Events

• AD 70 – Titus ends the siege of Jerusalem after destroying Herod’s Temple.
• 1282 – Peter III of Aragon lands at Trapani to intervene in the War of the Sicilian Vespers.
• 1363 – The five-week Battle of Lake Poyang begins, in which the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders (Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang) meet to decide who will supplant the Yuan dynasty.
• 1590 – Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle. (Traditional Japanese date: 01 August 1590).
• 1791 – HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on the outer Great Barrier Reef the previous day.
• 1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition.
• 1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen.
• 1813 – First Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance.
• 1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre: Creek “Red Sticks” kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama.
• 1835 – Australia: Melbourne, Victoria is founded.
• 1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General William “Bull” Nelson.
• 1873 – Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Sea.
• 1896 – Philippine Revolution: After Spanish victory in the Battle of San Juan del Monte, eight provinces in the Philippines are declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas.
• 1914 – World War I: Germans defeat the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg.
• 1917 – Vietnamese prison guards led by Trịnh Văn Cấn mutiny at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary against local French authority.
• 1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, which along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.
• 1922 – Battle of Dumlupınar: The final battle in the Greco-Turkish War (“Turkish War of Independence”).
• 1940 – World War II: The Second Vienna Award reassigns the territory of Northern Transylvania from Romania to Hungary.
• 1941 – World War II: The Tighina Agreement, a treaty regarding administration issues of the Transnistria Governorate, is signed between Germany and Romania.
• 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Alam el Halfa begins.
• 1945 – World War II: The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong comes to an end.
• 1945 – World War II: The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base.
• 1945 – World War II: The Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, comes into being.
• 1959 – South Vietnamese opposition figure Phan Quang Dan was elected to the National Assembly despite soldiers being bussed in to vote for President Ngo Dinh Diem’s candidate.
• 1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war.
• 1963 – The Moscow-Washington hotline between the leaders of the US and the Soviet Union goes into operation.
• 1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Azerbaijan declares independence from Soviet Union.
• 1995 – Bosnian War: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
• 1998 – Second Congo War: Armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and their Angolan and Zimbabwean allies recapture Matadi and the Inga dams in the western DRC from RCD and Rwandan troops.
• 2014 – Prime Minister of Lesotho Tom Thabane flees to South Africa as the army allegedly stages a coup.

People (Births)

• 1890 – Samuel Frederick Henry Thompson, English captain and pilot (d. 1918).
• 1910 – Roger Bushell, South African-English soldier and pilot (d. 1944).
• 1917 – Denis Healey, English soldier and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (d. 2015).
• 1920 – Arnold Green, Estonian soldier and politician (d. 2011).
• 1931 – Jack Swigert, American pilot and astronaut (d. 1982).
• 1942 – Jonathan Aitken, Irish-British journalist and politician, Minister for Defence Procurement.
• 1954 – Alexander Lukashenko, Belarusian marshal and politician, 1st President of Belarus.
• 1960 – Gary Gordon, American sergeant, Medal of Honour recipient (d. 1993).
• 1974 – Javier Otxoa, Spanish cyclist (d. 2018).
• 1985 – Leisel Jones, Australian swimmer.
• 1985 – Éva Risztov, Hungarian swimmer.
• 1985 – Eamon Sullivan, Australian swimmer.

People (Deaths)

• 1619 – Shimazu Yoshihiro, Japanese samurai and warlord (b. 1535).
• 1879 – John Bell Hood, American general (b. 1831).
• 1886 – Ferris Jacobs, Jr., American general and politician (b. 1836).
• 1908 – Alexander P. Stewart, American general (b. 1821).
• 1988 – Jack Marshall, New Zealand colonel, lawyer and politician, 28th Prime Minister of New Zealand (b. 1912).
• 2003 – Charles Bronson, American actor and soldier (b. 1921).
• 2007 – Charles Vanik, American soldier and politician (b. 1918).
• 2014 – Igor Decraene, Belgian cyclist (b. 1996).