This is a list of selected August 12 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
David the Builder of Georgia
Tyrannosaurus rex
The IBM Personal Computer
Isaac M. Singer
A sewing machine
Quagga in the London Zoo
Deimos
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| International Youth Day | stub, needs cleanup |
| 1099 – The First Crusade concluded with the Battle of Ascalon and Fatimid forces under Al-Afdal Shahanshah retreating to Egypt. | refimprove |
| 1851 – American inventor Isaac Singer was granted a patent for his sewing machine. | needs more footnotes |
| 1953 – The first Soviet thermonuclear bomb, Joe 4, was detonated at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR. | Soviet atomic bomb: refimprove; Joe 4: short |
| 1969 – Riots erupted in the Bogside area of Derry and spread across much of Northern Ireland. | refimprove |
| 1994 – Major League Baseball players went on a 232-day strike, forcing the cancellation of the rest of the season and the World Series. | unreferenced section |
| 2005 – Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka Lakshman Kadirgamar was fatally shot by a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam sniper as he was getting out of his swimming pool at his home in Colombo. | refimprove |
Eligible
- 1121 – Georgian-Seljuk wars: Forces led by David the Builder decisively won the Battle of Didgori, driving Ilghazi and the Seljuk Turks out of Georgia.
- 1323 – Sweden and the Novgorod Republic signed the Treaty of Nöteborg to temporarily end the Swedish–Novgorodian Wars.
- 1877 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Deimos, the smaller of the two moons of Mars.
- 1944 – After a week of indiscriminate killing of civilians in Wola, Warsaw, Poland, SS General Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski ordered that any remaining Poles be sent to labour or concentration camps.
- 1950 – Korean War: Members of the North Korean People's Army executed 75 captured U.S. Army prisoners of war.
- 1952 – Thirteen Jewish poets in Moscow were executed for espionage based on false confessions.
- 1981 – The IBM Personal Computer, the original version and progenitor of the IBM PC compatible hardware platform, was introduced.
- 2000 – The Oscar-class submarine K-141 Kursk of the Russian Navy suffered an on-board explosion and sank in the Barents Sea during a military exercise.
Notes
- Phobos (moon) appears on August 18, so Deimos should not appear in the same year
August 12: Queen Sirikit's Birthday and Mother's Day in Thailand
- 30 BC – Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last ruler of the Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty, committed suicide, allegedly by means of an asp bite.
- 1676 – Puritans and their Native American allies killed Wampanoag sachem Metacomet (known as "King Philip"), essentially ending King Philip's War.
- 1883 – The last known quagga, a subspecies of the plains zebra, died at the Artis Magistra zoo in Amsterdam.
- 1985 – Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashed into the ridge of Mount Takamagahara in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520 of 524 on board in the world's worst single-aircraft aviation disaster.
- 1990 – American paleontologist Sue Hendrickson found the most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus ever discovered (pictured) near Faith, South Dakota, US.