| 480 | BC | Leonidas reaches Thermopylae with 300 Spartans and 700 Allies [Trad] |
| 0 | | National Airborne Day, US |
| 0 | | Children's Day in Paraguay [See 1869] |
| 1153 | | Crusaders invest Ascalon |
| 1298 | | Battle of Castello di Caprona: the Florentines (including Dante) defeat the Pisans |
| 1513 | | Battle of the Spurs: Henry VIII routs the French |
| 1717 | | Austrians break Turkish siege of Belgrade against enormous odds |
| 1777 | | Battle of Bennington, Vt: Americans defeat British |
| 1778 | | French surrender Pondicherry to the British |
| 1780 | | Battle of Camden: British decisively defeat the Americans |
| 1812 | | Gen. Isaac Hull surrenders Detroit & the Michigan territory to England |
| 1819 | | "Peterloo Massacre" - British troops fire on protesters at Manchester, 11 die |
| 1854 | | Anglo-French forces capture Bomarsund, on the Baltic, from the Russians, posing a threat to St. Petersburg |
| 1855 | | Battle of the Tchernaya: Russians fail to break Franco-Sardinian lines |
| 1859 | | Giuseppe Garibaldi assumes command of the Army of the Italian League, formed by the provisional governments of Florence, Modena, Parma, and Bologna |
| 1861 | | Skirmish at Fredericktown & Kirkville, Mo. |
| 1864 | | Battle of Front Royal, Va |
| 1866 | | Battle of Condino: The Garibaldini defeat the Austrians |
| 1869 | | Battle of Acosta Ñu/Campo Grande: A Paragyan Army (mostly of child soldiers) is overwhelmed by a superior Brazilian-Allied force |
| 1907 | | Abd al-Hafid ousted as sultan of Morocco |
| 1914 | | Adolf Hitler joins the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry |
| 1914 | | Battle of Mt. Cher begins: Serbs repel an Austrian invasion by the 19th. |
| 1914 | | Emiliano Zapata & Pancho Villa capture Mexico City |
| 1916 | | Sixth Battle of the Isonzo ends (from Aug 6) |
| 1918 | | US troops capture Archangelsk |
| 1934 | | US ends occupation of Haiti, begun in 1915 |
| 1942 | | Ichiki Detachment (c. 1000) sails from Truk for Guadalcanal |
| 1942 | | Japanese land reinforcements at Buna, in northwestern New Guinea |
| 1943 | | Japanese super-battleship 'Yamato' arrives at Truk after a long refit, to spend months swinging at anchor. |
| 1943 | | US troops encounter stiff resistance on Baanga I., near New Georgia |
| 1943 | | Vella Lavella: 25th Infantry Div encounters moderate resistance. |
| 1945 | | Soviet troops land on South Sakhalin. |
| 1946 | | Calcutta: Muslim-Hindu rioting, 3000-4000 die |
| 1948 | | Palestine: Arabs blow up the Latrun pumping station |
| 1622 | | Tsjerk de Vries, Dutch admiral, d/w, this date 1666 |
| 1763 | | Frederick Augustus, the Duke of York & Albany, inept general, superb commander-in-chief, d. 1827 -- Learn More |
| 1828 | | Joseph Bradford Carr, Brig Gen, U.S., d. 1895 |
| 1831 | | Edward Payson Chapin, Brig Gen, U.S., kia 1863 |
| 1848 | | Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sukhomlinov, splendidly uniformed if inept Russian Russian Minister of War (1909-1915), d. 1926 |
| 1888 | | Thomas Edward Lawrence -- "Lawrence of Arabia", British scholar and soldier, d. 1935 |
| 1892 | | Harold Foster, cartoonist ("Tarzan", "Prince Valiant"), d. 1982 |
| 1904 | | Minoru Genda, Japanese airman who planned the Pearl Harbor attack, d. 1989, one day short of 85 |
| 1913 | | Menachem Begin, terrorist, Israeli PM (1977-83), 1978 Peace Nobelist, d. 1992 |
| 1923 | | Shimon Peres, Israeli PM (1984-1986, 1995-1996), President (2007-2014) |
| 1943 | | 4th Marine Div, at Camp Pendleton |
| 1956 | | Béla Ferenc Dezso Blaskó -- Bela Legosi, 73, Hungarian-American actor |
| 1153 | | Bernard de Tramelay, 4th Master of the Templars, kia, Ascalon |
| 1258 | | Emperor Theodore II Doukas Laskaris of Nicaea (1254-1258), c. 46 |
| 1297 | | Emperor John II Megas Komnenos of Trebizond (1280-1297), c. 35 |
| 1675 | | Bogdan Chmilnicki - Bohdan Zynoviy Mykhailovych Khmelnytsky, c. 62, Cossack hetman, who murdered 300,000 Jews |
| 1921 | | Peter I Karadordevic, 77, King of Serbia (1903–1918) and of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (1918-1921) |
| 1945 | | Vice Admiral Takihiro Onishi, 54, founder of the Kamikaze, on a mission |
| 1949 | | Margaret Mitchell, 48, novelist ("GWTW"), a day after being hit by a taxi |
| 1949 | | Tom Wintringham, British radical, International Brigader, godfather of the Home Guard, poet, at 51 |
| 1959 | | Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey, 76 |
| 1977 | | Elvis Aaron Presley, 42, sometime sergeant, 3rd Armored Division |
| 2002 | | Abu Nidal (Sabri al-Banna), Palestinian terrorist, suicide (b. 1937) |
| 2003 | | Idi Amin, 78, maniacal dictator/president of Uganda (1971-1979), in bed, unfortunately |