Browsing: August

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on August 19th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On August 19, 1612, three women from Samlesbury in Lancashire, England were put on trial for witchcraft. A letter written on August 19, 1665 or 1666 was found inside the cover of The Voynich manuscript, an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. On August 19, 1839, the government of France announced that the “Daguerreotype process,” an invention of Louis Daguerre as…

A Brief History On August 19, 1991, leader of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under arrest while on vacation in Foros, Ukraine.  This first step in the action called “The August Coup” was the first step that resulted in the dissolution of the largest country in the world. Digging Deeper The USSR was formed in 1922 from the Russian Empire that disintegrated during World War I and included much of the old empire plus new territory to create a giant communist country consisting of a federation of 15 national republics. The Western democracies had an uneasy relationship with the…

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on August 18th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On August 18, 1587, Virginia Dare was born in the Roanoke Colony in what is now North Carolina. On August 18, 1612, the trials of the “Pendle Witches” began in England. On August 18, 1920, the United States ratified the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. On August 18, 1940, an air battle was fought between the British RAF and the German Luftwaffe,…

A Brief History On August 18, 1940, an air battle was fought between the British RAF and the German Luftwaffe, the largest air battle in history to that point as part of the Battle of Britain, July 10 through October 31, 1940. Digging Deeper German planners knew they had to defeat British air defenses in order to defeat Britain, and the best way to make that happen was to destroy the RAF Fighter Command.  Despite September 15, 1940, being known as “Battle of Britain Day,” the purported climax of the Battle of Britain, it was “The Hardest Day” that saw…

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on August 17th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On August 17, 1498, Cesare Borgia, the son of reigning Pope Alexander VI, resigned his office as Cardinal of the Catholic Church, becoming the first cardinal to do so. On August 17, 1943, the U.S. 8th Air Force, the main American unit of heavy bombers stationed in England, launched 376 B-17 bombers against Schweinfurt and Regensburg in Germany, a raid that came…