Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 23
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is a list of selected August 23 anniversaries that appears on 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 may be controversial, or on a day that is or soon will be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors.
- 1305 – After a show trial, William Wallace (pictured), leader of the Scottish resistance against England during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was executed in Smithfield Market, London.
- 1839 – As it prepared for war against China's Qing Dynasty, an ensuing conflict that became known as the First Opium War, Britain captured the southeast Asia port of Hong Kong.
- 1927 – After a controversial trial, and despite worldwide protests, Italian-born American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed via electrocution in Massachusetts for the charge of murder and theft.
- 1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a 10-year, mutual non-aggression treaty that was eventually broken when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union two years later.
- 1989 – Baltic Way: Approximately two million people joined their hands to form an over 600 km (373 mi) long human chain across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics during the Singing Revolution.
