2 Shahrivar 1395

Events

• 1572 (454 years ago) French Wars of Religion: Mob violence against thousands of Huguenots in Paris results in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre.
• 1799 (227 years ago) Napoleon Bonaparte leaves Egypt for France en route to seizing power.
• 1939 (87 years ago) World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret protocol to the pact, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania are divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence".
• 1966 (60 years ago) Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
• 1989 (37 years ago) Singing Revolution: Two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the Vilnius–Tallinn road, holding hands.
• 1990 (36 years ago) Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1990 (36 years ago) Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.
• 2023 (3 years ago) Chandrayaan-3 mission initiates first Moon landing in Indian history.

Births

• 1754 (272 years ago) Louis XVI of France,
• 1769 (257 years ago) Georges Cuvier, French biologist and academic (died 1832)
• 1867 (159 years ago) Edgar de Wahl, Ukrainian-Estonian linguist and academic (died 1948)
• 1912 (114 years ago) Gene Kelly, American actor, singer, and dancer (died 1996)
• 1921 (105 years ago) Kenneth Arrow, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2017)
• 1954 (72 years ago) Halimah Yacob, Singaporean unionist and politician, 9th Speaker and 8th President of Singapore
• 1974 (52 years ago) Konstantin Novoselov, Russian-English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1978 (48 years ago) Kobe Bryant, American basketball player and businessman (died 2020)

Deaths

• 30 BC Caesarion, Egyptian king (born 47 BC)
• 634 (1392 years ago) Abu Bakr, Arabian caliph (born 573)
• 1305 (721 years ago) William Wallace, Scottish knight and rebel leader (born c.1270)
• 1806 (220 years ago) Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, French physicist and engineer (born 1736)
• 1926 (100 years ago) Rudolph Valentino, Italian actor (born 1895)
• 1933 (93 years ago) Adolf Loos, Austrian architect and theoretician, designed Villa Müller (born 1870)
• 1997 (29 years ago) John Kendrew, English biochemist and crystallographer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1917)
• 2023 (3 years ago) Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian businessman, chief of Wagner Group (born 1961)

All 422 events, births and deaths of August 23