August 26

55BC Roman forces under Julius Caesar invade Britain.

1017 The Turks defeat the Byzantine army under Emperor Romanus IV at Manikert, Eastern Turkey.

1429 Joan of Arc makes her triumphant entry into Paris.

1498 In Rome, 23 year old Italian artist Michelangelo is commissioned by Pope Alexander VI to carve the Pieta. The work is completed in 1501.

1541 Suleiman I of Turkey captures Buda and annexes Hungary after his dispute with Archduke Ferdinand over claims to the kingdom.

1629 Cambridge Agreement: The Massachusetts Bay Company stockholders agree to emigrate.

1676 Birth: The politician Sir Robert Walpole (Whig), the first British prime minister (1721-42); will restore financial stability after the South Sea Bubble; will be forced into the War of Jenkins's Ear with Spain.

1728 Birth: Johann Lambert, Swiss mathematician, will prove pi is irrational.

1740 Birth: Aviation Pioneer Joseph Michel Montgolfier (above left), French merchant, inventor, aeronaut (ballooning). Died in 1810.

1743 Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, is born in Paris. He will prove that the union of oxygen (which he names) and other chemicals is used in burning, rusting of metals and breathing.

1789 The Constituent Assembly in Versailles, France, approves the final version of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen.

1791 John Fitch is granted a US patent for his working steamboat. Note: The above is only one of the many steamship designs Fitch created.

1813 After an initial victory, the French under Marshal Macdonald are beaten by the Prussians under General Bluecher at the battle of Katzbach.

1820 Birth: James Harlan (Representative-Iowa), US Secretary of Interior (1865-66).

1838 Birth: John Wilkes Booth, presidential assassin.

1842 The first fiscal year is established by the US Congress to start on July 1st.

1846 W. A. Bartlett is appointed the first US mayor of Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

1847 Liberia is proclaimed as an independent republic.

1858 The Treaty of Edo is signed which provided for the opening up of Japan to British trade and set up British residency.

1862 US Civil War: Confederate General Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson encircles the Union Army under General John Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run.

1873 The first public school kindergarten in the US is authorized by the school board of St. Louis, Missouri.

1873 Birth: Lee De Forest, in Council Bluffs, Iowa, physicist, inventor, considered the father of radio, invented the Audion vacuum tube (radio tube). The tube makes the broadcasting of sound possible. Died in 1961.

1881 Birth: Franz Guertner, Bavarian Minister of Justice from 1922 to 1932. After the Munich putsch, Guertner actively advocated a pro-Nazi atmosphere during Hitler's trial in People's Court (1924) and was largely responsible for Hitler receiving such a lenient sentence. It was also Guertner who arranged for Hitler's early release from prison and later persuaded the Bavarian government to lift the ban on the NSDAP, allowing Hitler to once again speak in public. Guertner served as Reich Minister of Justice from 1932 until his death in 1941.

1896 Armenian revolutionaries attack the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople, provoking a three-day battle in which at least 6,000 Armenians die.

1896 In the Philippines, an insurrection begins against the Spanish government.

1901 Birth: General Maxwell D. Taylor, former US Army chief of staff.

1903 Aug 26-Sep 3 Pavolachi Krushevan publishes the earliest known version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in abbreviated form in his Russian-language newspaper, Znamia (The Banner). (Segel/Levy)

1906 Birth: Albert Sabin, bacteriologist, polio researcher, will discover of an oral vaccine for polio. Died in 1993.

1909 Birth: Frank Gasparro, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US chief engraver (1965-81). So, who's on the front of this popular coin?

1914 WW1: In East Prussia, the Germans counterattack from north, east, and west. Samsonov's uncoded radio messages are intercepted and Ludendorff learns the locations of all Russian units.

1928 ONT meetings at the priory of Marienkamp in Hungary record the investitures of Georg Hauerstein, Jr. and Friedrich Schwickert, an astrologer and onetime List Society member, as Presbyters. (Roots)

1931 Aug 25-Oct 27 A national coalition government is formed in Britain. The bulk of the Labour party does not follow MacDonald into the coalition government but he remains as Prime Minister.

1934 Aug 26-27 The Third World Conference of General Zionists meets in Cracow.

1935 Half-Jewish Berlin psychiatrist, Dr. Kallmann, is allowed to speak for the last time at a meeting in Germany. At the International Congress of Population Problems, he claims: "...it is desirable to extend prevention of reproduction to relatives of schizophrenics who stand out because of minor anomalies, and, above all, to define each of them as being undesirable from the eugenic point of view at the beginning of their reproductive years." (Science)

1936 Britain and Egypt sign a twenty-year alliance in Cairo, ending the British military occupation of Egypt, except for the Canal Zone (Suez).

1937 All Chinese shipping Is blockaded by Japan.

1938 Holocaust: The Central Office for Jewish Emigration is established in Vienna under the direction of Adolf Eichmann. Within eighteen months, 150,000 Austrian Jews will be induced to emigrate. (Days)

1939 -06: The British Chiefs of Staff advise the cabinet that the earliest possible date for any ultimatum to Germany is September 1.

1939 -06: Dahlerus meets with Halifax again, flies back to Berlin with a letter for Goering and returns to London later that afternoon.

1939 -06: French Ambassador Robert Coulondre sees Hitler and appeals to him as one soldier to another. When Coulondre cites the probable fate of women and children in any war, Hitler hesitates, but Ribbentrop does his part to strengthen his Furhrer's resolve.

