This is a list of selected August 11 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
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Hedy Lamarr -
Hedy Lamarr -
Pope Alexander VI -
1975 Ford Pinto -
Andriyan Nikolayev -
DJ Kool Herc -
Hussein of Jordan -
DJ Kool Herc
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Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 3114 BC – The epoch of the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, a non-repeating, vigesimal calendar used by the Maya civilization and several other Mesoamerican cultures, occurred. | refimprove section |
| 2492 BC – According to legend, Armenian culture hero Hayk slew the giant king Bel with a shot from a longbow near Lake Van (in modern Turkey). | disputed date; legendary event |
| 1919 – The Weimar Republic adopted its constitution to establish a liberal democracy in Germany. | Republic: refimprove sections; Constitution: refimprove section |
| 1942 – Actress Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil received a patent for their "Secret Communications System", an early technique of frequency-hopping spread spectrum that later became the basis for many forms of today's wireless communication systems. | Antheil: unreferenced section |
| 1962 – Vostok 3 launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome and cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev became the first person to float in microgravity. | refimprove section |
| 1965 – Violent race riots began in Watts, Los Angeles, California, lasting for six days and leaving 34 people dead and 1,032 others injured. | refimprove section, expansion |
| 1988 – Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam and several senior leaders of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad formed what is now known as Al-Qaeda to continue jihad elsewhere around the world after the Soviet war in Afghanistan ended. | outdated, expansion |
| Reid Blackburn |b|1952| | Birthday not cited |
| Nicola Zagame |b|1990 | Needs update for career 2013-2016 |
Eligible
- 106 – The region of Dacia, comprising parts of modern Romania, became a province of the Roman Empire.
- 1492 – The first papal conclave to be held in the Sistine Chapel elected Roderic Borja as Pope Alexander VI to succeed Innocent VIII.
- 1929 – The first Bud Billiken Parade and Picnic, the oldest and largest African-American parade in the United States, was held in Chicago.
- 1945 – Amid rumors of kidnappings of children by Jews in Kraków, a crowd of Poles took part in a pogrom, resulting in at least one death.
- 1952 – King Talal of Jordan was forced to abdicate due to mental illness and was succeeded by his eldest son Hussein .
- 1973 – At a party in New York City, Jamaican musician DJ Kool Herc (pictured) began rapping during an extended break, laying the foundation for hip hop music.
- 1975 – The Timorese Democratic Union launches a coup in Portuguese Timor, starting the East Timorese civil war.
- 1977 – The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration initiated an investigation into the alleged vulnerability of the Ford Pinto to fuel leakage and fire in a rear-end collision.
- 1999 – The Salt Lake City Tornado hit downtown Salt Lake City, damaging 120 homes and injuring over 100 people.
- Born/died this day: | Guttorm of Norway |d|1204| Hamnet Shakespeare |bur|1596| James B. Longacre |b|1794|Enid Blyton |b|1897| Tom Kilburn |b|1921| Aaron Klug |b|1926| Chanchal Kumar Majumdar |b|1938| Ian McDiarmid |b|1944| Steve Wozniak |b|1950| Wanda Wesołowska |b|1950| Pablo Sandoval |b|1986| Jacqueline Fernandez |b|1985| Robin Williams |d|2014|
- 1309 – Reconquista: Aragonese forces led by King James II landed on the coast of Almería, beginning an ultimately unsuccessful siege of the city, then held by the Emirate of Granada.
- 1786 – Francis Light founded George Town (city hall pictured), the first British settlement in Southeast Asia and the present-day capital of the Malaysian state of Penang.
- 1979 – Two Aeroflot passenger jets collided in mid-air near Dniprodzerzhynsk in the Ukrainian SSR, killing all 178 people on both aircraft.
- 1999 – Ken Levine's System Shock 2 was released to mediocre sales, but later received critical acclaim and influenced subsequent first-person shooter game design.
- 2012 – At least 306 people were killed and 3,000 others injured in a pair of earthquakes near Tabriz, Iran.
- John Hunyadi (d. 1456)
- William W. Chapman (b. 1808)
- Kaname Harada (b. 1916)
- Clare Nott (b. 1986)