On the 15th September 1935, the German Reichstag passed the Nuremberg Laws that legally discriminated against Jews.

On the 13th September 1985, the Super Mario Bros. video game was released in Japan.

South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko died in Pretoria prison from injuries inflicted while in police custody.

The Siege of Leningrad, one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, began.

On the 7th September the Second Cornish Uprising of 1497 began when Perkin Warbeck landed at Whitesand Bay near Land’s End.

The ship Victoria returned to Spain as the only survivor of Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet that circumnavigated the globe.

Octavian defeated the combined forces of Marc Anthony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium.

On the 1st September 1939, German forces invaded Poland in a move that was to trigger the Second World War.

On the 31st August 1888, Mary Ann Nichols – commonly known as Polly – became the first confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper in the Whitechapel area of London.

On the 29th August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon codenamed RDS-1 and nicknamed First Lightning.

On the 26th August 1346, one of the most decisive battles in the Hundred Years War was won by the army of the English king Edward III.

On the 25th August 1944, the Nazi German garrison in Paris surrendered the city to the Allies.

On 23rd August 1939, Vyacheslav Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop – the Soviet foreign minister and the German foreign minister – signed the Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,…

At around 11pm on the 20th August 1968, troops from the USSR, Bulgaria, Poland and Hungary entered Czechoslovakia in an invasion that brought the Prague Spring to an end.