1939 -06: The Polish government in Warsaw increases the pace of its military mobilization.

1939 -06: Mussolini submits a long list of Italian requirements to Ribbentrop, and insists that anything short of these requirements will make it impossible for Italy to take any part in hostilities.

1939 -06: Palestinian Jews (IZL) assassinate two British police detectives accused on torturing suspects. (Edelheit)

1941 WW2: The Soviets bomb Teheran, Iran.

1942 Diary of Leon Gladun: We arrived at Pahlevi in Persia. Finally it's finished: "paradise" is behind us. We weren't long in Pahlevi--after two weeks of gorging ourselves and swimming in the Caspian we travelled by cars to Iraq. The road was beautiful and dangerous: huge mountains, serpentine passes, gorges--and the Persian drivers drove like Satan himself! After several days of travel we arrived at our new bases at Ksil-Ribat and Kana-Quin. We set up home in tents in the desert. In a while reorganization took place and on October 11, I returned once more to the 6 PAL [Light Artillery Regiment] 5 Bat.

1942 Holocaust: At Treblinka, a young deportee from Kielce, having been forbidden by one of the Ukrainian guards to say farewell to his mother, attacks the guard with a knife. The whole train of deportees is machine-gunned. (Atlas)

1943 WW2: The United States recognizes the French Committee of National Liberation. Note: The French Foreign Legion will fight against the Germans with its usual élan, but it is almost destroyed by the disparate elements within its own ranks.

1944 WW2: The great Rothschild Mansion in Paris is discovered to contain almost all of its original art and furnishings, untouched after five years of occupation as Luftwaffe headquarters in Paris and numerous visits by Hermann Goering. (Cowles)

1944 WW2: During a Slovak revolt, a Jewish battalion, as well as hundreds of individual Jews, take part in the capture of three major towns. (Atlas)

1944 The Warsaw Uprising: FDR rejects Churchill's scheme to help Warsaw by using Soviet airfields without Stalin's approval.

1944 WW2: Bulgaria announced that it had withdrawn from the war and that German troops were to be disarmed.

1945 The Japanese are given surrender instructions on the US battleship Missouri.

1957 It is announced that an intercontinental ballistic missile is successfully tested by the Soviet Union.

1957 The first Edsel, named Edsel for the company founder's son, Edsel Bryant Ford, made by the Ford Motor Company rolls out. Well, they kind of pushed it out, actually. 110,847 of the cars are built before Ford pulls the plug due to lack of sales.

1962 Mariner 2 is launched for the first planet flyby, of Venus.

1964 Delegates to the Democratic National Convention nominated Lyndon B. Johnson and Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey to head the Democratic ticket.

1973 The U of Texas (Arlington) becomes the first accredited school to offer belly dancing, as America continues to redefine the word 'education.'

1974 Death: Charles Lindberg, at the age of 72, at his home in Hawaii.

1974 Soyuz 15 carries 2 cosmonauts to space station Salyut 3.

1973 A US Presidential Proclamation is declared that makes August 26th Women's Equality Day.

1977 Death: H.A. Rey, creator of Curious George and the author of a popular constellation book called 'The Stars,' at 78.

1978 Sigmund Jahn becomes the first German in space when he blasts off aboard Russia's Soyuz 31.

1978 Soyuz 31 carries 2 cosmonauts (1 East German) to Salyut 6.

1978 Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice is elected as Pope John Paul I at the age of 65. He serves only 33 days before dying of a heart attack.

1981 Voyager 2 makes it's closest approach to Saturn enroute to Uranus and Neptune.

1982 NASA launches Telesat-F.

1982 The Argentine government lifts a ban on political parties.

1987 Sonny Bono announces he was running for mayor of Palm Springs, California.

1990 The 55 Americans at the US Embassy in Kuwait leave Baghdad by car and head for the Turkish border.

1991 Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev promises that national elections will be held.

1992 A mistrial is declared in the Iran-Contra cover-up trial of accused CIA spy Clair George.

1992 Desert Shield: A 'no-fly zone' is imposed on the southern third of Iraq. The move by the United States, France and Britain, not sanctioned by the UN, is supposedly aimed at protecting Iraqi Shiite Muslims.

1993 Russian President Boris Yeltsin signs a friendship treaty with the Czech Republic after condemning the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.

1996 Chun Doo-hwan (above, left), the former military leader of South Korea, is sentenced to death. His crimes are mutiny, treason and embezzlement. His successor, Roh Tae Woo (above, right), is sentenced to prison for taking bribes.

1997 South Africa's last white president, F. W. de Klerk, announces he is quitting as leader of the opposition National Party.

1998 The US government announces that they are investigating Microsoft in an attempt to discover if they had "bullied" Intel into delaying new technology.

1998 US Attorney General Janet Reno orders a review of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1998 Sudan files a criminal lawsuit against US President Clinton and the United States for the bombing of the El-Shifa Pharmaceutical Industries Company. The Sudanese claim that the plant is strictly civilian.

1998 William Ritter resigns as a US weapons inspector to Iraq, saying that the failure to be more aggressive in the inspections constitutes a surrender to the Iraqi leadership.

2002 The Johannesburg Earth Summit gets under way.

2002 Post 911: Iraq will have nuclear weapons 'fairly soon,' Vice President Dick Cheney says, in a speech favoring US military action.

2002

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2004