On August 26, 1863, the Swedish-language liberal newspaper Helsingfors Dagblad proposed the current blue-and-white cross flag as the flag of Finland.
In 1920 on the 26th of August, the 19th amendment to the United States Constitution — giving women the same access to voting as men — was certified.
In 2014 on this day in August, The Jay Report into the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal was published.
On August 25, 1609, Galileo Galilei first demonstrated his new invention, the telescope, to Venetian lawmakers. Magnifying distant images by about eight or nine times, it quickly became a profitable sideline for Galileo, who sold his telescopes to merchants who found them useful both at sea and as items of trade. He published his initial telescopic astronomical observations in March of the next year.
On August 24, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. On the same day, and not coincidentally, Ukraine declared itself independent from the Soviet Union.
On Tuesday, August 23, 1927, 36-year-old Nicola Sacco and 39-year-old Bartolomeo Vanzetti died on the same date and at the same location, executed after a lengthy, controversial trial for a murder and robbery, committed on April 15, 1920. The two were anarchists and Italian immigrants to America. The means of execution was the electric chair for both; the times of execution were between noon and 12:30 on that Tuesday.
On August 22, 1902, the Cadillac Motor Company was founded — and on the same day Theodore Roosevelt became the first President of the United States to make a public appearance in an automobile, riding through the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, in a Columbia Victoria electric car. Though TR’s public statement was supportive of the new technology, privately he referred automobiles “a trial” and “as distinct additions to the discomfort of living.”
His predecessor in office, William McKinley, had himself ridden in an automobile, but did not do so in public.
Also in 1902, the federal government bought a Stanley Steamer for presidential outings, the first automobile in general service by what the Founding Fathers referred to as the “general government.”
On August 21, 1791, a Vodou ceremony led by Dutty Boukman turned into a violent slave rebellion, thereby starting the Haitian Revolution.
On August 20, 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declared the American Civil War over.
On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. Earlier, British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-imperialist Herbert Spencer (pictured), “Patriotism” (Facts and Comments, 1902).
On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, a crucial event leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In 1999, a mass rally of Serbians demanded the resignation of Slobodon Milosevic.
August 18, 1590, John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returned from a supply trip to England only to find his settlement deserted. The cryptic word “CROATOAN” was found carved into the palisade of the deserted camp.
On August 18, 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women’s suffrage.