Here are 50 newsworthy anniversaries coming up in August 2017 for you to write about (and make money from). The anniversaries are listed 6 months in advance to give you enough time to find markets, and research and write your articles.

We have painstakingly cross-checked every entry, but you are advised to check all facts again as part of your research. Please let us know of any errors you find.

The listing below is a small sample of the entries for August from The Date-A-Base Book 2017. There are 303 anniversaries for August in the book (more than six times more than listed here). The book covers the whole of 2017 from January to December and features more than 4,000 anniversaries in total.

If you need to work further ahead, Next Year’s News 2018 (the new name for the Date-A-Base Book series) is also available!

Just one published article should cover the cost of your copy many times over – and the book also explains how to get your anniversary articles and features published in newspapers and magazines, on radio and TV, and on paid sites online.

300 years ago (22 Aug – 30 Oct 1717)
The Spanish conquest of Sardinia. This led to the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718-20).

150 years ago (3 Aug 1867)
Birth of Stanley Baldwin, British Prime Minister (1923-24, 1924-29, 1935-37). He led the government during the 1926 General Strike, the 1935 Ethiopian crisis and the 1936 abdication crisis. He is the only British Prime Minister to have served under 3 monarchs.

150 years ago (14 Aug 1867)
Birth of John Galsworthy, British novelist and playwright. Best known for The Forsyte Saga. Winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize for Literature.

150 years ago (25 Aug 1867)
Death of Michael Faraday, British physicist and chemist. Noted for his many contributions to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry, especially electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis.

150 years ago (31 Aug 1867)
Death of Charles Baudelaire, important French poet, essayist, literary and art critic, and translator of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Best known for his poetry collection Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil).

125 years ago (4 Aug 1892)
The father and step-mother of Lizzie Borden were found murdered at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, USA. Lizzie was accused of killing them with an axe, but was later acquitted. Police said they were not looking for anyone else in connection with the crime, and Lizzie was ostracised for the rest of her life. It was one of the most sensational murder cases of that period, and speculation continues to this day. The story has been recounted in numerous books, films, TV shows, plays, songs, and a popular skipping rhyme.

125 years ago (24 Aug 1892)
Goodison Park opened in Liverpool, UK. It was one of the world’s first purpose-built football (soccer) stadiums, and is the home of Everton FC.

100 years ago (6 Aug 1917)
Birth of Robert Mitchum, American film actor. Best known for his roles as a gritty anti-hero.

100 years ago (18 Aug 1917)
Great Thessaloniki Fire, Greece. Two-thirds of Greece’s second-largest city was destroyed by fire. 72,000 people were left homeless. (Cause: a spark from an unattended kitchen fire ignited a pile of straw. The resulting fire swept through the city, fanned by strong wind.)

100 years ago (18 Aug 1917)
Birth of Caspar Weinberger, U.S. Secretary of Defense (1981-87) and businessman. He resigned over his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, but was pardoned shortly before his trial was due to begin. He later became chairman of Forbes magazine.

100 years ago (22 Aug 1917)
Birth of John Lee Hooker, American blues singer, songwriter and guitarist.

80 years ago (2 Aug 1937)
The Marijuana Tax Act was passed in the USA. It was a significant step towards the criminalisation of cannabis. (It came into effect on 1st October. It was repealed and replaced by the Controlled Substances Act in 1970.)

80 years ago (13 Aug – 26 Nov 1937)
Second Sino-Japanese War – the Battle of Shanghai (China). Japanese victory. One of the largest and bloodiest battles of the war.

80 years ago (28 Aug 1937)
The Toyota Motor Corporation was founded as an independent company in Japan. (It began in 1933 as part of the Toyoda Automatic Loom Works.)

75 years ago (1 Aug 1942)
Birth of Jerry Garcia, American rock singer, guitarist and songwriter (Grateful Dead). (Died 1995.)

75 years ago (7 Aug 1942 – 9 Feb 1943)
World War II – the Battle of Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands). The Allies’ first major offensive in the Pacific. Strategic Allied victory.

75 years ago (9 Aug 1942)
Mahatma Gandhi launched the Quit India Movement after being arrested by British forces in Bombay.

75 years ago (11 Aug 1942)
Austrian-born American actress Hedy Lamarr and American composer George Antheil were granted a U.S. patent for their frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication system. They developed the system as part of the U.S. war effort – it prevented radio-controlled torpedoes from being jammed by the enemy. The system was later adopted as the basis for wireless phones and Wi-Fi computer networking.

75 years ago (12 Aug 1942)
World War II – the Second Moscow Conference. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and U.S. envoy W. Averell Harriman to discuss war strategy, plan the North Africa Campaign, and discuss opening a new front in northern France.

75 years ago (13 Aug 1942)
The première of Walt Disney’s animated feature film Bambi. (Released 21st August. UK première: 8th August.)

75 years ago (17 Aug 1942)
World War II: the first US-only bombing raid in Europe. The U.S. Eighth Air Force attacked marshalling yards at Rouen/Sotteville in Normandy, France. Sam Junkin became the first U.S. pilot to shoot down a German fighter plane.

75 years ago (23 Aug 1942 – 2 Feb 1943)
World War II – the Battle of Stalingrad (Soviet Union). The turning point in the war in Europe. Regarded as the largest and bloodiest battle in the history of warfare, and one that the Germans never recovered from. Decisive Soviet victory.

