the USSR.

Mars 7

Failed Soviet flyby/lander mission to Mars (1973–1974)

Mars 7 (Russian: Марс-7), also known as 3MP No.51P was a Soviet spacecraft launched in 1973 to explore Mars. A 3MP bus spacecraft which comprised the final mission of the Mars programme, it consisted of a lander and a coast stage with instruments to study Mars as it flew past. Due to a malfunction, the lander failed to perform a maneuver necessary to enter the Martian atmosphere, missing the planet and remaining in heliocentric orbit along with the coast stage.

1. ^ Cite error: The named reference skyrocket1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
2. ^ ^{a b} Cite error: The named reference nssdc1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference LL was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ Cite error: The named reference beyond was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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10 August 1641 – The Treaty of London between England and Scotland, ending the Bishops' Wars, is signed.

Treaty of London (1641)

Treaty ending the Bishops' Wars between England and Scotland

The Treaty of London was an agreement signed between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland in 1641 which formally brought an end to the 1639 to 1640 Bishops' Wars.

Charles I was king of both countries but, since 1639, Scotland had been under the control of a political faction who opposed the king and were known as the Covenanters. In August 1640, a Covenanter army invaded and occupied parts of northern England. The Covenanters and Charles reached an interim truce in October in the Treaty of Ripon. This mandated that the English government pay for the ongoing Covenanter occupation pending further negotiations over a final settlement. Furthermore, Charles was required to summon a new parliament of England which assembled in November 1640.

After months of negotiations, on 10 August 1641 Charles signed a long-term peace treaty. Among other concessions, the terms included the abolition of bishops in the Church of Scotland, as well as the remittance of financial payments from England to Scotland. By the end of the month, all Covenanter forces had withdrawn from northern England.

The treaty restored peace between Scotland and England and resolved many of the issues which had led to the Bishops' Wars but the new English parliament was strongly opposed to Charles. Significantly, the Long Parliament, as it became known, was able to pass acts that meant it could only be dissolved by its own consent; previously, English monarchs had been able to dissolve Parliament at their will. In early 1642, a power struggle developed between Parliament and Charles which escalated to the outbreak of the First English Civil War.

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11 August 1929 – Babe Ruth becomes the first baseball player to hit 500 home runs in his career with a home run at League Park in Cleveland, Ohio.

Babe Ruth

American baseball player (1895–1948)

This article is about the baseball player. For other uses, see Babe Ruth (disambiguation).

Baseball player

George Herman "Babe" Ruth (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948) was an American professional baseball player whose career in Major League Baseball (MLB) spanned 22 seasons, from 1914 through 1935. Nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", he began his MLB career as a star left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, but achieved his greatest fame as a slugging outfielder for the New York Yankees. Ruth is regarded as one of the greatest sports heroes in American culture and is considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time. In 1936, Ruth was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame as one of its "first five" members.

At age seven, Ruth was sent to St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys. In 1914, Ruth was signed to play Minor League baseball for the Baltimore Orioles but was soon sold to the Red Sox. By 1916, he had built a reputation as an outstanding pitcher who sometimes hit long home runs, a feat unusual for any player in the dead-ball era. Although Ruth twice won 23 games in a season as a pitcher and was a member of three World Series championship teams with the Red Sox, he wanted to play every day and was allowed to convert to an outfielder. With regular playing time, he broke the MLB single-season home run record in 1919 with 29.

After that season, Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Ruth to the Yankees amid controversy. The trade fueled Boston's subsequent 86-year championship drought and popularized the "Curse of the Bambino" superstition. In his 15 years with the Yankees, Ruth helped the team win seven American League (AL) pennants and four World Series championships. His big swing led to escalating home run totals that not only drew fans to the ballpark and boosted the sport's popularity but also helped usher in baseball's live-ball era, which evolved from a low-scoring game of strategy to a sport where the home run was a major factor. As part of the Yankees' vaunted "Murderers' Row" lineup of 1927, Ruth hit 60 home runs, which extended his own MLB single-season record by a single home run. Ruth's last season with the Yankees was 1934, and he retired after a short stint with the Boston Braves the following year. In his career, he led the AL in home runs 12 times.

During Ruth's career, he was the target of intense press and public attention for his baseball exploits and off-field penchants for drinking and womanizing. After his retirement as a player, he was denied the opportunity to manage a major league club, most likely because of poor behavior during parts of his playing career. In his final years, Ruth made many public appearances, especially in support of American efforts in World War II. In 1946, he became ill with nasopharyngeal cancer and died from the disease two years later. Ruth remains a major figure in American culture.

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12 August 1981 – The IBM Personal Computer is released.

IBM Personal Computer

1981 American microcomputer model

"IBM PC" redirects here. For personal computers compatible with the IBM PC, see IBM PC compatible.

Not to be confused with the separate IBM PC Series released from 1994 to 2000.

The IBM Personal Computer (model 5150), often referred to as the IBM PC, is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers at International Business Machines (IBM), directed by William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida.

