August 20 in History

1000 – The foundation of the Hungarian state by Saint Stephen.

1858 – Charles Darwin first published his theory of evolution through natural selection in The Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London

1882 – Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture debuted in Moscow, Russia.

1910 – The Great Fire of 1910 burned 3 Million acres in Washington, Idaho and Montana.

1920 – The first commercial radio station, 8MK “Detroit News Radiophone” (now WWJ), began operations in Detroit, Michigan.

1926 – Japan’s public broadcasting company, Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK) was established.

1938 – Lou Gehrig hit his 23rd career grand slam, a record that stood until 2013 years when it was broken by Alex Rodriguez.

1975 – NASA launched the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.

#1 Hit August 20, 1977 – September 30, 1977: The Emotions – Best of My Love

1977 – NASA launched the Voyager 2 spacecraft towards the outer solar system.

1998 – The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Quebec cannot legally secede from Canada without the federal government’s approval.

2014 – 72 people were killed in Japan’s Hiroshima prefecture by a series of landslides that were caused by a (typical) month’s worth of rain that fell in a singleday.