August 23 30 BC After the successful invasion of Egypt, Octavian executes Marcus Antonius Antyllus.*
August 23 476 Odoacer, chieftain of the Germanic tribes (Herulic Scirian foederati), is proclaimed rex Italiae ("King of Italy") by his troops.*
August 23 1244 Siege of Jerusalem The city's citadel, the Tower of David, surrenders to Khwarezmian Empire.*
August 23 1268 The Battle of Tagliacozzo marks the fall of the Hohenstaufen family from the Imperial and Sicilian thrones, and leading to the new chapter of Angevin domination in Southern Italy.*
August 23 1328 Battle of Cassel French troops stop an uprising of Flemish farmers.*
August 23 1382 Siege of Moscow The Golden Horde led by Tokhtamysh lays siege to the capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.*
August 23 1514 The Battle of Chaldiran ends with a decisive victory for the Sultan Selim I, Ottoman Empire, over the Shah Ismail I, founder of the Safavid dynasty.[2]*
August 23 1595 Long Turkish War Wallachian prince Michael the Brave confronts the Ottoman army in the Battle of Călugăreni and achieves a tactical victory.*
August 23 1600 Battle of Gifu Castle The eastern forces of Tokugawa Ieyasu defeat the western Japanese clans loyal to Toyotomi Hideyori, leading to the destruction of Gifu Castle and serving as a prelude to the Battle of Sekigahara.*
August 23 1655 Battle of Sobota The Swedish Empire led by Charles X Gustav defeats the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth.*
August 23 1775 American Revolutionary War King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James's stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.*
August 23 1813 At the Battle of Großbeeren, the Prussians under Von Bülow repulse the French army.*
August 23 1839 The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares for the First Opium War with Qing China.*
August 23 1864 American Civil War The Union Navy captures Fort Morgan, Alabama, thus breaking Confederate dominance of all ports on the Gulf of Mexico except Galveston, Texas.*
August 23 1866 Austro Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague.*
August 23 1914 The British Expeditionary Force and the French Fifth Army begin their Great Retreat before the German Army.*
August 23 1914 Japan declares war on Germany.*
August 23 1921 British airship R38 experiences structural failure over Hull in England and crashes in the Humber Estuary. Of her 49 British and American training crew, only four survive.*
August 23 1923 Captain Lowell Smith and Lieutenant John P. Richter performed the first midair refuelling on De Havilland DH4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.*
August 23 1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression treaty, the Molotov Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.*
August 23 1942 Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.*
August 23 1943 Kharkiv is liberated by the Soviet Union after the Battle of Kursk.*
August 23 1944 Marseille is liberated by the Allies.*
August 23 1944 King Michael of Romania dismisses the proNazi government of Marshal Antonescu, who is arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies.*
August 23 1945 Soviet Japanese War The USSR State Defence Committee issues Decree no. 9898cc "About Receiving, Accommodation, and Labour Utilization of the Japanese Army Prisoners of War".
August 23 1946 Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Länder (states) of Hanover and SchleswigHolstein.*
August 23 1954 First flight of the Lockheed C130 multirole aircraft.*
August 23 1958 Chinese Civil War The Second Taiwan Strait Crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.*
August 23 1993 Oberon Class Diesel-Electric Submarine, HMS OPOSSUM, paid off at Gosport 1*
August 23 1994 Eugene Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.*
* Wikipedia 1* Royal Navy