Powered by an x86-architecture Intel 8088 processor, the machine was based on open architecture and third-party peripherals. Over time, expansion cards and software technology increased to support it. The PC had a substantial influence on the personal computer market; the specifications of the IBM PC became one of the most popular computer design standards in the world. The only significant competition it faced from a non-compatible platform throughout the 1980s was from Apple's Macintosh product line, as well as consumer-grade platforms created by companies like Commodore and Atari. Most present-day personal computers, including the Intel-based Mac computers manufactured from 2006 to 2022, share architectural features in common with the original IBM PC.

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13 August 1905 – Norwegians vote to end the union with Sweden.

1905 Norwegian union dissolution referendum

Referendum ratifying Norway's separation from Sweden

A referendum on dissolving the union with Sweden was held in Norway on 13 August 1905.^[1] Voters were asked whether they endorsed the Storting's declaration of 7 June that the personal union, in place since 1814, had ceased to exist. Dissolution was approved by 368,208 votes to 184, or 99.95% of valid votes, on a voter turnout of 85.4%, one of the most lopsided results in the history of national referendums.^[2][3]

The vote was the first national referendum held in Norway, and the first in the Nordic countries.^[4] Only men could take part, and Norwegian women's organisations responded by mounting a parallel signature campaign that gathered close to 280,000 names in under three weeks, an episode widely credited with accelerating the introduction of women's suffrage in 1913.^[5]

Historians have generally accepted the result as a genuine expression of Norwegian opinion in the summer of 1905, while noting that the campaign preceding it was one-sided and at times coercive. No organised opposition existed, the press, the churches and the political parties campaigned uniformly for a "yes", and abstention or a "no" vote was widely portrayed as unpatriotic.^[4]

1. ^ Sejersted, Francis; Dørum, Knut. "Unionsoppløsningen i 1905". Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian). Retrieved 29 August 2026.
2. ^ Nohlen, Dieter; Stöver, Philip (2010). Elections in Europe: A Data Handbook. Nomos. p. 1446. ISBN 978-3-8329-5609-7.
3. ^ Eeg-Henriksen, Fride (2005). "1905 – året da norske kvinner tok allmenn stemmerett på forskudd" (in Norwegian). Statistics Norway. Retrieved 29 August 2026.
4. ^ ^{a b} Steine, Bjørn Arne. "Folkeavstemningen om unionsoppløsning i 1905". Norgeshistorie (in Norwegian). University of Oslo. Retrieved 29 August 2026.
5. ^ Lønnå, Elisabeth. "Kvinnenes underskriftskampanje i 1905". Store norske leksikon (in Norwegian). Retrieved 29 August 2026.

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14 August 1935 – Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, creating a government pension system for the retired.

Social Security Act

1935 U.S. law creating the Social Security program and unemployment insurance

This article is about the United States. For the Social Security Act of other countries, see Social Security Act (disambiguation).

The Social Security Act of 1935 is a law enacted by the 74th United States Congress and signed into law by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. The law created the Social Security program as well as insurance against unemployment. The law was part of Roosevelt's New Deal domestic program.

By 1930, the United States was one of the few industrialized countries without any national social security system.^[1] Amid the Great Depression, the physician Francis Townsend galvanized support behind a proposal to issue direct payments to older people. Responding to that movement, Roosevelt organized a committee led by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins to develop a major social welfare program proposal. Roosevelt presented the plan in early 1935 and signed the Social Security Act into law on August 14, 1935. The Supreme Court upheld the act in two major cases decided in 1937.

The law established the Social Security program. The old-age program is offset by payroll taxes, and over the ensuing decades, it contributed to a dramatic decline in poverty among older people, and spending on Social Security became a significant part of the federal budget. The Social Security Act also established an unemployment insurance program administered by the states and the Aid to Dependent Children program, which provided aid to families headed by single mothers. The law was later amended by acts such as the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which established two major healthcare programs: Medicare and Medicaid.

1. ^ Leimgruber, Matthieu (2008). Solidarity without the State?: Business and the Shaping of the Swiss Welfare State, 1890–2000. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 57. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511497094. ISBN 978-0-521-87540-0.

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15 August 1814 – War of 1812: British forces launch a costly and unsuccessful night attack against American defenders during the siege of Fort Erie

War of 1812

1812–1815 conflict in North America

This article is about the conflict in North America from 1812 to 1815. For the Franco-Russian conflict, see French invasion of Russia. For other uses of this term, see War of 1812 (disambiguation).

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815.^{[16][17][18][19][20]}

The United States objected to British restrictions on American trade with Napoleonic France and to the Royal Navy's impressment of seamen from American vessels, including men the United States considered American citizens.^[21] Opinion in the US was split on how to respond, and although majorities in both the House and Senate voted for war in June 1812, they were divided along strict party lines, with the Democratic-Republican Party in favour and the Federalist Party against.^[e][22] News of British concessions made in an attempt to avoid war did not reach the US until late July, by which time the conflict was already underway. Britain, engaged in a global war against France, defended its maritime system as necessary to the defeat of Napoleon and treated many impressed sailors as British subjects. Tensions were also intensified by British relations with Indigenous confederacies resisting American expansion in the Old Northwest.

British war aims were initially limited and defensive: to protect Canada (then British North America), maintain maritime rights, and avoid diverting major resources from the war in Europe.^[23] The United States, by contrast, launched repeated invasions of Upper^[24] and Lower Canada, all of which failed. At sea, the Royal Navy imposed an increasingly effective blockade of the American coast, while American privateers and naval victories inflicted localised, limited damage on British commerce and prestige.

