This is a list of selected August 6 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 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.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Gertrud Ederle -
Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan -
Crew of the Enola Gay -
Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, waving from its cockpit -
Little Boy, the first atomic bomb used in warfare -
The Genbaku Dome, a standing memorial of the bombing of Hiroshima -
Effects of the atomic bombing on Hiroshima -
Mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the Little Boy explosion -
Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi -
Tim Berners-Lee -
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor -
Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act into law -
ALH84001
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Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Feast of the Transfiguration (Gregorian calendar); | refimprove |
| Independence Day in Bolivia (1825) and Jamaica (1962) | Bolivia: refimprove section; Jamaica: lots of CN tags (24) |
| 1538 – Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada founded a European urban settlement in what is today Bogotá, Colombia. | refimprove sections |
| 1806 – The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by its last emperor, Francis II, during the aftermath of the War of the Third Coalition. | unreferenced section |
| 1861 – Under the threat of military bombardment, Dosunmu, Oba of Lagos, ceded the island of Lagos to British forces. | Date not cited |
| 1870 – Franco-Prussian War: At the Battle of Wörth, German troops under Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm defeated the French under Marshal Patrice de MacMahon near the village of Wœrth. | single source |
| 1890 – At Auburn Prison in the U.S. state of New York, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed by electric chair. | Referencing issues |
| 1914 – First World War: Germany's Atlantic U-boat campaign began when ten U-boats sailed from their base in Heligoland to attack Royal Navy warships in the North Sea, the first ever submarine war patrol in history. | refimprove section |
| 1915 – First World War: The Allied Powers launched the Battle of Sari Bair at Gallipoli. | needs more footnotes |
| 1926 – American competitive swimmer Gertrude Ederle became the first woman to swim across the English Channel. | refimprove section |
| 1956 – DuMont, one of the world's first television networks, aired its last program. | Referencing issues |
| 1964 – American researcher Donald Currey had a bristlecone pine tree known as Prometheus cut down, only to find that it was the oldest known non-clonal organism ever discovered, at least 4,862 years old at the time. | refimprove section |
| 1966 – Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan became emir and ruler of Abu Dhabi, succeeding his brother, Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who was deposed in a bloodless coup d'état. | refimprove section |
| 1988 – New York City Police officers charged a crowd protesting a curfew for the previously 24-hour Tompkins Square Park, sparking a riot that led to more than 100 complaints of police brutality. | refimprove section |
| Diego Velázquez |d|1660| | Too much uncited |
| James Henry Greathead |b|1844| | Too much uncited |
| James Henry Greathead |b|1844| | Too much uncited |
Eligible
- 686 – Second Fitna: Pro-Alid forces defeated the Umayyad Caliphate in the Battle of Khazir, allowing them to take control of Mosul in present-day Iraq.
- 1777 – The Battle of Oriskany, one of the bloodiest battles of the American Revolutionary War, was fought about 6 mi (10 km) east of Fort Stanwix, New York.
- 1892 – The Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company was founded in Antwerp to exploit natural rubber in the Congo Free State.
- 1930 – New York Supreme Court judge Joseph Force Crater disappeared in Manhattan, in a case that was never solved.
- 1945 – World War II: The U.S. Army Air Force bomber Enola Gay (pictured with crew) dropped the Little Boy atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing about 70,000 people instantly.
- 1965 – U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, outlawing literacy tests and other discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disfranchisement of African Americans.
- 1991 – British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee posted a public invitation to collaborate on a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessible via the Internet, known as the World Wide Web.
- 1996 – Researchers announced that the meteorite ALH84001 (pictured), discovered in the Allan Hills of Antarctica, may contain evidence of life on Mars, but further tests were inconclusive.
- 2008 – Mauritanian President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi was ousted from power by a group of high-ranking generals that he had dismissed from office several hours earlier.
- 2010 – Flash floods, mudslides, and debris flows across the Ladakh region of Indian-administered Kashmir left at least 255 people dead.
- 2013 – A gas leak caused an explosion that collapsed a building and led to the deaths of 22 people in Rosario, Argentina.
- Born this day: | Saint Dominic |d|1221| Stephen V of Hungary |d|1272| Josias I, Count of Waldeck-Eisenberg|d|1588| Daniel O'Connell |b|1755| Jennie Lozier |d|1915|Maria Simon|b|1918|Bix Beiderbecke |d|1931| John Richard Clark Hall |d|1931| Aniru Conteh |b|1942| William McCrea |b|1948|Michelle Yeoh |b|1962 | Vera Farmiga |b|1973 | Shapour Bakhtiar |d|1991|
Street fighting during the Battle of Saint-Malo
- 686 – Second Fitna: Pro-Alid forces defeated the Umayyad Caliphate in the Battle of Khazir, allowing them to take control of Mosul in present-day Iraq.
- 1623 – After the death of Gregory XV, a papal conclave in Rome elected Maffeo Barberini as Pope Urban VIII.
- 1944 – World War II: Allied forces attacked German fortifications at Saint-Malo, France, beginning the Battle of Saint-Malo (pictured).
- 1979 – An earthquake struck along the Calaveras Fault near Coyote Lake, California, injuring sixteen people.
- 1997 – Korean Air Flight 801 crashed into a hill on approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport in Guam, killing 228 of the 254 people aboard.
- 2011 – A series of riots broke out in several London boroughs and in cities and towns across England in response to the shooting of Mark Duggan by Metropolitan Police officers.
- Ludwig Ross (d. 1859)
- George Kenney (b. 1889)
- Lucille Ball (b. 1911)
- Edsger W. Dijkstra (d. 2002)