Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 23

This is a list of selected August 23 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← August 22	August 24 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

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  Eight-foot statue of Wallace by Alexander Carrick near the entrance of Edinburgh Castle
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  Stained-glass depiction of William Wallace
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  Sacco and Vanzetti
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  Lunar Orbiter 1
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  Albert Bridge in London at night
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  Flag of Ukraine
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  Part of the human chain forming the Baltic Way
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  Cesar Chavez
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  German tanks and soldiers in the Battle of Kursk
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  Dogs of the Southern Cross Expedition
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  Proclamation of Rebellion

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
Day of the National Flag in Ukraine	refimprove section
International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition	stub
1514 – Ottoman forces defeated the Safavids at the Battle of Chaldiran, gaining control of eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq.	Uncited section
1521 – Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire: After an extended siege, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés's forces captured the Aztec leader Cuauhtémoc and conquered the capital of Tenochtitlan.	refimprove
1572 – French Wars of Religion: The St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, a wave of Catholic mob violence against Protestant Huguenots, began, resulting in an estimated tens of thousands deaths across France over several months.	unreferenced section
1784 – The western part of the U.S. state of North Carolina declared independence as the State of Franklin.	lots of inline tags
1866 – Prussia defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War, dissolving the German Confederation.	refimprove section
1927 – After a controversial trial, and despite worldwide protests, Italian-born American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed by electric chair for murder.	CN tags, refimprove section
1948 – The World Council of Churches, a worldwide Christian ecumenical organization, was established in Amsterdam.	primary sources
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.	"Too long" banner
1954 - A prototype C-130 transport aircraft, the longest continuously produced military aircraft, makes its maiden flight from a Lockheed plant in Burbank, California.	Orange "more sources needed" banner
1958 – The People's Liberation Army began an intense artillery bombardment of Quemoy, sparking the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.	needs more footnotes, neutrality issues
1966 – NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1 took the first photograph of Earth from the distance of the Moon.	refimprove
1970 – The United Farm Workers, led by Cesar Chavez, began the Salad Bowl strike, the largest farmworker strike in U.S. history.	page numbers needed
2007 – The skeletal remains of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia, and his sister Anastasia were found near Yekaterinburg, Russia.	Alexei: refimprove section
Ebussuud Efendi |d|1574|	"More refs needed" banner
Abraham Yates Jr. |b|1724|	"Lead too short" banner

Eligible

• 1305 – William Wallace, a leader of Scottish resistance against England during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was hanged, drawn and quartered.
• 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.
• 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 M_W 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: | Radagaisus |d|406| Isabella of Aragon, Queen of Portugal |d|1498| Evangelos Zappas|b|1800| Minna Craucher |b|1891| John Sherman Cooper |b|1901| Keith Moon |b|1946|Oscar Hammerstein II |d|1960| Rex Grossman |b|1980| Denny Bautista |b|1980| Jeremy Lin |b|1988 |James White |d|1999

August 23: Black Ribbon Day

Stalin and Ribbentrop shaking hands after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

• 1898 – The Southern Cross Expedition , 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 (pictured), a ten-year mutual non-aggression treaty, which also secretly divided northern and eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres of influence.
• 1954 – The Cruise of the Kings, a royal cruise organised by the Queen Consort of Greece, Frederica of Hanover, departed from Marseille, France.
• 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.

• Hamilton Disston (b. 1844)
• Sarah Yorke Jackson (d. 1877)
• Germán Busch (d. 1939)
• Mimis Papaioannou (b. 1942)

More anniversaries:

• August 22
• August 23
• August 24