After Napoleon's abdication in April 1814, Britain reinforced North America and expanded operations against the United States, including the capture and burning of Washington in August 1814. American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh in September helped end major fighting in the northern theatre. In the southeast, American forces and allied Indigenous groups defeated the Red Stick faction of the Muscogee, while Andrew Jackson’s army repulsed a British attack on New Orleans in January 1815, after the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed but before news of peace reached the region.

The Treaty of Ghent restored the pre-war territorial status quo and did not settle the maritime issues that had contributed to the war.^[25] Impressment largely ceased after 1815 because the end of the Napoleonic Wars removed Britain's wartime manpower emergency, but Britain did not formally renounce its wider maritime claims in the treaty. Later Anglo-American disputes over the stopping, visiting, searching, and seizure of American vessels continued in narrower contexts, especially anti-slave-trade enforcement, and rare American allegations of post-war impressment appeared in diplomatic correspondence in the 1820s.^[26][27][28]

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).

1. ^ ^{a b c} Clodfelter 2017, p. 245.
2. ^ McGuigan, Ron. "The British Army Stationed in British North America 1812-1815 - Appendix 3: Canadian Volunteer Units Formed from the Sedentary Militia 1812-1813". The Napoleon Series Archive. Retrieved 13 August 2026.
3. ^ "War of 1812". Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved 13 August 2026.
4. ^ Allen 1996, p. 121; Clodfelter 2017, p. 245.
5. ^ Tucker et al. 2012, p. 570.
6. ^ ^{a b} Clodfelter 2017, p. 244.
7. ^ ^{a b} Stagg 2012, p. 156.
8. ^ Hickey 2006, p. 297; Stagg 2012, p. 156.
9. ^ Leland 2010, p. 2.
10. ^ Tucker et al. 2012, p. 311; Hickey 2012n.
11. ^ Weiss 2013.
12. ^ "History of the Books of Remembrance - War of 1812 Book of Remembrance". Veterans Affairs Canada. Retrieved 13 August 2026.
13. ^ Paul Silverstone, "The Sailing Navy, 1775-1854", Taylor & Francis: November 2006, p. 89-92. Listed fifth rates lost consist of the Guerrier (captured and burnt), Macedonian (captured), Southampton (wrecked), Java (captured and burnt), Confiance (captured), and Statira (wrecked).
14. ^ Silverstone, p. 89-91.
15. ^ Owsley 2000, p. 118.
16. ^ Order of the Senate of the United States 1828, pp. 619–620.
17. ^ Carr 1979, p. 276.
18. ^ "War of 1812". Encyclopedia Britannica (Online ed.). Retrieved 12 September 2025.
19. ^ "The War of 1812". National Army Museum. Retrieved 12 September 2025.
20. ^ "The Senate Approves for Ratification the Treaty of Ghent". U.S. Senate. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
21. ^ Hickey 1989, p. 44.
22. ^ Hickey 1989, pp. 32, 42–43.
23. ^ "War of 1812 Overview (1812-1815): U.S. Navy & America's Second Fight for Independence". USS Constitution Museum. Retrieved 3 May 2026.
24. ^ Greenspan 2018.
25. ^ "Impressment and the War of 1812 (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 3 May 2026.
26. ^ "Right Of Searching American Vessels - Hansard - UK Parliament". hansard.parliament.uk. Retrieved 3 May 2026.
27. ^ "THE SLAVE TRADE.—RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 12 July 1858)". api.parliament.uk. Retrieved 3 May 2026.
28. ^ "PUNISHING OUR OWN RASCALS: GREAT BRITAIN, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE RIGHT TO SEARCH DURING THE ERA OF SLAVE TRADE SUPPRESSION". scholarworks.boisestate.edu. Retrieved 3 May 2026.

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16 August 1916 – The Migratory Bird Treaty between Canada and the United States is signed.

Migratory Bird Treaty

1916 treaty between Canada and the United States

The Migratory Bird Treaty or Convention is an environmental treaty between Canada and the United States. It was originally signed on 16 August 1916 by the United States and the United Kingdom (representing Canada), entered into force on 6 December 1916 and has since been amended several times.

Whereas, many species of birds in the course of their annual migrations traverse certain parts of the Dominion of Canada and the United States; and

Whereas, many of these species are of great value as a source of food or in destroying insects which are injurious to forests and forage plants on the public domain, as well as to agricultural crops, in both Canada and the United States, but are nevertheless in danger of extermination through lack of adequate protection during the nesting season or while on their way to and from their breeding grounds;

His Majesty the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions beyond the seas, Emperor of India, and the United States of America, being desirous of saving from indiscriminate slaughter and of insuring the preservation of such migratory birds as are either useful to man or are harmless, have resolved to adopt some uniform system of protection which shall effectively accomplish such objects ...^[1]

1. ^ "Canada Treaty Information - View Treaty". Archived from the original on 2011-10-03. Retrieved 2011-05-18.

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17 August 2008 – American swimmer Michael Phelps becomes the first person to win eight gold medals at one Olympic Games.

