Browse events, births, deaths and holidays on August 20 throughout history.
Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is an American former politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Del…
Joe Biden gives his acceptance speech virtually for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination at the 2020 Democratic…
On 20 August 2016, a suicide bomber targeted a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep, Turkey. 57 people were killed and 66 injured in the attack, 14 critically.
Fifty-four people are killed when a suicide bomber detonates himself at a Kurdish wedding party in Gaziantep, Turkey.
Hiroshima Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Hiroshima Prefecture has a population of 2,811,410 and has a geographic area of 8,479 km2. …
Seventy-two people are killed in Japan's Hiroshima Prefecture by a series of landslides caused by a month's worth of…
On 20 August 2012, armed prisoners in the Yare I prison complex, an overcrowded prison in Miranda state near Caracas, Venezuela, rioted. A shootout between two groups resulted in …
A prison riot in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, kills at least 20 people.
First Air Flight 6560 was a domestic charter flight that crashed on landing at Resolute, Nunavut, Canada, on 20 August 2011. Of the fifteen people on board, twelve were killed and…
First Air Flight 6560 crashes 1 mile from the Resolute Bay runway, killing 12 of the 15 aboard.
First Air Flight 6560 was a domestic charter flight that crashed on landing at Resolute, Nunavut, Canada, on 20 August 2011. Of the fifteen people on board, twelve were killed and…
First Air Flight 6560 crashes 1 mile (1.6 km) from the Resolute Bay runway, killing 12 of the 15 aboard.
Spanair Flight 5022 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Barcelona–El Prat Airport to Gran Canaria Airport, Spain, with a stopover in Madrid–Barajas Airport that crashed…
Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid, Spain to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. Of the…
China Airlines Flight 120 was a regularly scheduled international flight from Taoyuan International Airport in Taoyuan County, Taiwan to Naha Airport in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan.…
China Airlines Flight 120 catches fire and explodes after landing at Naha Airport in Okinawa, Japan.
The Sri Lankan civil war was fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Liberation Tigers of…
Sri Lankan Civil War: Sri Lankan Tamil politician and former MP S. Sivamaharajah is shot dead at his home in…
Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003 during the United States-led invasion of I…
A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi embassy in Berlin, Germany for five…
The Supreme Court of Canada is the highest court in the judicial system of Canada. It comprises nine justices, whose decisions are the ultimate application of Canadian law, and gr…
The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's…
The 1998 United States embassy bombings were a series of terrorist attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998. More than 220 people were killed in two nearly simultaneous truck bomb …
U.S. embassy bombings: The United States launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan…
The largest of the Souhane massacres occurred in the small mountain town of Souhane on 20–21 August 1997. 64 people were killed, and 15 women were kidnapped; the resulting terror …
Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped.
The Firozabad rail collision occurred on 20 August 1995 near Firozabad on the Delhi–Kanpur section of India's Northern Railway, at 02:55 when a passenger train collided with a tra…
The Firozabad rail disaster kills 358 people in Firozabad, India.
Meitei, also known as Manipuri, is a Tibeto-Burman language of northeast India. It is the official language and the lingua franca of Manipur and an additional official language in…
In India, Meitei language (officially known as Manipuri language) was included in the scheduled languages' list and…
The Soviet Union was formally dissolved and ceased to exist as a sovereign state and subject of international law on December 26, 1991. It also brought an end to the Soviet Union'…
Dissolution of the Soviet Union, August Coup: More than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament…
Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the w…
Estonia, occupied by and incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940, issues a decision on the re-establishment of…
The Marchioness disaster was a collision between two vessels on the River Thames in London in the early hours of 20 August 1989, which resulted in the deaths of 51 people. The ple…
The pleasure boat Marchioness sinks on the River Thames following a collision. Fifty-one people are killed.
The Yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Starting as many smaller individu…
"Black Saturday" of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park
The Iran–Iraq War, also called the First Imposed War by Iran, began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980. After eight years of conflict, both countries accepted a cea…
Iran–Iraq War: A ceasefire is agreed after almost eight years of war.