A Brief History
This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on August 14th. For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event.
Digging Deeper
On August 14, 1480, during the protracted Battle of Otranto in Southern Italy, a siege of the city between the Ottoman Turks and the Italian defenders of their homeland, the Ottomans, who of course were of the Islamic faith, took 800 Christian Italians hostage and gave them a choice, convert to Islam or be executed.
On August 14, 1851, John Henry Holliday was born in Griffin, Georgia.
On August 14, 1880, work on the Cathedral of Cologne was finally finished after it had been started 600 years earlier!
On August 14, 1893, some idiot in France dreamed up motor vehicle registration.
On August 14, 1937, the Japanese invasion of China that started July 7, 1937, at the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, saw the first air to air combat of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War and arguably the first air to air combat of World War II (presuming you consider the start of the war between Japan and China as the start of World War II).
On August 14, 1947, the independent country of Pakistan came about, a mostly Muslim country consisting of the Northeast and Northwest portions of the Indian sub-continent carved out of the British colony of India.
On August 14, 1994, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, Venezuelan terrorist and one of the most wanted men in the world, was finally arrested by authorities in the Sudan and turned over to French law enforcement.
On August 14, 2003, an enormous electrical blackout struck the Northeast and upper Midwest of the United States and a large part of Western Ontario, Canada, leaving about (or “aboot” in the Great White North) 55 million people without electricity for a period lasting between seven hours and two days.
Because the Northeast blackout of August 14–16, 2003 came only two years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the first thought in the minds of many people was that a terrorist attack had occurred.
From August 14 through 16, 2003, a widespread power outage affected millions of people living throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and the Canadian province of Ontario.
On August 14, 2014, we ran a list of wonderful products named after the city they are associated with or came from.
On August 14, 2017, President Donald Trump of the United States and Dictator for Life Kim Jong Un of North Korea have been engaging in a war of words, threatening each other’s country with one sort of hyperbolic annihilation or another.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Andrews, John and Matt Baker. Timeline of World History. Thunder Bay Press, 2020.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.