August 23

30 BC –Octavian has Marcus Antonius Antyllus, eldest son of Mark Antony, and Caesarion, the last king of the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt. and only child of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, executed.

79 – Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.

1244 – King Frederick II of Jerusalem, ruler for 15 years after his forces of the 6th Crusade successfully retook the city in 1229, surrenders to forces of the besieging moslem Khwarezm Empire

1305 – Sir William Wallace is executed for high treason at Smithfield, London.

1541 – French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.

1595 – One of the warlords of ancient Wallachia, Prince Michael the Brave’s forces confront an Ottoman army 8 times its size, led by Koca Sinan Pasha near Călugăreni in modern southeastern Hungary, and achieves a tactical victory, inflicting losses ten times its own before retreating in good order

1775 – King George III delivers his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James’s stating that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion.

1784 – Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin. It is not accepted into the United States, and only lasts for 4 years before dissolving back under control of the state.

1785 – Oliver Hazard Perry is born in South Kingstown, Rhode Island.

1819 – Oliver Hazard Perry dies aboard his his flagship USS Nonsuch enroute to Tobago, having caught Yellow Fever while sailing the Oronoco river on a diplomatic mission to Simon Bolivar.

1831 – Nat Turner’s slave rebellion is suppressed. Turner flees into hiding.

1914 – Japan declares war on Germany

1927 – Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are executed for murder at Charlestown State Prison in Massachusetts

1929 – Arabs attack the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, killing over 60 Jews and forcing the rest to evacuate the town.

1939 – Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Non-aggression Pact.

1942 – German troops begin the attack on Stalingrad.

1954 – The Lockheed C-130 Hercules files for the first time

1966 – NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.

1990 – Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western “guests”  – actually hostages -to try to prevent the 1st Gulf War.

1991 – The World Wide Web is opened public access.

1994 – Eugene Bullard, the only African American pilot in World War I, is posthumously commissioned as Second Lieutenant in the United States Air Force.

2011 – A  5.8  magnitude earthquake occurs in Virginia. Damage occurs to monuments and structures in Washington, D.C. and the resultant damage is estimated at $200 –$300 million USD. Personnel at Felker Army Airfield at Fort Eustis report actually seeing shock waves traveling through a concrete floor of an aircraft hangar.