23 August History
- 1244 - Turks expel the crusaders under Frederick II from Jerusalem.
- 1305 - Scottish patriot William Wallace is hanged, drawn, beheaded, and quartered in London.
- 1541 - Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec on his third voyage to North America.
- 1711 - A British attempt to invade Canada by sea fails.
- 1775 - King George III of England refuses the American colonies' offer of peace and declares them in open rebellion.
- 1821 - After 11 years of war, Spain grants Mexican independence as a constitutional monarchy.
- 1863 - Union batteries cease their first bombardment of Fort Sumter, leaving it a mass of rubble but still unconquered by the Northern besiegers.
- 1900 - Booker T. Washington forms the National Negro Business League in Boston, Massachusetts.
- 1902 - Fanny Farmer, among the first to emphasize the relationship of diet to health, opens her School of Cookery in Boston.
- 1914 - The Emperor of Japan declares war on Germany.
- 1926 - American film star Rudolph Valentino dies, causing world-wide hysteria and a number of suicides.
- 1927 - Immigrant laborers Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for a robbery they did not commit. Fifty years later, in 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis establishes a memorial in the victims' honor.
- 1939 - Joseph Stalin and German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop sign a non-aggression pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, freeing Hitler to invade Poland and Stalin to invade Finland.
- 1942 - German forces begin an assault on the major Soviet industrial city of Stalingrad.
- 1944 - German SS engineers begin placing explosive charges around the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
- 1950 - Up to 77,000 members of the U.S. Army Organized Reserve Corps are called involuntarily to active duty to fight the Korean War.
23 August Birthdays
- 1754 - Louis XVI, King of France during the French Revolution who met his fate at the guillotine.
- 1755 - Jean Baptiste Lislet-Geoffroy, French geographer.
- 1883 - Jonathan Wainwright, U.S. general who fought against the Japanese on Corregidor in the Philippines and was forced to surrender.
- 1898 - Albert Claude, biologist who won the 1974 Nobel for his work on the sub-structure of the cell. He never graduated from high school.
- 1912 - Gene Kelly, dancer, choreographer and actor.
- 1931 - H.O. Smith, molecular biologist credited with helping 'open the door' on genetic engineering.
- 1934 - Sonny (Christian) Jurgensen, professional football player and sports announcer.