Michael Phelps

American swimmer (born 1985)

This article is about the American swimmer. For other people named Michael Phelps, see Michael Phelps (disambiguation).

Michael Fred Phelps II^[5] (born June 30, 1985)^[6] is an American former competitive swimmer. He won more Olympic medals than any other athlete, a total of 28 medals across four Olympic Games. Phelps also holds the all-time records for Olympic gold medals (23),^[7] Olympic gold medals in individual events (13), and Olympic medals in individual events (16).^[8] At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Phelps tied the record of eight medals of any color at a single Games, held by gymnast Alexander Dityatin, by winning six gold and two bronze medals. Four years later, when he won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Games, he broke fellow American swimmer Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven first-place finishes at any single Olympic Games. At the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, Phelps won four gold and two silver medals, and at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he won five gold medals and one silver. This made him the most successful athlete of the Games for the fourth Olympics in a row.^[9][10]

Phelps is a former long course world record holder in the 200-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly, 200-meter individual medley, and 400-meter individual medley. He has won 82 medals in major international long course competitions, of which 65 were gold, 14 silver, and three bronze, spanning the Olympics, the World Championships, and the Pan Pacific Championships. Phelps's international titles and record-breaking performances have earned him the World Swimmer of the Year Award eight times and American Swimmer of the Year Award eleven times, as well as the FINA Swimmer of the Year Award in 2012 and 2016. Phelps earned Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsman of the Year award due to his unprecedented Olympic success in the 2008 Games.

After the 2008 Summer Olympics, Phelps started the Michael Phelps Foundation, which focuses on growing the sport of swimming and promoting healthier lifestyles. Phelps retired following the 2012 Olympics, but he made a comeback in April 2014.^[11] At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro,^[12] his fifth Olympics, he was selected by his team to be the flag bearer of the United States at the 2016 Summer Olympics Parade of Nations. He announced his second retirement on August 12, 2016,^[13] having won more medals than 161 countries. He won the Laureus World Comeback of the Year Award in 2017.^[14] He is widely regarded as the greatest swimmer of all time and is often considered to be one of the greatest athletes of all time.^[15][16][17]

1. ^ Harris, Nick (August 11, 2008). "'Baltimore Bullet' has history in his sights". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on August 22, 2009. Retrieved August 25, 2010.
2. ^ "'Flying Fish' Phelps largely unknown in China". NBC News. August 17, 2008. Retrieved April 21, 2012.
3. ^ Cite error: The named reference phelpsbio was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
4. ^ "Michael Phelps". London2012.com. Archived from the original on January 23, 2013. Retrieved August 1, 2012.
5. ^ "Michael Phelps(Full Birth Name)". britannica.com. December 1, 2005. Archived from the original on July 12, 2021. Retrieved August 31, 2021.
6. ^ "Michael Phelps Biography: Swimming, Athlete (1985–)". Biography.com (FYI / A&E Networks). Retrieved November 18, 2015.
7. ^ "Rio 2016 | Simone Biles dazzles while Phelps wins his 22nd gold on day 6". August 12, 2016. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
8. ^ Gibbs, Robert (August 11, 2016). "Phelps breaks ties for most overall & gold individual medals". Swimswam. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
9. ^ Anderson, Jared (September 28, 2016). "Phelps named USOC's male athlete of the Rio Olympics". Swimswam. Retrieved October 2, 2016.
10. ^ Lord, Craig (September 16, 2012). "Franklin Pips Phelps For Top Honour". SwimNews. Archived from the original on October 6, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
11. ^ Harris, Beth (April 14, 2014). "Olympic Great Michael Phelps Ending Retirement". NBC Washington. Retrieved November 21, 2015.
12. ^ Zaccardi, Nick (May 3, 2016). "Michael Phelps left with one meet before Olympic Trials". Olympics on NBC. Retrieved May 23, 2016.
13. ^ Rogers, Martin. "Michael Phelps on Olympic future: 'I am not coming back in four years'". USA Today. Retrieved July 26, 2017.
14. ^ "PAST WINNERS". Laureus Sport for Good Foundation.
15. ^ "Where Does Michael Phelps Rank Among Great Athletes Of All Time?". BleacherReport. Retrieved August 7, 2020.
16. ^ Jones, Tom. "Jones: Put Michael Phelps in talk about greatest athlete of all time". Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved August 7, 2020.
17. ^ "Top 100 Athletes of the 21st Century". ESPN.

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18 August 1304 – The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle is fought to a draw between the French army and the Flemish militias

Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle

1304 battle of the Franco-Flemish War

The Battle of Mons-en-Pévèle (or Pevelenberg) was fought on 18 August 1304 between the French and the Flemish. The French were led by their king, Philip IV.

1. ^ ^{a b} Curveiller 1989, p. 34.
2. ^ ^{a b} DeVries 2006, p. 34.
3. ^ DeVries 2006, p. 35.
4. ^ ^{a b} Verbruggen 1997, p. 203.
5. ^ ^{a b} DeVries 2006, p. 33.

