| August 1 | 1838 Slavery was abolished in the British Empire |
| August 2 | 1887 Rowell Hodge patented barbed wire |
| August 3 | 1858 John Speke, English explorer, discovered Lake Victoria |
August 4
 |  1892 Lizzie Borden was alleged to have killed her father and stepmother with an axe in Fall River, Massachusetts
1265 Simon de Montfort was defeated and killed at the Battle of Evesham |
| August 5 | 1858 The laying of the first transatlantic telegraph cable was completed - but it failed after three weeks |
August 7
|  2000 Actor Alec Guinness and political commentator Sir Robin Day died
1947 The Kon Tiki expedition landed on a reef in the Tuamotu Archipelago in the Pacific Ocean having spent four months at sea on a raft made of balsa wood 1914 The £1 and 10/- notes were first issued |
| August 8 | 1919 F W Woolworth, founder of the chain of stores that bear his name, died |
August 9
| 1979 Brighton became the first British seaside resort to have a beach reserved for nudists 1974 Gerald Ford became the 38th President of the USA under extraordinary circumstances 1792 The Paris commune was established |
| August 10 | 1895 The first Promenade Concert was given 1675 Charles II laid the foundation stone of Greenwich Observatory |
| August 11 | 1877 The astronomer Asaph Hall first saw Phobos and Deimos, the two moons that circle Mars |
| August 12 | 1960 Echo 1, the first communications satellite was launched |
| August 13 |  1972 The last US troops left Vietnam
1826 Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laennec, the inventor of the stethoscope, died |
August 15
|   1947 India became independent
1939 The film Wizard of Oz was given its world premiere |
| August 16 | 1897 The Tate Gallery in London opened |
| August 17 | 1977 Elvis died |
| August 19 |  1953 England regained the Ashes after 20 years
1959 The Mini was launched 1978 Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson, and Larry Newman, completed the first balloon crossing of the Atlantic in Double Eagle II |
| August 20 | 1980 Italian Reinhold Messner completed the first solo ascent of Everest |
| August 21 |  1961 Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington was stolen from the National Gallery
1959 Hawaii became the 50th state of the USA |
| August 22 | 1485 The Battle of Bosworth Field brought the Wars of the Roses to an end |
| August 23 | 1297 William Wallace, conqueror of the English at the Battle of Stirling Bridge, was hanged at Smithfield, London |
August 24
|  1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was established
410 The Visigoths captured Rome |
| August 25 | 1875 Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the the Channel |
| August 26 | 1883 The volcanic island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait started to erupt - over 36000 people died in the resulting tidal waves |
| August 27 | 2003 Mars is closest to Earth in nearly 60,000 years passing passing some 34,646,416 miles away |
| August 28 |  1919 Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, Nobel prize winner and inventor of the CAT scanner, was born
|
| August 29 | 1949 Russia detonated its first atomic device |
| August 30 | 1900 Bubonic plague broke out in Glasgow 1860 The first tramway in Britain was opened in Birkenhead |
| August 31 | 1951 Deutsche Grammophon launched the first long-playing record 1888 Polly Nichols, the first victim of Jack The Ripper, was found dead |
