Today in history, August 26: Suleiman I, Sultan of Turkey, annexes Hungary

Highlights in history on this date:

1071: Turkish Seljuks beat the Byzantine forces at the Battle of Manzikert (now Malazgirt, Turkey), gaining entry into Anatolia and opening the road to Europe.
1346: English archers defeat French knights at Battle of Crecy in northern France.
1541: Suleiman I, Sultan of Turkey, annexes Hungary.
1768: Captain James Cook and his ship, the Endeavour, sail from England’s Plymouth Harbour, ordered to observe the transit of Venus and explore the Southern Ocean for “Terra Australia incognita”.
1847: Liberia is proclaimed an independent republic.
1883: The volcano Krakatoa erupts on the island Krakatau, near Indonesia, creating tsunami waves that kill more than 36,000 people.

1896: Insurrection begins in the Philippines against the Spanish.
1915: The German army captures Brest-Litovsk in Russia during World War I.
1920: The 19th Amendment to the US Constitution, guaranteeing American women the right to vote, is declared in effect.
1934: Adolf Hitler demands that France turn over the Saar region to Germany.
1936: A treaty ends British occupation of Egypt, except the Suez Canal zone, and Britain and Egypt form an alliance for 20 years.
1937: Japan blockades Chinese shipping.
1942: The German army reaches Stalingrad in Soviet Union during World War II.
1945: Japanese envoys board US battleship Missouri to receive surrender instructions at the end of World War II.
1947: The UN Security Council passes a resolution for both the Dutch and Indonesians to adhere to a ceasefire order.
1952: Floods caused by monsoon rains inundate 90 per cent of Manila, causing at least eight deaths. It is Manila’s third flood in a month.
1957: The Soviet Union announces it has successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile.
1964: Student and Buddhist riots force the resignation of government of Premier Nguyen Khanh in South Vietnam.
1970: North Vietnam sends its chief negotiator back to Vietnam peace talks in Paris after a nearly nine-month boycott of negotiations.
1978: Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice is elected the 264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church following the death of Paul VI.
1990: The number of US soldiers, airmen and sailors in the Gulf reaches 60,000.
1993: Egyptian-born Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and 14 others are charged in an attack on New York’s World Trade Center earlier in the year.
1997: Former South African President FW de Klerk resigns as the head of the National Party, which created the practice of apartheid, and leaves politics.

2003: Rwandan President Paul Kagame is the overwhelming winner of presidential elections. The election was the first since the 1994 genocide.
2004: Iraq’s top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, makes a dramatic return to Najaf and swiftly wins agreement from a rebel cleric and the government to end three weeks of fighting between his militia and US-Iraqi forces.
2005: A fire races through a crowded, rundown Paris apartment building housing African immigrants killing 17 people, mainly children trapped while they slept, and triggers angry calls for decent housing for the needy in the French capital.
2008: Russia recognises the independence claims of two Georgian breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
2011: A car loaded with explosives crashes into the main United Nations building in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja and explodes, killing at least 18 people. A radical Muslim sect claims responsibility for the blast.
2014: Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas agree to an open-ended ceasefire after seven weeks of fighting — an uneasy deal that halts the deadliest war the sides have fought in years.
2015: A disgruntled former employee of a US TV network shoots dead two journalists during a live broadcast before killing himself.
2017: Iraqi forces raise the national flag in the heart of Tal Afar, Islamic State’s stronghold in the country’s northwest, and say they are poised to take full control of the city after a week-long offensive.
2018: Prime Minister Scott Morrison announces his new ministry, with former defence minister Marise Payne replacing Julie Bishop who announced she would quit as Foreign Affairs Minister.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY
“Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded” — Virginia Woolf, English author and critic (1882-1941).