August 1

Independence Day
Benin : August 1 1960
Switzerland : August 1 1291

August 1 to 7 : World Breastfeeding Week

World Breastfeeding Week is celebrated every year from 1 to 7 August in more than 120 countries to encourage breastfeeding and improve the health of babies around the world. It commemorates the Innocenti Declaration made by WHO and UNICEF policy-makers in August 1990 to protect, promote and support breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding is the best way to provide newborns with the nutrients they need. WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding until a baby is six months old, and continued breastfeeding with the addition of nutritious complementary foods for up to two years or beyond.

Events

30 BC – Octavian (later known as Augustus) enters Alexandria, Egypt, bringing it under the control of the Roman Republic.
69 – Batavian rebellion: The Batavians in Germania Inferior (Netherlands) revolt under the leadership of Gaius Julius Civilis.
527 – Justinian I becomes the sole ruler of the Byzantine Empire.
607 – Ono no Imoko is dispatched as envoy to the Sui court in China (Traditional Japanese date: July 3, 607).
902 – Taormina, the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily, is captured by the Aghlabid army.
1192 – Richard the Lionheart landed on Jaffa and defeated the army of Saladin
1203 – Isaac II Angelus, restored Eastern Roman Emperor, declares his son Alexius IV Angelus co-emperor after pressure from the forces of the Fourth Crusade.
1291 – The Old Swiss Confederacy is formed with the signature of the Federal Charter.
1498 – Christopher Columbus becomes the first European to visit what is now Venezuela.
1664 – The Ottoman Empire is defeated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard by an Austrian army led by Raimondo Montecuccoli, resulting in the Peace of Vasvár.
1759 – Seven Years' War: The Battle of Minden, an allied Anglo-German army victory over the French. In Britain this was one of a number of events that constituted the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 and is celebrated as Minden Day by certain British Army regiments.
1798 – French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay) – Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action.
1800 – The Act of Union 1800 is passed in which merges the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
1801 – First Barbary War: The American schooner USS Enterprise captures the Tripolitan polacca Tripoli in a single-ship action off the coast of modern-day Libya.
1831 – A new London Bridge opens.
1834 – Slavery is abolished in the British Empire as the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 comes into force.
1838 – Non-labourer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1840 – Labourer slaves in most of the British Empire are emancipated.
1842 – The Lombard Street Riot erupts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.
1855 – The first ascent of Monte Rosa, the second highest summit in the Alps.
1876 – Colorado is admitted as the 38th U.S. state.
1894 – The First Sino-Japanese War erupts between Japan and China over Korea.
1907 – The start of first Scout camp on Brownsea Island, the origin of the worldwide Scouting movement.
1914 – Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I. The Swiss Army mobilises because of World War I.
1927 – The Nanchang Uprising marks the first significant battle in the Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and Communist Party of China. This day is commemorated as the anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army.
1937 – Josip Broz Tito reads the resolution "Manifesto of constitutional congress of KPH" to the constitutive congress of KPH (Croatian Communist Party) in woods near Samobor.
1944 – The Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation breaks out in Warsaw, Poland.
1957 – The United States and Canada form the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).
1960 – Dahomey (later renamed Benin) declares independence from France.
1960 – Islamabad is declared the federal capital of the Government of Pakistan.
1964 – The Belgian Congo is renamed the Republic of the Congo.
1966 – Charles Whitman kills 16 people at The University of Texas at Austin before being killed by the police.
1966 – Purges of intellectuals and imperialists becomes official People's Republic of China policy at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
1968 – The coronation is held of Hassanal Bolkiah, the 29th Sultan of Brunei.
1974 – Cyprus dispute: The United Nations Security Council authorizes the UNFICYP to create the "Green Line", dividing Cyprus into two zones.
1975 – CSCE Final Act creates the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
1980 – Buttevant Rail Disaster kills 18 and injures dozens of train passengers in Ireland.
1980 – Vigdís Finnbogadóttir is elected President of Iceland and becomes the country's first democratically elected female head of state
1981 – MTV begins broadcasting in the United States and airs its first video, "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the Buggles.
1984 – Commercial peat-cutters discover the preserved bog body of a man, called Lindow Man, at Lindow Moss, Cheshire, North West England.
1993 – The Great Flood of 1993 comes to a peak.
2001 – Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has a Ten Commandments monument installed in the judiciary building, leading to a lawsuit to have it removed and his own removal from office.
2004 – A supermarket fire kills 396 people and injures 500 in Asunción, Paraguay.
2007 – The I-35W Mississippi River Bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota, collapses during the evening rush hour.

Holidays and observances

Armed Forces Day (Lebanon)
Armed Forces Day or Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Liberation Army (People's Republic of China)
Christian Feast Day:
Abgar V of Edessa (Syrian Church)
Alphonso Maria de' Liguori
Æthelwold of Winchester
Eusebius of Vercelli
Exuperius of Bayeux
Felix of Girona
Peter Apostle in Chains
August 1 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Celebration of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 which ended the slavery in the British Empire, generally celebrated as a part of Carnival, as the Caribbean Carnival takes place at this time (British West Indies):
Earliest day on which Caribana celebration can fall, celebrated on the first Weekend of August. (Toronto)
Earliest day on which Emancipation Day can fall, celebrated on the first Monday of August. (Anguilla, the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands)
Emancipation Day (Barbados, Bermuda, Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago)
Earliest day on which Civic Holiday can fall; celebrated on the first Monday of August. (Canada)
Earliest day on which Commerce Day, or Frídagur verslunarmanna, can fall; celebrated on the first Monday of August. (Iceland)
Earliest day on which International Friendship Day can fall, celebrated on the first Sunday of August.
Feast of Kamál (Perfection); First day of the eighth month of the Bahá'í calendar. (Bahá'í Faith)
Liberation of Haile Selassie from slavery. (Rastafari movement)
National Day, celebrates the independence of Benin from France in 1960.
National Day, commemorates Switzerland becoming a single unit in 1291.
Procession of the Cross and the beginning of Dormition Fast (Eastern Orthodoxy)
Statehood Day (Colorado)
The beginning of Autumn observances:
Lughnasadh, traditionally begins on the eve of August 1. (Gaels, Ireland, Scotland, Neopagans)
Lammas (England, Scotland, Neopagans)
The first day of Carnaval del Pueblo (Burgess Park, London)
Yorkshire Day (Yorkshire, England)
World Scout Day, anniversary of the first day of the Brownsea Island Camp in 1907, where Robert Baden-Powell began scouting.

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