2023-08-19 22:57:59
823: Pope Pius VII dies in Rome. He was elected in Venice in March 1800 under Austrian protection and was a prisoner of Napoleon from 1809 to 1814. He endeavored to reorganize the restored Papal States.
1898: The Gornergrat Bahn is opened in the Bernese Alps.
1913: Frenchman Adolphe Pégoud is the first pilot in the history of aviation to jump out of his plane with a parachute.
1918: A breakthrough attempt by French troops between Oise and Aisne fails.
1933: Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss visits the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the Adriatic seaside resort of Riccione.
1948: During the Greek Civil War, the troops of the royal government in Athens report that they have taken possession of the entire Grammos mountain range.
1953: Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco, who later became the first king after independence, was deposed by the French protectorate and banished first to Corsica and later to Madagascar.
1968: In the night from August 20th to 21st. Troops from five Warsaw Pact states (USSR, Poland, GDR, Hungary and Bulgaria) occupy Czechoslovakia and end the “Prague Spring” reform experiment initiated under the leadership of party leader Alexander Dubček. 94 Czechs and Slovaks are killed in the invasion.
1988: After eight years in the Gulf War, a ceasefire between Iran and Iraq comes into force.
1988: Lawyer Maung Maung becomes Burma’s first civilian president in 26 years. (He is overthrown by the military after only a month.)
1993: Mediators David Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg present a new partition plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina that gives the Bosnian Serbs 52 percent of the territory.
1998: After the deadly attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the US air force is attacking targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, where the headquarters of the suspected terror mastermind, the Saudi Arabian billionaire Osama bin Laden, and his organization Al Qaeda are located. A pharmaceutical factory was hit near the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
2003: After the devastating attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank announce the withdrawal of their employees from Iraq.
2008: A machine belonging to the Spanish SAS subsidiary Spanair crashed on take-off at Madrid Airport and overshot the runway. 154 people die. One of the McDonnell Douglas MD-82’s engines caught fire.
2018: Greece is leaving the eurozone rescue package after eight years. Around 290 billion euros were pumped into the country. In return, the Greeks had to take a very tough austerity course.
birthdays: John I (Juan I), King of Castile (naA 24.8.) (1358-1390); Luise George Bachmann, Austria writer (1903-1976); Roger W. Sperry, USA. psychobiologist and brain researcher; Nobel Prize 1981 (1913-1994); Jacqueline Susann, US writer (1918-1974); Luciano De Crescenzo, Italian writer (1928-2019); Theodor Kotulla, German director (1928-2001); Bernhard Russi, former Swiss ski star (1948); Robert Plant, British rock musician (1948); Andrew Garfield, US-amer. Actor (1983).
days of death: Bernard of Clairvaux, French mystic (around 1090-1153); Pope Pius VII (Luigi Barnaba Count Chiaramonti) (1742-1823); Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, German publisher (1772-1823); Hans Lebert, Austria writer (1919-1993); Hua Guofeng, Chinese politician; 1976-1981 head of the Communist Party (naA 1920; 1921-2008); Uri Avnery (actually Helmut Ostermann), Israel. Journalist, writer, politician and peace activist (1923-2018); Elmore Leonard, US crime writer (1925-2013); Johann Georg Gsteu, Austria Architect (1927-2013); Erik Neutsch, GDR writer (1931-2013).
name days: Bernhard, Oswin, Burkhard, Stephan, Ronald, Philibert, Hugo, Samuel, Bernd, Heribert.
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