August 2023

1483: In France, following the death of his father, Charles VIII of Valois mounts Louis XI. the royal throne.
1528: King Francis I’s French army surrenders at Aversa in southern Italy and is driven out of Naples and Genoa.
1873: The Austro-Hungarian North Pole Expedition led by Julius Ritter von Payer and Carl Weyprecht discovers an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean and gives it the name “Franz-Josephs-Land”.
1898: In the unrealized secret “Angola Agreement” the British and Germans agree on the division of Portuguese colonial possessions in Africa.
1918: Lenin is seriously wounded in a revolver attack carried out by the Socialist-Revolutionary agent Fanya Kaplan in Moscow.
1918: Violent British attacks once morest the Germans at Arras.
1933: A Nazi commando murders the German cultural philosopher Theodor Lessing in his exile in Marienbad, Czechoslovakia.
1933: After the merger of the five largest airlines in France, “Air France” is founded. Flight operations at Paris-Le Bourget Airport will begin on October 7th.
1933: The NSDAP “Gauleiter” for Tyrol and Vorarlberg, Franz Hofer, was freed from the Innsbruck prison by like-minded people and fled to Italy.
1948: In Wrocław (Breslau) in Poland, the “World Congress of Cultural Workers for the Protection of Peace” meets with delegates from 46 countries and elects the French nuclear physicist Frédéric Joliot-Curie as chairman.
1963: A permanent telex connection is set up between the White House in Washington and the Moscow Kremlin on the basis of an agreement reached between US President Kennedy and the Soviet leader Khrushchev. In the event of a sudden military crisis, it is intended to enable direct communication between the two most important centers of power.
1963: The Philips “Pocket-Recorder” 3300 will be presented at the Berlin Radio Exhibition (08/30-09/08). This first cassette recorder is equipped with a microphone, carrying case and a “Compact Cassette”. The cassette contains tape with a thin ferrous surface wound on two small spools. Five baby cell batteries provide the power, making up to 20 hours of playtime possible.
1988: South Africa announces the end of its troops’ withdrawal from Angola.
1993: King Hassan II of Morocco inaugurates the Casablanca Grand Mosque, which bears his name and can accommodate 25,000 Muslim worshippers. At night, a laser beam shines from the 200 meter high minaret in the direction of Mecca.
1993: The Israeli Council of Ministers approves the Oslo Accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization on mutual recognition and the establishment of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
2003: World Trade Organization (WTO) member states reach compromise on access to cheap essential medicines for third world countries. Poorer countries should be able to import cheaply produced medicines (generics) more easily, especially for the treatment of AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria.
2008: With billions in compensation for the colonial period, Italy is opening a new chapter in relations with Libya. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signs an agreement in Tripoli on the payment of 3.4 billion euros in the form of project investments.
2008: Jörg Haider is elected in Graz with 100 percent of the delegate votes to succeed Peter Westenthaler as head of the BZÖ. He died in a car accident just a few weeks later, on October 11.

birthdays: Theo van Doesburg (originally Christian Emil Küpper), niedl. architect and art theorist (1883-1931); Sir Richard Stone, British economist (1913-1991); Gerhard Wimberger, Austria composer and conductor (1923-2016); Jean-Claude Killy, French skier (1943); Robert Crumb, US comic artist and illustrator; Fritz the Cat (1943); Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, Russian journalist and author (1958-2006); Sabine Oberhauser, Austria Minister of Health (1963-2017); Andrea Morassi, former Italian ski jumper (1988).
days of death: Franz von Stuck, German painter (1863-1928); Marianne Pollak, Austria writer, journalist and politician (1891-1963); Charles Bronson (aka Buchinsky), Amer. actor (1921-2003); Seamus Heany, Irish writer; Nobel Prize 1995 (1939-2013).
name days: Heribert, Felix, Rita, Ingeborg, Rosa, Sieglinde, Rebekka, Amadeus, Guarin, Benjamin, Thekla.