Julia Ward Howe’s poem ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was first published in ‘The Atlantic Monthly’. Set to the music of ‘John Brown’s Body’, it became a popular Union song during the American Civil War

I have created an auto-updating gallery of ‘Fakebook’ examples created by students and teachers around the world in a wide variety of subjects. Why not try Fakebook out with your own classes as a way of getting thinking about timelines of events / biographical summaries and relationships between historical figures?

Death of George Harrison, British rock guitarist, singer and songwriter (The Beatles)

Death of Cary Grant, British-born American film actor (‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘Gunga Din’, ‘His Girl Friday’, ‘The Philadelphia Story’, ‘To Catch A Thief’, ‘North by Northwest’, and more)

Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, an agreement to collaborate against the threat of Soviet Communism

Death of Freddie Mercury, Zanzibar-born British rock singer and songwriter (Queen)

Death of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, Spanish politician, founder of the Spanish fascist party, the Falange. (Executed)

Birth of John Bright, British politician and political reformer, co-founder of the Anti-Corn Law League, and a campaigner for free trade

Death of Vyacheslav Molotov, Russian statesman and diplomat

American Civil War: Battle of Belmont, Missouri. A minor battle with an inconclusive outcome, but notable as it was Ulysses S. Grant’s first experience of battlefield command. (He would later become commander of the Union Army, and U.S. President)

Alex Ferguson was appointed manager of Manchester United FC

The first aerial bombing raid. In the Italo-Turkish War, Italian pilot Giulio Gavotti dropped 4 small bombs on Turkish troops in Libya

William Shakespeare’s play ‘The Tempest’ was first performed, at Whitehall Palace, London, UK

De-Stalinisation: former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s mausoleum in Red Square, Moscow and reburied within the Kremlin walls, out of public view.

Private Eye is a fortnightly British satirical and current affairs magazine, edited by Ian Hislop. Since its first publication in 1961, Private Eye has been a prominent critic and lampooner of public figures and entities that it deemed guilty of any of the sins of incompetence, inefficiency, corruption, pomposity or self-importance and it has become…

Death of Gene Roddenberry, American screenwriter and producer, creator of ‘Star Trek’

Apple Computer released the first iPod digital music player

Algerian War – Paris massacre: French police attacked Algerian protesters who were staging a peaceful demonstration in Paris. (The exact number of Algerians killed is unknown – at least 40, but possibly more than 200)

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew within 112 miles (181 km) of Jupiter’s moon Io, sending back images and data

The Reykjavik summit in Iceland, aimed at reducing the nuclear arsenals of the USA and USSR, ended in failure. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev failed to reach agreement on the USA’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) – also known as ‘Star Wars’

Death of Theodor Geisel, ‘Dr. Seuss’, popular American children’s writer, illustrator and film-maker (‘How the Grinch Stole Christmas’, ‘The Cat in the Hat’, ‘Green Eggs and Ham’, and many more)

The American rock band Nirvana released the album ‘Nevermind’.

Ötzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old mummified body, was discovered by a tourist in the Tirolean Alps on the Italian-Austrian border.

Greenpeace, the international environmental group, was founded in Vancouver, Canada

The USA returned Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘Guernica’ to Spain. Picasso had refused to allow it to return until democracy had been restored. It was put on display in Spain on 25th Oct – the centenary of Picasso’s birth.

25 years ago today – 31 Aug 1986 Death of Henry Moore, British sculptor

30 years ago today – 25 Aug 1981 The U.S. space probe Voyager 2 reached Saturn and sent back images and data from the planet. (It travelled on to Uranus (1986) and Neptune (1989) before leaving the solar system)

30 years ago today – 24 Aug 1981 Mark Chapman was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of British rock musician John Lennon

20 years ago today – 24 Aug 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

150 years ago today – 22 Aug 1861 Birth of Mary Elizabeth Wood, American librarian and missionary who established a network of libraries and a training programme for librarians in China

100 years ago today – 21 Aug 1911 Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in Paris by an employee. (Recovered in 1913)

20 years ago today – 19 Aug 1991 Attempted coup in the Soviet Union. Hard-line members of the Communist Party tried to seize control from President Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup failed after just 3 days, and eventually led to the collapse of communism and the disintegration of the USSR

75 years ago today – 19 Aug 1936 Death of Federico García Lorca, Spanish poet and playwright

50 years ago today – 13 Aug 1961 East Germany sealed off the border between East and West Berlin to prevent the exodus of refugees to the West. Initially barbed wire fences were erected; construction of the Berlin Wall began on 15th August

300 years ago today – 11 Aug 1711 The first horse race meeting at Ascot took place, initiated by Queen Anne

100 years ago today – 10 Aug 1911 British Members of Parliament voted to receive salaries for the first time.

100 years ago (31 Jul 1910) American physician Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was arrested aboard the SS Montrose as it docked in Quebec. He had fled England after murdering his wife, and was the first criminal to be caught using wireless telegraph [more].

75 years ago today – 1 Aug 1936 The XI Olympic Games opened in Berlin, Germany. It was the last Olympics for 12 years due to World War II 75 years ago today – 1 Aug 1936 Birth of Yves Saint-Laurent, Algerian-born French fashion designer 75 years ago today – 2 Aug 1936 Death of…