70 years ago (7 Aug 1947)
Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl’s raft Kon-Tiki reached Raroia, Tuamotu Islands, French Polynesia after a 101-day journey across the Pacific from South America. This demonstrated that people from pre-Columbian South America could have made the journey and settled there.

70 years ago (14 Aug 1947)
Pakistan gained its independence from the UK. Muhammad Ali Jinnah was its first Governor-General. (Pakistan and India both officially became independent at midnight on 15th August, but Pakistan held its independence ceremony 30 minutes early, on 14th, and now celebrates 14th August as its independence day.)

70 years ago (15 Aug 1947)
India gained its independence from the UK.

65 years ago (15 Aug 1952)
Lynmouth flood, Devon, UK. 34 people were killed and buildings and bridges devastated as a flood swept through the village.

60 years ago (5 Aug 1957)
The first episode of the dance show American Bandstand was broadcast on ABC TV in the USA. (It began as a local TV show called Bandstand in Philadelphia in 1952.)

60 years ago (31 Aug 1957)
The Federation of Malaya (now Malaysia) gained its independence from the UK.

50 years ago (8 Aug 1967)
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was founded.

50 years ago (9 Aug 1967)
Death of Joe Orton, British playwright. Known for his outrageous farces and black comedies. Best known for Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot and What the Butler Saw. (Murder-suicide by his lover.)

50 years ago (14 Aug 1967)
The Marine, Etc. Broadcasting Offences Act came into effect in the UK. It banned radio and television broadcasts being made into Britain from outside its territory, including airspace and bodies of water. It effectively made offshore pirate radio stations illegal, as well as outlawing pirate TV stations and aircraft-based broadcasts that were being planned.

50 years ago (15 Aug 1967)
Death of René Magritte, Belgian Surrealist artist.

50 years ago (27 Aug 1967)
Death of Brian Epstein, British music entrepreneur. Best known as the manager of the Beatles. (Accidental overdose of sleeping pills.)

40 years ago (15 Aug 1977)
The ‘Wow! Signal’ was detected by American astronomer Jerry R. Ehman while he was working on a SETI project using the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University. The 72-second strong narrowband signal appeared to come from the M55 globular cluster in the constellation Sagittarius, but it has not been detected since.

40 years ago (16 Aug 1977)
Death of Elvis Presley, (‘The King’), iconic American rock and roll singer, guitarist and actor.

40 years ago (20 Aug 1977)
NASA launched its Voyager 2 spacecraft on a mission to study the outer solar system and (eventually) interstellar space. It is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune. (It also visited Jupiter and Saturn.) It remains operational and in communication with Earth. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 carry a gold-plated audio-visual disc featuring photos and sounds from Earth as well as scientific information.

40 years ago (23 Aug 1977)
The first VHS video recorder was released in the USA – the RCA VBT200. (The first VHS video recorder in the UK was the Victor HR-3300, released in 1978 by JVC. That model had been on sale in Japan since October 1976.)

30 years ago (1 Aug 1987)
The entertainment television network MTV Europe was launched. The first music video it played was Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.

30 years ago (15 Aug 1987)
Corporal punishment was banned in British state schools.

30 years ago (19 Aug 1987)
Hungerford Massacre, Berkshire, UK. Michael Ryan went on a shooting rampage around the town, killing 16 people (including his mother) before committing suicide.

25 years ago (12 Aug 1992)
Death of John Cage, American avant-garde composer.

25 years ago (20 Aug 1992)
Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper published compromising photographs of the Duchess of York (Sarah Ferguson) on holiday in France with her ‘financial adviser’ John Bryan, who could be seen sucking her toes while she was topless.

25 years ago (24 Aug 1992)
Hurricane Andrew hit Florida, USA, causing a record $26.5 billion (£17 billion) worth of damage (surpassed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005). The Bahamas and Louisiana were also hit. 65 people were killed.

25 years ago (30 Aug 1992)
Astronomers David Jewitt and Jane Luu discovered the first Kuiper belt object after 5 years of searching. (The Kuiper belt is a region of the solar system beyond the orbit of Neptune and includes the dwarf planet Pluto. More than 100,000 Kuiper belt objects with a diameter larger than 62 miles (100 km) are believed to exist. Over 1,000 have been discovered so far.)

25 years ago (30 Aug 1992)
German racing driver Michael Schumacher won the Belgian Grand Prix – the first of his record 91 Formula One wins.

20 years ago (13 Aug 1997)
The first episode of the adult animated comedy series South Park was broadcast on Comedy Central in the USA.

20 years ago (26 Aug 1997)
The first DVD-Video discs went on sale in the USA.

20 years ago (29 Aug 1997)
Netflix began operating as an online DVD rental service. It switched to a subscription-based service in 1999 and later added unlimited video streaming and original programming.

20 years ago (31 Aug 1997)
Death of Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Fayed, and their driver, in a car crash in the Place de l’Alma underpass in Paris, France.

15 years ago (4 Aug 2002)
Soham murders, Cambridgeshire, UK. 10-year-old schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells went missing. (Their bodies were found in a ditch in Suffolk 2 weeks later. School caretaker Ian Huntley and his girlfriend Maxine Carr were arrested and convicted.)

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