Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index August 20 is the 232nd day of the year (233rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 133 days remaining. Table of contents 1 Events 2 Births 3 Deaths 4 Holidays and observances Events 917 - Battle of Anchialus: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria invades Thrace and drives the Byzantines out. 1794 - Battle of Fallen Timbers - American troops force a confederacy of Shawnee, Mingo, Delaware, Wyandot, Miami, Ottawa, Chippewa and Pottawatomie warriors into a disorganized retreat. 1804 - Lewis and Clark Expedition: The "Corps of Discovery", whose purpose is to explore the Louisiana Purchase, suffers it first and last death when Sergeant Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute appendicitis. 1882 - Piotr Ilyitch Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" debuts in Moscow. 1914 - World War I: German forces occupy Brussels. 1920 - The first commercial radio station, 8MK (WWJ), begins operations in Detroit, Michigan. 1940 - Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded in Mexico City by an assassin's ice-ax. He will die the next day. 1955 - In Morocco, a force of Berbers from the Atlas Mountains region of Algeria, raid two rural settlements and kill 77 French nationals. 1960 - Senegal breaks from the Mali federation, declaring independence. 1968 - 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to end the "Prague Spring" of political liberalization. 1975 - Viking program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars. 1977 - Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft. 1982 - Lebanese Civil War: A multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the PLO withdrawal from Lebanon. 1986 - In Edmond, Oklahoma, US Postal employee Patrick Henry Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide. 1989- In Beverly Hills, California, Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their wealthy parents to death in their family's den. 1991 - Collapse of the Soviet Union: Estonia declares its independence from the Soviet Union. 1991 - Collapse of the Soviet Union: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup that deposed President Mikhail Gorbachev. 1998 - The Supreme Court of Canada states Quebec can not legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval. 1998 - 1998 U.S. embassy bombings: The United States military launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Quaida camps in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical plant in Sudan in retaliation for the August 7 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum is destroyed in the attack. Births 1561 - Jacopo Peri, composer 1779 - Jons Jacob Berzelius, chemist 1833 - Benjamin Harrison, 23rd President of the United States 1881 - Edgar Guest, poet 1890 - H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer (+ 1937) 1905 - Jack Teagarden, jazz musician (+ 1964) 1910 - Eero Saarinen, architect 1918 - Jacqueline Susann, novelist (+ 1974) 1923 - Jim Reeves, country and western singer (+ 1964) 1931 - Don King, boxing promoter 1941 - Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslabia 1942 - Isaac Hayes, singer, songwriter, actor 1944 - Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (+ 1991) 1946 - Connie Chung, journalist 1948 - Robert Plant, rock and roll singer 1949 - Phil Lynott, rock and roll musician (+ 1986) 1951 - Greg Bear, science fiction author 1952 - John Hiatt, musician 1955 - Agnes Chan, singer, professor of education, essayist 1956 - Joan Allen, actress (Nixon, Pleasantville) 1965 - KRS-One (Lawrence Krisna Parker), rap music singer Deaths 1611 - Tomás Luis de Victoria, composer 1914 - Pope Pius X 1940 - Leon Trotsky, Bolshevik revolutionary 2001: Sir Fred Hoyle, astronomer, science fiction writer Holidays and observances Bahá'í Faith - Feast of Asmá (Names) - First day of the ninth month of the Bahá'í Calendar St. Stephen's day in Hungary, the main national holiday See Also: August 19 - August 21 - July 20 - September 20 -- listing of all days January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December\n This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.