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19 August 1953 – Cold War: The CIA and MI6 help to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

1953 Iranian coup d'état

Coup to depose Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh

On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d'état after illegally dissolving the Parliament justifying it as “the will of the people is above the law,”^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} the coup d'état strengthened the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. It was instigated by the United Kingdom (MI6), under the codename Operation Boot^{[11][12][13][14]} and the United States (CIA), under the codename TP-AJAX Project^[15] or Operation Ajax. A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mosaddegh nationalized the country's oil industry.^[16][17][18]

Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP), to verify that AIOC was paying the contracted royalties to Iran, and to limit their control over Iranian oil reserves.^[19] Upon the AIOC's refusal to cooperate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.^[20][21][22] After this vote, Britain instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically.^[23] Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the British-built Abadan oil refinery, then the world's largest, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee opted instead to tighten the economic boycott^[24] while using agents to undermine Mosaddegh's government.^[25]: 3 Judging Mosaddegh to be unamenable and fearing the growing influence of the communist Tudeh, UK prime minister Winston Churchill decided in early 1953 to solicit the Eisenhower administration and overthrow Iran's government. The preceding Truman administration had opposed a coup, fearing the precedent that Central Intelligence Agency involvement would set,^[25]: 3 and the U.S. government had been considering unilateral action (without UK support) to assist the Mosaddegh government as late as 1952.^[26][27][28] British intelligence and the UK government's solicitations to the US were instrumental in initiating and planning the coup. In the weeks before the coup, Mosaddegh consolidated power through a referendum to dissolve parliament that was deemed by observers as fraudulent and unconstitutional.^{[29][20][22][30]} Mossadegh justified it as "the will of the people is above the law."^[31]

Late on the evening of August 15, the head of the Shah's Imperial Guard, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, was dispatched to Tehran to deliver the dismissal decree directly to Mosaddegh. When Nassiri arrived at Mosaddegh's villa, he was immediately surrounded, disarmed, and arrested by military units loyal to the Prime Minister. Pro-Mosaddegh forces then took control of the capital, putting up roadblocks and actively hunting for General Zahedi, who fled into a CIA safe house. Learning via radio that his initial coup attempt had catastrophically collapsed, the Shah fled Iran on August 16 across the border to Baghdad, Iraq and later to Rome, Italy. A second, chaotic wave of protests organized by the CIA tried to overthrow Mosaddegh but failed; CIA officials were poised to flee the country when several Iranian officers recruited by the agency, acting on their own, took command of a pro-Shah demonstration in Tehran and seized the government, setting the stage for the Shah's swift return from Rome.^[28]

Following the coup, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran (Persian for 'king'),^[32] to rule more firmly as monarch. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power.^{[20][21][page needed][22][page needed][33]} According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-shah riots on 19 August.^[16] Other men paid by the CIA were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks and took over the streets of the city.^[34] Between 200^[3] and 300^[4] people were killed because of the conflict. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. On 21 December 1953, he was sentenced to three years in jail, then placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.^{[29]: 280 [35][36][page needed]} Other Mosaddegh supporters were imprisoned, and several received the death penalty.^[22] The coup strengthened the Shah's authority, and he continued to rule Iran for the next 26 years as a pro-Western monarch^[21][22] until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.^{[21][22][25][37]}

In August 2013, the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup. According to American journalist Stephen Kinzer, the operation included false flag attacks, paid protesters, provocations, the bribing of Iranian politicians and high-ranking security and army officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.^{[38][17][39][40][page needed]} The CIA is quoted as acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government".^[41] In 2023, the CIA took credit for the coup,^[42] which some scholars had previously disagreed with,^[43][44] while others agreed that the U.S. and Britain had engineered the coup.^{[45][clarification needed]}

