Browse Historical Events by Month: What Happened in August?

27 Romania declares war on Austria-Hungary. and enters WW1 on the side of the Allies. The decision was motivated primarily by the desire to claim the region of Transylvania and its majority ethnic Romanian population from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

China ends its neutrality and declares war on Germany and Austria-Hungary during World War I.

Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin is shot by Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Social Revolutionary party. Lenin was seriously wounded but survived the attack which was the third assassination attempt on his life. More

Germany's Weimar constitution was passed by the National Assembly. The design of a new Democratic constitution began in late 1918, following the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II and the collapse of the monarchy. The Weimar Republic, Germany's 12-year experiment with democracy, came to an end 12 years later when the Nazis came to power in January 1933 and established a dictatorship. More

Afghan Independence Day (Afghan Victory Day) It commemorates the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919

The 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, granting women the right to vote is ratified as Tennessee, by a vote of 50 to 49, becomes the 36th State to do so. The deciding vote came from Harry T. Burn, a 24 year old, who supported suffrage but but was under political pressure to vote no. In his pocket was a letter from his mother, Febb Burn, urging him to vote for the amendment. The amendment was formally adopted into the Constitution by proclamation of Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby on August 26, 1920. More

President Warren G. Harding died suddenly in San Francisco while on a Western speaking tour. He was succeeded the next day by Calvin Coolidge.

Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel. She swam across the Channel in 14 hours and 34 minutes, beating the men's record by two hours. More

A dike along China' Lake Gaoyou is breached during major floods in the Yangtze Valley. The floods covered an area approximately the size of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut combined. All together the floods which lasted from June to the end of August and flooded areas of central and eastern China including densely populated cities like Wuhan and Nanjing. The death toll of the floods ranges between 422,000 - 4,000,000, depending on the source. The 1931 China flood is known as one of the world's deadliest disasters. More

Adolf Hitler becomes absolute dictator of Germany under the title of Fuhrer, or “Leader after German President Paul von Hindenburg death. More

The first batch of 137 prisoners arrives at Alcatraz, arriving by railroad from the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, to Santa Venetia, California. In 1850, a presidential order set aside the island for possible use as a United States military reservation. and the U.S. Army had used the island for more than 80 years. In 1933, the island was transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice for use by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to open a maximum-security, minimum-privilege penitentiary to deal with the most incorrigible inmates in Federal prisons. More

Hitler becomes President of Germany; 89.9 percent of German voters approved granting Chancellor Adolf Hitler additional powers, including the office of president.

President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act to provide for the general welfare by establishing a system of Federal old-age benefits, and by enabling the several States to make more adequate provision for aged persons, blind persons, dependent and crippled children, maternal and child welfare, public health, and the administration of their unemployment compensation laws; to establish a Social Security Board; to raise revenue; and for other purposes. More

Hitler declares the Berlin Olympics, the eleventh Olympiad of the modern era, to be open.

Albert Einstein writes a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt regarding the possibility of atomic weapons. Six years later, on August 6, 1945, the first Atomic Bomb, developed by the U.S., was dropped on the Japanese port of Hiroshima.

FDR and Churchill meet for the first time as leaders of their respective nations on board naval vessels anchored in Placentia Bay, off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The document released as a result of the meeting is referred to as "The Atlantic Charter." It was not an official document, but rather a joint statement expressing the war aims of the two countries--one technically neutral and the other at war. More

The United States signed the Mexican Farm Labor Agreement with Mexico. An executive order called the Mexican Farm Labor Program established the Bracero Program. This series of diplomatic accords between Mexico and the United States permitted millions of Mexican men to work legally in the United States on short-term labor contracts. The Bracero Program ended on December 31, 1964. More

American forces land on the Solomon Islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida. on the morning of August 7,1942. After some fierce fighting, the US Marines cleared Tulagi and Florida by August 9. The main forces on Guadalcanal met little resistance on their way inland to secure the airfield at Lunga Point, Almost immediately, however, Japanese naval aircraft attacked transport and escort ships, and Japanese reinforcements arrived in the area. More

Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr and composer with composer George Antheil were awarded a patent for a “frequency hopping, spread-spectrum communication system” designed to make radio-guided torpedoes harder to detect or jam.

Lamarr and Antheil donated their patent to the US Navy and never realized any money from their invention which was the simplest version of a radio transmission technique , known today as spread-spectrum technique, which refers to any method that widens the frequency band of a signal. The technique would eventually find its way into other cutting-edge technologies like wireless phones, Global Positioning Systems, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. More

The Dieppe Raid, an Allied amphibious assault on the German-occupied port of Dieppe, France, ends in a heavy defeat and high casualties.