On this day: August 20

Events on August 20

• 14 Agrippa Postumus, maternal grandson of the late Roman emperor Augustus, is executed by his guards while in exile. Wikipedia
• 636 Battle of the Yarmuk: Marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia, Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid defeat the Byzantine Empire and take control of the Levant. Wikipedia
• 917 Battle of Acheloos: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria decisively defeats a Byzantine army. Wikipedia
• 1858 Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory. Wikipedia
• 1882 Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow, Russia. Wikipedia
• 1905 Sun Yat-sen, Song Jiaoren, and others establish the Tongmenghui, a Republican, anti-Qing revolutionary organisation, in Tokyo, Japan. Wikipedia
• 1909 Pluto was photographed for the first time at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, U.S., 21 years before it was officially discovered by Clyde Tombaugh. Wikipedia
• 1910 Hurricane-force winds combined hundreds of small fires in the U.S. states of Washington and Idaho into the Devil's Broom fire, which burned about 4,700 square miles (12,100 km²), the largest fire in recorded U.S. history. Wikipedia
• 1914 World War I: Brussels is captured during the German invasion of Belgium. Wikipedia
• 1940 World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes the fourth of his famous wartime speeches, containing the line "Never was so much owed by so many to so few". Wikipedia
• 1944 World War II: The Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet Union offensive. Wikipedia
• 1948 Soviet Consul General in New York, Jacob M. Lomakin is expelled by the United States, due to the Kasenkina Case. Wikipedia
• 1949 Hungary adopts the Hungarian Constitution of 1949 and becomes a People's Republic. Wikipedia
• 1955 Battle of Philippeville: In Algeria, a force of Berbers from the Atlas Mountains region of Algeria raid two rural settlements and kill 77 French nationals. Wikipedia
• 1960 Senegal breaks from the Mali Federation, declaring its independence. Wikipedia
• 1968 Cold War: Warsaw Pact troops invade Czechoslovakia, crushing the Prague Spring. East German participation is limited to a few specialists due to memories of the recent war. Only Albania and Romania refuse to participate. Wikipedia
• 1975 Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars. Wikipedia
• 1975 ČSA Flight 540 crashes on approach to Damascus International Airport in Damascus, Syria, killing 126 people. Wikipedia
• 1991 Estonia, occupied by and incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, issues a decision on the re-establishment of independence on the basis of legal continuity of its pre-occupation statehood. Wikipedia
• 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev. Wikipedia
• 1997 Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped. Wikipedia
• 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: The United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical weapons plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Wikipedia
• 1998 The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval. Wikipedia
• 2008 Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid, Spain to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. Of the 172 people on board, 146 die immediately, and eight more later die of injuries sustained in the crash. Wikipedia
• 2012 A prison riot in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, kills at least 20 people. Wikipedia
• 2020 Joe Biden gives his acceptance speech virtually for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination at the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Wikipedia

Born on August 20

• 1720 Bernard de Bury, French harpsichord player and composer (died 1785) Wikipedia
• 1779 Jöns Jacob Berzelius, Swedish chemist and academic (died 1848) Wikipedia
• 1833 Benjamin Harrison, American general, lawyer, and politician, 23rd President of the United States (died 1901) Wikipedia
• 1847 Bolesław Prus, Polish journalist and author (died 1912) Wikipedia
• 1860 Raymond Poincaré, French lawyer and politician, 10th President of France (died 1934) Wikipedia
• 1884 Rudolf Bultmann, German Lutheran theologian and professor of New Testament at the University of Marburg (died 1976) Wikipedia
• 1890 H. P. Lovecraft, American short story writer, editor, novelist (died 1937) Wikipedia
• 1901 Salvatore Quasimodo, Italian novelist and poet, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1968) Wikipedia
• 1913 Roger Wolcott Sperry, American neuropsychologist and neurobiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1994) Wikipedia
• 1935 Ron Paul, American captain, physician, and politician Wikipedia
• 1936 Hideki Shirakawa, Japanese chemist, engineer, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate Wikipedia
• 1937 Andrei Konchalovsky, Russian director, producer, and screenwriter Wikipedia
• 1937 Stelvio Cipriani, Italian composer (died 2018)[citation needed] Wikipedia
• 1941 Slobodan Milošević, Serbian lawyer and politician, 1st President of Serbia (died 2006) Wikipedia
• 1944 Rajiv Gandhi, Indian lawyer and politician, 6th Prime Minister of India (died 1991) Wikipedia
• 1946 Mufaddal Saifuddin, 53rd Da'i al-Mutlaq of Fatimid Caliphate Wikipedia
• 1946 Laurent Fabius, French politician, 158th Prime Minister of France Wikipedia
• 1948 Robert Plant, English singer-songwriter Wikipedia
• 1966 Enrico Letta, Italian lawyer and politician, 55th Prime Minister of Italy Wikipedia
• 1974 Amy Adams, American actress Wikipedia
• 1983 Andrew Garfield, American-English actor Wikipedia
• 1992 Demi Lovato, American singer-songwriter and actress Wikipedia

Died on August 20

• 2 Lucius Caesar, Roman son of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (born 12 BC) Wikipedia
• 14 Agrippa Postumus, Roman son of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (born 12 BC) Wikipedia
• 917 Constantine Lips, Byzantine admiral Wikipedia
• 984 Pope John XIV Wikipedia
• 1153 Bernard of Clairvaux, French theologian and saint (born 1090) Wikipedia
• 1823 Pope Pius VII (born 1740) Wikipedia
• 1914 Pope Pius X (born 1835) Wikipedia
• 1915 Paul Ehrlich, German physician and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1854) Wikipedia
• 1917 Adolf von Baeyer, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1835) Wikipedia
• 1961 Percy Williams Bridgman, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1882) Wikipedia
• 2001 Fred Hoyle, English astronomer and author (born 1915) Wikipedia
• 2008 Hua Guofeng, Chinese politician, 2nd Premier of the People's Republic of China (born 1921) Wikipedia
• 2012 Meles Zenawi, Ethiopian soldier and politician, Prime Minister of Ethiopia (born 1955) Wikipedia
• 2017 Jerry Lewis, American actor and comedian (born 1926) Wikipedia

Holidays and observances

• Christian feast day: Amadour Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Bernard of Clairvaux Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Blessed Georg Häfner Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Heliodorus of Bet Zabdai Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Maria De Mattias Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Oswine of Deira Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Philibert of Jumièges Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Samuel (prophet) Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: William and Catherine Booth (Church of England) Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: August 20 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Wikipedia
• Feast of Asmá’ (Baháʼí Faith, only if Baháʼí Naw-Rúz falls on March 21) Wikipedia
• Indian Akshay Urja Day (India) Wikipedia
• Independence Restoration Day (Estonia), re-declaration of the independence of Estonia from the Soviet Union in 1991. Wikipedia
• Meitei Language Day, also known as Manipuri Language Day, the day on which Meitei (Manipuri) was included in the scheduled languages' list and made one of the official languages of India. Wikipedia
• Revolution of the King and the People (Morocco) Wikipedia
• Saint Stephen's Day (Hungary) Wikipedia
• World Mosquito Day Wikipedia

The events, births, deaths and observances above are from the English Wikipedia article “August 20” and the articles it links to (authors and history), retrieved 2026-10-09 through the Wikimedia “On this day” feed. They are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; this selection is shared under the same licence. We picked the 26 events, 22 births and 14 deaths with the widest coverage across Wikipedia's language editions (counted from Wikidata) and sorted them by year; the wording is unchanged apart from removing references to pictures.