20 August: On this day in history
What events happened on 20 August in history? We round up the events, births and deaths…
c20 August AD 14
The day after Augustus’s death, his exiled grandson Agrippa Postumus is murdered on the orders of the new emperor, Tiberius.
20 August 1580
Death of Sir George Bowes. A loyal servant of Elizabeth I, he oversaw the transfer of Mary, Queen of Scots from Carlisle to Bolton Castle in 1568. In 1569 he held Barnard Castle against the northern rebels for two weeks.
20 August 1779
Jöns Jakob Berzelius was born near Linkoping in Sweden. Considered one of the founders of modern chemistry, he discovered a number of elements including cerium, selenium and thorium.
20 August 1841
Under the command of Captain HD Trotter RN, the steamers Albert, Wilberforce and Soudan began their ascent of the Niger river.
20 August 1902
Birth of Scottish doctor Margaret Henderson Thompson. A prisoner of the Japanese on Sumatra during the Second World War, she helped provide medical care for her fellow inmates and in 1943, while still in captivity, she was awarded the MBE.
20 August 1991
After a KGB-backed coup to depose Mikhail Gorbachev, 100,000 Muscovites join Boris Yeltsin to demonstrate outside the Russian parliament.
Get exclusive access to Ruth Goodman’s six-week Academy course on Victorian Life, featuring two live Q&As + a book of your choice when you subscribe to BBC History Magazine
