Holidays Calendar for August 19, 2020
Independence Day in Afghanistan is celebrated on August 19. It commemorates the full independence of Afghanistan from the British Empire in 1919. Interestingly, Afghanistan was never officially part of the British Empire.
The Day of the Tribes (Ibumin Earoeni Day) is a public holiday in the Micronesian island country of Nauru. It is celebrated on August 19 to honor the country’s twelve traditional tribes and matrilineal system.
Eastern churches that use the Julian calendar celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus on August 19. It is one of the so-called Twelve Great Feasts of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
World Photography Day, also known as World Photo Day, is celebrated on August 19. It is a community focused global celebration of photography launched in 2009 by Australian photographer Korske Ara.
Some Star Wars fans celebrate International Talk Like Jar Jar Binks Day on August 19. This annual holiday is dedicated to one of the most controversial characters of the Star Wars franchise.
International Orangutan Day, formerly known as World Orangutan Day, is celebrated annually on August 19. It was created to raise awareness of the critically endangered status of these amazing great apes.
International Bow Day is celebrated annually on August 19. It was created to celebrate a versatile accessory that has been around for hundreds of years.
Beekeeper Day is an official professional holiday in Ukraine celebrated on August 19 every year. It was established by President Leonid Kuchma in 1997.
On August 19, National Aviation Day is celebrated across the United States. It is an annual national observance that honors the development of aviation.
August 19 is August Revolution Commemoration Day in Vietnam. It celebrates the 1945 revolution that ended Japanese rule in Vietnam. The anniversary of the August Revolution is not a public holiday, but it is an important memorial day.
August 19 is an official flag flying day in Norway because it is the birthday of Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway, the wife of Crown Prince Haakon.
Manuel Luis Quezon Day is a Philippine holiday celebrated on August 19. It is dedicated to the second president of the Philippines and the first president of the country to have been elected by popular vote. Quezon Day is a special working holiday in the provinces of Quezon and Aurora, named after Manuel Quezon and his wife Aurora Aragon, respectively.
Anniversaries and Memorial Days →
India
Birthday of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Debbarman Bahadur in Tripura
The birthday of Maharaja Bir Bikram Kishore Manikya Debbarman Bahadur is a state holiday in the Indian state of Tripura. It is celebrated on August 19 to commemorate the last ruling Maharaja of Tripura who made a great contribution to its development.
On August 19, National Soft Ice Cream Day is celebrated throughout the United States. This food holiday celebrates a type of ice cream that has been around since 1930s.
Russian Telnyashka Day, also known as the birthday of the Russian telnyashka, is an unofficial holiday celebrated on August 19. It is dedicated to an iconic uniform garment worn by the Russian Navy and some other branches of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
Potatoes are a staple in many countries across the world because they are easy to grow, relatively inexpensive, and very versatile. Celebrate this amazing root vegetable on National Potato Day that is observed annually on August 19.
World Humanitarian Day is an annual United Nations observance that was officially proclaimed in 2008 and first celebrated on August 19, 2009. It was established to honor humanitarian personnel and those who lost their lives working for humanitarian causes.
Lesbian Pride Day (Dia do Orgulho Lésbico) has been celebrated in Brazil on August 19 every year since 2003. It should not be confused with National Lesbian Visibility Day (Dia Nacional da Visibilidade Lésbica), which is observed ten days later, on August 29.
Festivals on August 19, 2020
- Giffoni Film Festival in Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy
- Kadayawan Festival in Davao City, Philippines
- Paris Jazz Festival in Paris, France
- Just Festival in Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Edinburgh International Festival in Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- Music in Old Kraków in Krakow, Poland
- Music in Old Lviv in Lviv, Ukraine
- Sarajevo Film Festival in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Zürcher Theater Spektakel in Zurich, Switzerland
- Odesa Classics in Odesa, Ukraine
- Bienal de Flamenco in Seville, Spain
- Melbourne International Film Festival in Melbourne, Australia
- Salzburg Festival in Salzburg, Austria
- Qingdao International Beer Festival in Qingdao, China
- International Istanbul Film Festival in Istanbul, Turkey
This Day in History
- 2024 Died: Maria Branyas Morera, Catalan supercentenarian who, until her death at the age of 117 years, 168 days, was the world's oldest verified living person.
- 2024 The Bayesian, a 56-meter superyacht owned by the wife of the technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch, sank off the coast of Palermo, Sicily during a storm.
- 2019 Hundreds of thousands of non-native Atlantic salmon were accidentally released into the Pacific Ocean when net pen broke at a fish farm near Cypress Island, Washington state.
- 2013 Died: Lee Thompson Young, American actor known for his teenage role on the Disney Channel TV series The Famous Jett Jackson and as Chris Comer in Friday Night Lights.
- 2012 Died: Tony Scott, British film director and producer, best known for his work on the films The Hunger, Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, The Last Boy Scout, Enemy of the State, Domino, Unstoppable.
