Historical Events on August 20

  • 1775: Presidio San Augustin del Tucson is established by the Spanish. It would later become known as Tucson, Arizona.
  • 1794: American troops push back a confederacy of American Indian tribes during the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
  • 1852: After a collision, the steamboat known as the Atlantic sank on Lake Erie. At least 150 people were killed.
  • 1858: The theory of evolution through natural selection is published for the first time in the The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London by Charles Darwin.
  • 1866: The American Civil War is proclaimed to be officially over by then President Andrew Johnson.
  • 1882: The 1812 Overture by Tchaikovsky debuts in Moscow, Russia.
  • 1910: The Great Fire of 1910 begins on this day. This fire, which was also known as the Big Burn, engulfed over 3 million acres across northeast Washington, western Montana and northern Idaho.
  • 1914: Germany invades Brussels in Belgium.
  • 1940: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivers his fourth of his now famous wartime speeches.
  • 1944: 168 captured allied airmen are taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp.
  • 1944: The Soviet Union launches a major offensive during the Battle of Romania.
  • 1975: Viking 1 probe is launched by NASA towards the planet of Mars.
  • 1977: The Voyager 2 spacecraft is launched by NASA.
  • 1998: It’s ruled by the Supreme Court of Canada that Quebec doesn’t have the authority to legally secede from Canada without the government’s approval.
  • 1998: The U.S launches cruise missile attacks at suspected al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan to retaliate for the August 7th bombings of American embassies.

Famous Birthdays on August 20

  • American actor and screenwriter Donn Swaby is born in 1973.
  • American actress Amy Adams is born in 1974.
  • American actor Misha Collins is born in 1974.
  • American baseball play Chris Schroder is born in 1978.
  • English tennis player Sarah Borwell is born in 1979.