THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 14

August 14 is the 226th day of the year (227th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 139 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Wednesday or Thursday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Saturday (56).

NATIONAL CREAMSICLE DAY


1480 – Battle of Otranto: Ottoman troops behead 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam; they are later honored in the Church. Guess we've learned nothing. 

1842 – American Indian Wars: Second Seminole War ends, with the Seminoles forced from Florida to Oklahoma. 

1880 – Construction of Cologne Cathedral, the most famous landmark in Cologne, Germany, is completed. 

1914 – World War I: Start of the Battle of Lorraine, an unsuccessful French offensive designed to recover the lost province of Moselle from Germany.

1933 – Loggers cause a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon, later known as the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn; it is not fully extinguished until September 5, after destroying 240,000 acres (970 km2). 

1935 – Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act, creating a government pension system for the retired. 

1936 – Rainey Bethea is hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last known public execution in the United States. 

1941 – World War II: Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt sign the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims. 

1945 – Japan accepts the Allied terms of surrender in World War II and the Emperor records the Imperial Rescript on Surrender (August 15 in Japan Standard Time).

1975 – The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the longest-running release in film history, opens in London. 

1980 – Lech Wałęsa leads strikes at the Gdańsk, Poland shipyards.

2003 – A wide scale power blackout affects the northeast United States and Canada.

2006 – 61 schoolgirls killed in Chencholai bombing by Sri Lankan Air Force air strike. 

2007 – The Kahtaniya bombings kills at least 334 people. ― From NPR

2013 – Egypt declares a state of emergency as security forces kill hundreds of demonstrators supporting former president Mohamed Morsi. 

2015 – The US Embassy in Havana, Cuba re-opens after 54 years of being closed when Cuba–United States relations were broken off. 

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1499 – John de Vere, 14th Earl of Oxford, English politician, Lord Great Chamberlain (d. 1526)

1642 – Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (d. 1723)

1848 – Margaret Lindsay Huggins, Anglo-Irish astronomer and author (d. 1915)

1912 – Frank Oppenheimer, American physicist and academic (d. 1985)

1925 – Russell Baker, American critic and essayist

1950 – Gary Larson, American cartoonist

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.