2007 - Leona Helmsley, American hotel operator and real estate investor (b. 1920)
2008 - Hua Guofeng, former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party
2012 - Phyllis Diller, American comedian (b. 1917)
Events
636 - Battle of Yarmouk: Arab forces led by Khalid ibn al-Walid take control of Syria and Palestine away from the Byzantine Empire, marking the first great wave of Muslim conquests and the rapid advance of Islam outside Arabia.
917 - Battle of Anchialus: Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria invades Thrace and drives the Byzantines out.
1000 - The foundation of the Hungarian state, Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.
1391 - Konrad von Wallenrode becomes the 24th Hochmeister of the Teutonic Order.
1672 - Former Grand Pensionary Johan de Witt and his brother Cornelis are brutally murdered by an angry mob in The Hague.
1775 - The Spanish establish a presidio (fort) in the town that became Tucson, Arizona.
1804 - Lewis and Clark Expedition: the "Corps of Discovery", exploring the Louisiana Purchase, suffers its only death when sergeant Charles Floyd dies, apparently from acute appendicitis.
1858 - Charles Darwin first publishes his theory of evolution in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, alongside Alfred Russel Wallace's same theory.
1866 - President Andrew Johnson formally declares the American Civil War over.
1882 - Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture debuts in Moscow.
1940 - In Mexico City exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded with an ice axe by Ramon Mercader. He dies the next day.
1944 - World War II: the Battle of Romania begins with a major Soviet offensive.
1953 - The Soviet Union publicly acknowledges that it had tested a hydrogen bomb.
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 its 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: NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
1979 - The East Coast Main Line rail route between England and Scotland is restored when the Penmanshiel Diversion opens.
1982 - Lebanese Civil War: a multinational force lands in Beirut to oversee the PLO's withdrawal from Lebanon.
1986 - In Edmond, Oklahoma, U.S. Postal employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers and then commits suicide.
1988 - "Black Saturday" of the Yellowstone fire in Yellowstone National Park
1988 - Peru becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
1988 - Iran–Iraq War: a cease-fire is agreed after almost eight years of war.
1991 - Collapse of the Soviet Union, August Coup: more than 100,000 people rally outside the Soviet Union's parliament building protesting the coup aiming to depose President Mikhail Gorbachev.
1993 - After rounds of secret negotiations in Norway, the Oslo Peace Accords are signed, followed by a public ceremony in Washington, D.C. the following month.
1997 - Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people are killed and 15 kidnapped.
1998 - The Supreme Court of Canada rules that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government's approval.
1998 - U.S. embassy bombings: the United States military launches cruise missile attacks against alleged al-Qaida 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.
2002 - A group of Iraqis opposed to the regime of Saddam Hussein take over the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin for five hours before releasing their hostages and surrendering.
2008 - Spanair Flight 5022, from Madrid to Gran Canaria, skids off the runway and crashes at Barajas Airport. 146 people are killed in the crash, 8 more die afterwards. Only 18 people survive.
2009 - Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, imprisoned for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, is released by the Scottish government on compassionate grounds as he has terminal prostate cancer. He returns to his native Libya.