1. ^ Parsa, Misagh (1989). Social origins of the Iranian revolution. Rutgers University Press. p. 160. ISBN 0-8135-1411-8. OCLC 760397425.
2. ^ Samad, Yunas; Sen, Kasturi (2007). Islam in the European Union: Transnationalism, Youth and the War on Terrors. Oxford University Press. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-19-547251-6.
3. ^ ^{a b} Wilford 2013, p. 166.
4. ^ ^{a b} Steven R. Ward (2009). Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-1-58901-587-6.
5. ^ TIME (17 August 1953). "IRAN: 99.93% Pure". TIME. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
6. ^ Milani, Abbas (4 January 2011). The Shah. Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-7193-7.
7. ^ "Historical Documents - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
8. ^ Takeyh, Ray (16 June 2014). "What Really Happened in Iran". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 93, no. 4. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
9. ^ "تغییرات قانون اساسی در دوره پهلوی | دانشنامه پژوهه پژوهشکده باقرالعلوم". pajoohe.ir. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
10. ^ Afkhami, Gholam Reza (12 January 2009). The Life and Times of the Shah. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-94216-5.
11. ^ Wilber, Donald Newton (March 1954). Clandestine Service history: overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953 (Report). Central Intelligence Agency. p. iii. OCLC 48164863. Archived from the original on 2 July 2009. Retrieved 6 June 2009.
12. ^ Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization. I.B.Tauris. 2007. pp. 775 of 1082. ISBN 978-1-84511-347-6.
13. ^ Byrne, Malcolm (18 August 2013). "CIA Admits It Was Behind Iran's Coup". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 17 December 2020. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
14. ^ The CIA's history of the 1953 coup in Iran is made up of the following documents: a historian's note, a summary introduction, a lengthy narrative account written by Dr. Donald N. Wilber, and, as appendices, five planning documents he attached. Risen, James (18 June 2000). "Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 25 January 2013.
15. ^ Wilford 2013, p. 164. "'TP' was the CIA country prefix for Iran, while 'AJAX' seems, rather prosaically, to have been a reference to the popular household cleanser, the implication being that the operation would scour Iran of communist influence".
16. ^ ^{a b} Olmo Gölz (2019). "The Dangerous Classes and the 1953 Coup in Iran: On the Decline of lutigari Masculinities". In Stephanie Cronin (ed.). Crime, Poverty and Survival in the Middle East and North Africa: The 'Dangerous Classes' since 1800. I.B. Tauris. pp. 177–190. doi:10.5040/9781838605902.ch-011. ISBN 978-1-78831-371-1. S2CID 213229339.
17. ^ ^{a b} Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (18 April 2024). "64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 12 October 2019. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
18. ^ Borger, Julian (17 August 2020). "British spy's account sheds light on role in 1953 Iranian coup". The Guardian.
19. ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2008). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-18549-0.
20. ^ ^{a b c} Cite error: The named reference Kressin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
21. ^ ^{a b c d} Cite error: The named reference Milani Persians was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
22. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Milani, Abbas (2011). The Shah. St. Martin's. ISBN 978-0-230-11562-0.
23. ^ Mary Ann Heiss (2004). "The International Boycott of Iranian Oil and the Anti-Mosaddeq Coup of 1953". In Boroujerdi, Mehrzad (ed.). Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. Syracuse University Press. pp. 178–200. JSTOR j.ctt1j5d815.10.
24. ^ Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, ed. (2004). Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. Syracuse University Press. JSTOR j.ctt1j5d815.
25. ^ ^{a b c} Kinzer, Stephen (2008). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-18549-0. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
26. ^ "New U.S. Documents Confirm British Approached U.S. in Late 1952 About Ousting Mosaddeq". National Security Archive. 8 August 2017. Archived from the original on 20 March 2020. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
27. ^ "Proposal to Organize a Coup in Iran". National Security Archive. 8 August 2017. Archived from the original on 10 May 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
28. ^ ^{a b} "How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and in '79)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 June 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2010.
29. ^ ^{a b} Cite error: The named reference iran was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
30. ^ "Iran 1906 Constitution". Foundation for Iranian Studies. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
31. ^ TIME (17 August 1953). "IRAN: 99.93% Pure". TIME. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
32. ^ Gholam Reza Afkhami (12 January 2009). The Life and Times of the Shah. University of California Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-520-94216-5.
33. ^ Sylvan, David; Majeski, Stephen (2009). U.S. foreign policy in perspective: clients, enemies and empire. London: Routledge. p. 121. doi:10.4324/9780203799451. ISBN 978-0-415-70134-1. OCLC 259970287.
34. ^ Zulaika, Joseba (2010). Terrorism: the self-fulfilling prophecy. University of Chicago Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-226-99417-8. OCLC 593226403.
35. ^ Norouzi, Ebrahim. "Mossadegh – A Medical Biography". Archived from the original on 19 May 2021. Retrieved 11 November 2024.
36. ^ Elwell-Sutton, Laurence Paul (1975). Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-8371-7122-7.
37. ^ "A CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran haunts the country with people still trying to make sense of it". AP News. 25 August 2023. Archived from the original on 16 April 2024. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
38. ^ "CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup". nsarchive2.gwu.edu. The National Security Archive. 19 August 2013. Archived from the original on 20 March 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2018.
39. ^ Kamali Dehghan, Saeed; Norton-Taylor, Richard (19 August 2013). "CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 April 2020. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
40. ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2008). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-18549-0.
41. ^ "In declassified document, CIA acknowledges role in '53 Iran coup". CNN. Archived from the original on 14 June 2017. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
42. ^ "CIA admits 1953 Iranian coup it backed was undemocratic". The Guardian. 13 October 2023. Archived from the original on 14 October 2023. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
43. ^ Wilford 2013, pp. 166–168.
44. ^ Cite error: The named reference Takeyh2014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
45. ^ Mahdavi, Mojtaba. Problematizing the Politics of Resistance in Pre-Revolutionary Iran. Cambridge University Press. p. 50.

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19 August 1953 – Cold War: The CIA and MI6 help to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran and reinstate the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

1953 Iranian coup d'état

Coup to depose Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddegh

On 19 August 1953, Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh was overthrown in a coup d'état after illegally dissolving the Parliament justifying it as “the will of the people is above the law,”^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} the coup d'état strengthened the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran. It was instigated by the United Kingdom (MI6), under the codename Operation Boot^{[11][12][13][14]} and the United States (CIA), under the codename TP-AJAX Project^[15] or Operation Ajax. A key motive was to protect British oil interests in Iran after Mosaddegh nationalized the country's oil industry.^[16][17][18]

