August 20 in Pop Culture 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 Washinton, 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 hits 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.
1977 – #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.
