On August 23
On August 23, 2 pivotal events are recorded in the Human Saga, including Battle of Stalingrad (1942).
On this day
The Battle of Stalingrad was fought from 23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943 between German and Soviet forces for control of the city on the Volga.
On 23 August 1514 the Ottoman Sultan Selim I crushed the Safavid army of Shah Ismail I at Chaldiran in northwestern Iran.
Also this week in history (Aug 20 – Aug 26)
On 26 August 1071, near Manzikert (modern Malazgirt in eastern Anatolia), the Byzantine army under Emperor Romanos IV Diogenes was decisively defeated by the Seljuk forces of Sultan Alp Arslan.
On the night of 22 August 1791, following a clandestine vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman associated with the leader Dutty Boukman, enslaved people across the northern plain of Saint-Domingue rose in revolt, burning plantations and seizing…
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE buried the Campanian towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae under metres of ash, pumice and pyroclastic surges, killing thousands and freezing daily Roman life in place.
On 24 August 410 CE the Visigoths under their king Alaric entered Rome and plundered the city for three days, the first time Rome had fallen to a foreign enemy in nearly 800 years.
Beginning at dawn on 24 August 1572 in Paris, Catholic mobs and royal forces slaughtered French Protestants (Huguenots) who had gathered for the wedding of the Protestant Henry of Navarre to Margaret of Valois.
On 26 August 1789 the French National Constituent Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a foundational statement of the principles of the French Revolution.
On 20 August 1897, while working in Secunderabad in British India, the army surgeon Ronald Ross dissected an Anopheles mosquito that had fed days earlier on a malaria patient and found the malarial parasite developing within cells of the…
On 22 August 1948, representatives of 147 churches from 44 countries gathered in Amsterdam to inaugurate the World Council of Churches (WCC), a fellowship of churches affirming Jesus Christ as God and Saviour.