Mosaddegh had sought to audit the documents of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP), to verify that AIOC was paying the contracted royalties to Iran, and to limit their control over Iranian oil reserves.^[19] Upon the AIOC's refusal to cooperate with the Iranian government, the parliament (Majlis) voted to nationalize Iran's oil industry and to expel foreign corporate representatives from the country.^[20][21][22] After this vote, Britain instigated a worldwide boycott of Iranian oil to pressure Iran economically.^[23] Initially, Britain mobilized its military to seize control of the British-built Abadan oil refinery, then the world's largest, but Prime Minister Clement Attlee opted instead to tighten the economic boycott^[24] while using agents to undermine Mosaddegh's government.^[25]: 3 Judging Mosaddegh to be unamenable and fearing the growing influence of the communist Tudeh, UK prime minister Winston Churchill decided in early 1953 to solicit the Eisenhower administration and overthrow Iran's government. The preceding Truman administration had opposed a coup, fearing the precedent that Central Intelligence Agency involvement would set,^[25]: 3 and the U.S. government had been considering unilateral action (without UK support) to assist the Mosaddegh government as late as 1952.^[26][27][28] British intelligence and the UK government's solicitations to the US were instrumental in initiating and planning the coup. In the weeks before the coup, Mosaddegh consolidated power through a referendum to dissolve parliament that was deemed by observers as fraudulent and unconstitutional.^{[29][20][22][30]} Mossadegh justified it as "the will of the people is above the law."^[31]

Late on the evening of August 15, the head of the Shah's Imperial Guard, Colonel Nematollah Nassiri, was dispatched to Tehran to deliver the dismissal decree directly to Mosaddegh. When Nassiri arrived at Mosaddegh's villa, he was immediately surrounded, disarmed, and arrested by military units loyal to the Prime Minister. Pro-Mosaddegh forces then took control of the capital, putting up roadblocks and actively hunting for General Zahedi, who fled into a CIA safe house. Learning via radio that his initial coup attempt had catastrophically collapsed, the Shah fled Iran on August 16 across the border to Baghdad, Iraq and later to Rome, Italy. A second, chaotic wave of protests organized by the CIA tried to overthrow Mosaddegh but failed; CIA officials were poised to flee the country when several Iranian officers recruited by the agency, acting on their own, took command of a pro-Shah demonstration in Tehran and seized the government, setting the stage for the Shah's swift return from Rome.^[28]

Following the coup, a government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran (Persian for 'king'),^[32] to rule more firmly as monarch. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power.^{[20][21][page needed][22][page needed][33]} According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-shah riots on 19 August.^[16] Other men paid by the CIA were brought into Tehran in buses and trucks and took over the streets of the city.^[34] Between 200^[3] and 300^[4] people were killed because of the conflict. Mosaddegh was arrested, tried and convicted of treason by the Shah's military court. On 21 December 1953, he was sentenced to three years in jail, then placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.^{[29]: 280 [35][36][page needed]} Other Mosaddegh supporters were imprisoned, and several received the death penalty.^[22] The coup strengthened the Shah's authority, and he continued to rule Iran for the next 26 years as a pro-Western monarch^[21][22] until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.^{[21][22][25][37]}

In August 2013, the U.S. government formally acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup by releasing a bulk of previously classified government documents that show it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup. According to American journalist Stephen Kinzer, the operation included false flag attacks, paid protesters, provocations, the bribing of Iranian politicians and high-ranking security and army officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda.^{[38][17][39][40][page needed]} The CIA is quoted as acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government".^[41] In 2023, the CIA took credit for the coup,^[42] which some scholars had previously disagreed with,^[43][44] while others agreed that the U.S. and Britain had engineered the coup.^{[45][clarification needed]}

