On this day -- August 29

August 29 is the 241st day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (242nd in leap years), with 124 days remaining.

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Events

708 - Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708)
1261 - Urban IV becomes Pope, the last man to do so without being a Cardinal first
1475 - Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between France and England
1484 - Pope Innocent VIII, a staunch supporter of the Spanish Inquisition, is elected Pope
1521 - The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár, now known as Belgrade
1526 - Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia
1541 - The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom
1756 - Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War
1786 - Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens
1842 - The Tokugawa shogunate orders the local daimyō to begin providing foreign ships with fresh water and supplies when requested. (Traditional Japanese date: July 24, 1842)
1862 - Battle of Aspromonte - Italian royal forces defeat rebels
1871 - Emperor Meiji orders the abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871)
1885 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle
1895 - The formation of the Northern Rugby Union at the George Hotel, Huddersfield.
1896 - Chop suey is invented in New York City
1898 - Goodyear tire company is founded.
1907 - The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers
1910 - Japan changes Korea's name to Chōsen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony.
1911 - Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with whites, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California
1930 - the last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda voluntarily evacuated to Scotland.
1943 - German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves Danish government
1944 - Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazi rulers.
1949 - Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
1952 - Premiere of John Cage's 4'33" in Woodstock, New York
1958 - United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado
1966 - Last Beatles concert, in San Francisco
1966 - Execution of Sayyid Qutb, an important theoretician of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
1982 - The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
1991 - Supreme Soviet suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party
1995 - NATO launched Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
1996 - A Vnukovo Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard
1997 - At least 98 villagers killed by the GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria
1997 - Serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz bludgeons to death Christopher Maier of Lexington, Kentucky, the first of nine victims.
2003 - Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, was assassinated in a terrorist bombing that killed him along with nearly 100 worshippers as they were leaving a mosque in Najaf.
2004 - End of the 2004 Summer Olympics