Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 23

Images
Use only ONE image at a time

Eligible

 * 1305 – William Wallace, a leader of Scottish resistance against England during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was hanged, drawn and quartered.
 * 1514 – Ottoman forces defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran, gaining control of eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq.
 * 1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition (dogsled team pictured), the first British venture of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, departed London.
 * 1914 – In their first major action of the First World War, the British Expeditionary Force engaged German troops in Mons, Belgium.
 * 1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, a ten-year mutual non-aggression treaty, which also secretly divided northern and eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
 * 1944 – King Michael dismissed the pro-Axis government of General Ion Antonescu, placing Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of World War II.
 * 1954 - A prototype C-130 transport aircraft, the longest continuously produced military aircraft, makes its maiden flight from a Lockheed plant in Burbank, California
 * 1989 – Singing Revolution: Approximately two million people joined hands to form a human chain spanning 675.5 kilometres (419.7 mi) across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics to demonstrate their desire for independence.
 * 2006 – Natascha Kampusch, who had been abducted at the age of ten in Vienna, escaped from her captor's house in Strasshof an der Nordbahn after more than eight years in captivity.
 * 2010 – A former Philippine National Police officer hijacked a tourist bus in Manila, holding its occupants hostage for nearly eleven hours and killing eight of them before being killed by police himself.
 * 2011 – A 5.8 MW earthquake struck the Piedmont region of Virginia, and was felt by more people than any other quake in U.S. history.
 * Born/died this day: | Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal |d|1498| Ebussuud Efendi |d|1574| Abraham Yates Jr. |b|1724| Minna Craucher |b|1891| John Sherman Cooper |b|1901| Keith Moon |b|1946|Oscar Hammerstein II |d|1960| Rex Grossman |b|1980| Jeremy Lin |b|1988

August 23: Black Ribbon Day


 * 1775 – King George III issued a proclamation (copy pictured) that declared elements of the American colonies of Great Britain to be in a state of "open and avowed rebellion".
 * 1873 – The Albert Bridge, spanning the River Thames in London, opened to traffic.
 * 1933 – The Chesapeake–Potomac hurricane made landfall in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and went on to cause at least 47 deaths in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region.
 * 1943 – Second World War: A decisive Soviet victory against German forces at the Battle of Kursk gave the Red Army the strategic initiative for the rest of the war.
 * 1954 – The Cruise of the Kings, a royal cruise organised by the Queen Consort of Greece, Frederica of Hanover, departs from Marseille, France.