1. ^ Parsa, Misagh (1989). Social origins of the Iranian revolution. Rutgers University Press. p. 160. ISBN 0-8135-1411-8. OCLC 760397425.
2. ^ Samad, Yunas; Sen, Kasturi (2007). Islam in the European Union: Transnationalism, Youth and the War on Terrors. Oxford University Press. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-19-547251-6.
3. ^ ^{a b} Wilford 2013, p. 166.
4. ^ ^{a b} Steven R. Ward (2009). Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces. Georgetown University Press. p. 189. ISBN 978-1-58901-587-6.
5. ^ TIME (17 August 1953). "IRAN: 99.93% Pure". TIME. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
6. ^ Milani, Abbas (4 January 2011). The Shah. Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-7193-7.
7. ^ "Historical Documents - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
8. ^ Takeyh, Ray (16 June 2014). "What Really Happened in Iran". Foreign Affairs. Vol. 93, no. 4. ISSN 0015-7120. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
9. ^ "تغییرات قانون اساسی در دوره پهلوی | دانشنامه پژوهه پژوهشکده باقرالعلوم". pajoohe.ir. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
10. ^ Afkhami, Gholam Reza (12 January 2009). The Life and Times of the Shah. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-94216-5.
11. ^ Wilber, Donald Newton (March 1954). Clandestine Service history: overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953 (Report). Central Intelligence Agency. p. iii. OCLC 48164863. Archived from the original on 2 July 2009. Retrieved 6 June 2009.
12. ^ Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization. I.B.Tauris. 2007. pp. 775 of 1082. ISBN 978-1-84511-347-6.
13. ^ Byrne, Malcolm (18 August 2013). "CIA Admits It Was Behind Iran's Coup". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 17 December 2020. Retrieved 8 May 2017.
14. ^ The CIA's history of the 1953 coup in Iran is made up of the following documents: a historian's note, a summary introduction, a lengthy narrative account written by Dr. Donald N. Wilber, and, as appendices, five planning documents he attached. Risen, James (18 June 2000). "Secrets of History: The C.I.A. in Iran". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 25 January 2013.
15. ^ Wilford 2013, p. 164. "'TP' was the CIA country prefix for Iran, while 'AJAX' seems, rather prosaically, to have been a reference to the popular household cleanser, the implication being that the operation would scour Iran of communist influence".
16. ^ ^{a b} Olmo Gölz (2019). "The Dangerous Classes and the 1953 Coup in Iran: On the Decline of lutigari Masculinities". In Stephanie Cronin (ed.). Crime, Poverty and Survival in the Middle East and North Africa: The 'Dangerous Classes' since 1800. I.B. Tauris. pp. 177–190. doi:10.5040/9781838605902.ch-011. ISBN 978-1-78831-371-1. S2CID 213229339.
17. ^ ^{a b} Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (18 April 2024). "64 Years Later, CIA Finally Releases Details of Iranian Coup". Foreign Policy. Archived from the original on 12 October 2019. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
18. ^ Borger, Julian (17 August 2020). "British spy's account sheds light on role in 1953 Iranian coup". The Guardian.
19. ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2008). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-18549-0.
20. ^ ^{a b c} Cite error: The named reference Kressin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
21. ^ ^{a b c d} Cite error: The named reference Milani Persians was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
22. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Milani, Abbas (2011). The Shah. St. Martin's. ISBN 978-0-230-11562-0.
23. ^ Mary Ann Heiss (2004). "The International Boycott of Iranian Oil and the Anti-Mosaddeq Coup of 1953". In Boroujerdi, Mehrzad (ed.). Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. Syracuse University Press. pp. 178–200. JSTOR j.ctt1j5d815.10.
24. ^ Boroujerdi, Mehrzad, ed. (2004). Mohammad Mosaddeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran. Syracuse University Press. JSTOR j.ctt1j5d815.
25. ^ ^{a b c} Kinzer, Stephen (2008). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-18549-0. Retrieved 11 August 2018.
26. ^ "New U.S. Documents Confirm British Approached U.S. in Late 1952 About Ousting Mosaddeq". National Security Archive. 8 August 2017. Archived from the original on 20 March 2020. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
27. ^ "Proposal to Organize a Coup in Iran". National Security Archive. 8 August 2017. Archived from the original on 10 May 2019. Retrieved 1 September 2017.
28. ^ ^{a b} "How a Plot Convulsed Iran in '53 (and in '79)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 26 June 2017. Retrieved 5 June 2010.
29. ^ ^{a b} Cite error: The named reference iran was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
30. ^ "Iran 1906 Constitution". Foundation for Iranian Studies. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
31. ^ TIME (17 August 1953). "IRAN: 99.93% Pure". TIME. Retrieved 1 September 2026.
32. ^ Gholam Reza Afkhami (12 January 2009). The Life and Times of the Shah. University of California Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-520-94216-5.
33. ^ Sylvan, David; Majeski, Stephen (2009). U.S. foreign policy in perspective: clients, enemies and empire. London: Routledge. p. 121. doi:10.4324/9780203799451. ISBN 978-0-415-70134-1. OCLC 259970287.
34. ^ Zulaika, Joseba (2010). Terrorism: the self-fulfilling prophecy. University of Chicago Press. p. 139. ISBN 978-0-226-99417-8. OCLC 593226403.
35. ^ Norouzi, Ebrahim. "Mossadegh – A Medical Biography". Archived from the original on 19 May 2021. Retrieved 11 November 2024.
36. ^ Elwell-Sutton, Laurence Paul (1975). Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics. Greenwood Press. ISBN 978-0-8371-7122-7.
37. ^ "A CIA-backed 1953 coup in Iran haunts the country with people still trying to make sense of it". AP News. 25 August 2023. Archived from the original on 16 April 2024. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
38. ^ "CIA Confirms Role in 1953 Iran Coup". nsarchive2.gwu.edu. The National Security Archive. 19 August 2013. Archived from the original on 20 March 2020. Retrieved 21 August 2018.
39. ^ Kamali Dehghan, Saeed; Norton-Taylor, Richard (19 August 2013). "CIA admits role in 1953 Iranian coup". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 April 2020. Retrieved 20 August 2013.
40. ^ Kinzer, Stephen (2008). All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-470-18549-0.
41. ^ "In declassified document, CIA acknowledges role in '53 Iran coup". CNN. Archived from the original on 14 June 2017. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
42. ^ "CIA admits 1953 Iranian coup it backed was undemocratic". The Guardian. 13 October 2023. Archived from the original on 14 October 2023. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
43. ^ Wilford 2013, pp. 166–168.
44. ^ Cite error: The named reference Takeyh2014 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
45. ^ Mahdavi, Mojtaba. Problematizing the Politics of Resistance in Pre-Revolutionary Iran. Cambridge University Press. p. 50.

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