Historical Events on this Day in History - per Wikipedia

August 23

• 79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
• 1305 – William Wallace, Scottish patriot, is hanged, drawn and quartered for high treason by Edward I of England.
• 1328 – Battle of Cassel: French troops stop an uprising of Flemish farmers.
• 1514 – Battle of Chaldiran ended with a decisive victory for the Sultan Selim I, Ottoman Empire, over the Shah Ismail I, Safavids founder.
• 1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.
• 1555 – Calvinists are granted rights in the Netherlands.
• 1572 – Mob violence against Huguenots in Paris – St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
• 1595 – Michael the Brave confronts the Ottoman army in the Battle of Calugareni.
• 1650 – Colonel George Monck of the English Army forms Monck's Regiment of Foot, which will later become the Coldstream Guards.
• 1708 – Meidingnu Pamheiba is crowned King of Manipur.
• 1775 – King George III declares that the American colonies exist in a state of open and avowed rebellion.
• 1784 – Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it wasn’t accepted into the United States, and only lasted for four years.
• 1799 – Napoleon leaves Egypt for France en route to seize power.
• 1813 – At the Battle of Grossbeeren, the Prussians under Von Bülow repulse the French army.
• 1839 – The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
• 1858 – The Round Oak rail accident occurs in Brierley Hill in the Black Country, England. It is 'Arguably the worst disaster ever to occur on British railways'.
• 1864 – The Union Navy captures Fort Morgan, Alabama, thus breaking Confederate dominance of all ports on the Gulf of Mexico.
• 1866 – Austro-Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague.
• 1873 – Albert Bridge in Chelsea, London opened.
• 1896 – Officially recognised date of the Cry of Pugad Lawin, the start of the Philippine Revolution is made in Pugad Lawin (Quezon City), in the province of Manila (actual date and location is disputed).
• 1904 – The automobile tire chain is patented.
• 1914 – World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.
• 1914 – World War I: the Battle of Mons; the British Army begins withdrawal.
• 1921 – British airship R-38 experiences structural failure over Hull in England and crashes in the Humber estuary. Of her 49 British and American training crew, only 4 survive.
• 1923 – Capt. Lowell Smith and Lt. John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.
• 1927 – Sacco and Vanzetti are executed.
• 1929 – Hebron Massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attack on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, continuing until the next day, resulted in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
• 1938 – English cricketer Len Hutton sets a world record for the highest individual Test innings of 364, during a Test match against Australia.
• 1939 – World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.
• 1942 – World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.
• 1943 – World War II: Kharkov liberated as a result of the Battle of Kursk.
• 1944 – World War II: Marseille liberated.
• 1944 – World War II King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of General Antonescu, who is arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies (see King Michael's Coup)
• 1944 – Freckleton Air Disaster – A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people.
• 1946 – Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Land (state) of Schleswig-Holstein.
• 1948 – World Council of Churches is formed.
• 1954 – First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
• 1958 – Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.
• 1966 – Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
• 1970 – Organized by Mexican American union leader César Chávez, the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farm worker strike in U.S. history, begins.
• 1977 – The Gossamer Condor wins the Kremer prize for human powered flight.
• 1982 – Bachir Gemayel is elected Lebanese President amidst the raging civil war.
• 1985 – Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.
• 1989 – Singing Revolution: two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands (Baltic Way).
• 1989 – 1,645 Australian domestic airline pilots resign after the airlines threaten to fire them and sue them over a dispute.
• 1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.
• 1990 – Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1990 – West Germany and East Germany announce that they will unite on October 3.
• 1994 – Eugene Bullard, The only black pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.
• 1996 – Osama bin Laden issues message entitled 'A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.'
• 2000 – Gulf Air Flight 072 crashes into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143.
• 2006 – Natascha Kampusch, who had been abducted at the age of 10, managed to escape from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil, after 8 years of captivity.