- 2009 Died: Don Hewitt, American television producer, best known for creating the CBS television news magazine 60 Minutes in 1968. This news magazine is the longest-running prime-time broadcast on American television.
- 2009 A series of three car bomb attacks occurred in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, killed at least 101 people and injured 565 others. The bombings were targeted at government and privately owned buildings.
- 1999 Tens of thousands of Serbians rallied on the streets to demand the resignation of President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević.
- 1994 Died: Linus Pauling, American chemist and biologist. In 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances.
- 1988 Born: Veronica Roth, American novelist and short story writer, known for her bestselling Divergent trilogy which has sold more than 35 million copies worldwide.
- 1987 Born: Manny Jacinto, Canadian actor known for his roles as Jason Mendosa on the NBC sitcom The Good Place and as Qimir in the Star Wars series The Acolyte.
- 1987 The first mass murder occurred in Hungerford, Berkshire, Britain. 27-year-old unemployed man Michael Robert killed 16 people, including his mother, with a semi-automatic rifle and then committed suicide.
- 1982 Born: Melissa Fumero, American actress. She is best known for her role as Amy Santiago in the Fox/NBC police procedural comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
- 1980 Saudia Flight 163 en route from Riyadh to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia caught fire after takeoff. The aircraft burned after the emergency landing at the Riyadh airport; all 287 passengers and 14 crew on board died.
- 1969 Born: Matthew Perry, American actor, best known for role as Chandler Bing on the popular sitcom Friends. He also appeared in a number of films, including Fools Rush In, The Whole Nine Yards, and 71 Again.
- 1968 Died: George Gamow, Soviet and American polymath, theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory.
- 1965 Born: Kyra Sedgwick, American film and television actress. She is best known for her starring role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the crime drama The Close.
- 1964 The first geostationary communication satellite Syncom 3 was launched from Cape Canaveral. The satellite was turned off in 1966 and remains in the Earth's orbit as of 2024.
- 1963 Born: John Stamos, American actor and musician. He first gained recognition for his role as Blackie Parrish on the ABC television soap opera General Hospital.
- 1960 The Soviet Union launched a satellite with the dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, two rats, and a variety of plants to space. All animals safely returned back to Earth.
- 1959 Died: Jacob Epstein, American-born British sculptor, a pioneer of modern sculpture. He is known for his controversial works that challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter for public artworks.
- 1955 Born: Peter Gallagher, American actor. He is best known for starring as Sandy Cohen in the television drama series The O.C., as well as for his numerous film roles.
- 1955 At least 200 people died in the flooding caused by Hurricane Diane that hit the Northeast United States. It was the costliest Atlantic hurricane of its time.
- 1946 Born: Bill Clinton, American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Since leaving office, he has been involved in public speaking and humanitarian work.
- 1945 Born: Ian Gillan, English singer and songwriter, known as the lead singer and lyricist for Deep Purple. During his career he also collaborated with Episode Six, Black Sabbath, and WhoCares.
- 1944 Born: Jack Canfield, American author and motivational speaker, known as the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, the third best-selling book in the USA during the 1990s.
- 1942 The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division led an amphibious assault by allied forces on Dieppe, France, codenamed Operation Jubilee, and failed.
- 1936 Died: Federico García Lorca, Spanish poet, playwright, and theater director. He achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27.
- 1924 Born: Willard Boyle, Canadian-American physicist, co-inventor of the charge-coupled device. This work earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.
- 1883 Born: Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, best known as Coco Chanel, French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand. She is the only fashion designer listed on Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
- 1871 Born: Orville Wright, American pilot, inventor, and businessman, co-founder of the Wright Company. Together with his brother Wilbur he invented and built the world's first successful airplane and made the first controlled, powered and sustained human flight.
- 1822 Died: Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre, French mathematician, astronomer, historian of astronomy, and geodesist. He was also director of the Paris Observatory, and author of well-known books on the history of astronomy.
- 1808 Died: Fredrik Henrik af Chapman, Swedish shipbuilder, scientist, and officer in the Swedish navy. He is credited as the first person to apply scientific methods to shipbuilding and is considered to be the first naval architect.
- 1772 Gustav III of Sweden staged a coup d'état, in which he assumed power and enacted a new constitution. The constitution divided power between the Riksdag and the King.
- 1743 Born: Madame du Barry, the last official mistress of King Louis XV of France. She was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution on accusations of treason.
- 1689 Born: Samuel Richardson, English author, best known for his three epistolary novels Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded, Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady, and The History of Sir Charles Grandison.
- 1666 Rear Admiral Robert Holmes led a raid on the Dutch island of Terschelling during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, destroying 150 merchant ships. This act later became known as Holmes's Bonfire.
- 1662 Died: Blaise Pascal, French mathematician, inventor, and physicist. He made important contributions to the study of fluids and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum.
- 1646 Born: John Flamsteed, English astronomer and academic, known for the creation of a catalog of over 3000 stars.