August 1

• 1774 - The element oxygen is discovered for the third (and last) time.
• 1981 - MTV begins broadcasting.

August 2

• 1870 - Tower Subway, the world's first underground tube railway, opens in London.

August 3

• 1914 - World War I: Germany declares war against France.
• 1934 - Adolf Hitler becomes the supreme leader of Germany.

August 5

• 1858 - Cyrus West Field and others complete the first transatlantic telegraph cable after several unsuccessful attempts. It operated for less than a month.
• 1884 - The cornerstone for the Statue of Liberty is laid on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor.
• 1962 - Marilyn Monroe is found dead in her home.
• 1962 - Nelson Mandela is jailed. He would not be released until 1990.

August 6

• 1923 - Henry Sullivan swims the English Channel.
• 1991 - Tim Berners-Lee releases files describing his idea for the World Wide Web.
• 1997 - Microsoft buys $150 million worth of shares of financially troubled Apple Computer.

August 7

• 1959 - Explorer program: Explorer 6 launched from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
• 1976 - Viking program: Viking 2 enters into orbit around Mars.
• 1991 - World Wide Web debuts as a publicly available service on the Internet.

August 9

• 1173 - Construction of the Tower of Pisa begins, and it takes two centuries to complete.
• 1942 - Indian leader, Mohandas Gandhi is arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement.

August 10

• 1990 - The Magellan space probe reaches Venus.
• 2000 - World Population reaches 6 million according to www.ibiblio.org world population tracker.
• 2004 - Earthquake measuring 9.1 in the Richter scale triggers tsunami in the Indian Ocean which killed more than 300,000 people mainly in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, South India and Maldives.

August 12

• 1908 - First Model T Ford built.
• 1981 - Release of the IBM PC or Personal Computer

August 15

• 1947 - India gains independence from the United Kingdom and becomes an independent nation within the Commonwealth; Jawaharlal Nehru addresses the nation with the Indian Declaration of Independence and takes office as the first Prime Minister of India.
• 1947 - Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah is sworn in as first Governor General of Pakistan at Karachi.

August 16

• 2006- The volcano Tungurahua (Ecuador) erupts at 8:25 a.m.

August 17

• 1959 - Quake Lake: Quake Lake was formed by a 7.5 rated earthquake in Montana.

August 18

• 1868 - Helium is discovered.

August 20

• 1975 - Viking Program: NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars.

August 21

• 1770 - James Cook formally claims eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.
• 1993 - NASA loses contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.

August 22

• 1639 - Madras (now Chennai), India, is founded by the British East India Company after buying a sliver of land from local Nayak rulers.
• 1989 - The first ring of Neptune is discovered.

August 23

• 1924 - The distance between Earth and Mars is the smallest since the 10th century.

August 24

• 1690 – Calcutta (Kolkata), India is founded.
• 1853 - Potato chips are first prepared.
• 1989 - Voyager 2 passes Neptune.
• 1995 - Windows 95, a computer operating system by Microsoft, is released with much fanfare.

August 25

• 1609 - Galileo Galilei demonstrates his first telescope to Venetian lawmakers.
• 1981 - Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Saturn
• 1989 - Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Neptune, the outermost planet in the Solar System.

August 27

• 1962 - Mariner 2 launched to Venus.
• 2003 - Mars makes its closest approach to Earth in nearly 60,000 years, passing approximately 34,646,416 miles (55,758,006 kilometers) from Earth.

August 28

• 1937 - Toyota Motors becomes an independent company.

August 29

• 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle.
• 1898 - The Goodyear tire company is founded.
• 2005 - Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and causing over $115 billion in damage.

August 31

• 1997 - Diana, Princess of Wales, dies in a car crash in Paris.