August 26

• 55 BC - Julius Caesar invades Britain
• 1071 - The Seljuk Turks defeat the Byzantine Empire at Manzikert
• 1346 - Battle of Crécy
• 1429 - Joan of Arc enters Paris
• 1498 - Michelangelo commissioned to carve the Pieta
• 1789 - Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen approved by Constituent Assembly at Versailles
• 1839 - Amistad captured off Long Island
• 1847 - Liberia proclaimed independent
• 1858 - First news dispatch by telegraph
• 1862 - Second Battle of Bull Run begins in the American Civil War
• 1883 - Eruption of Mount Krakatoa
• 1914 - Germans defeat Russians in Battle of Tannenberg
• 1920 - 19th amendment to U.S. Constitution gives women the right to vote
• 1944 - Charles de Gaulle enters Paris
• 1957 - Russia tests an ICBM
• 1968 - Democratic National Convention opens in Chicago
• 1972 - Games of the XX Olympiad open in Munich, Germany
• 1976 - Raymond Barre becomes Prime Minister of France
• 1978 - Pope John Paul I elevated to Papacy
• 1978 - Sigmund Jähn becomes first German cosmonaut on board of the Soyuz 33 spacecraft
• 1986 - Toxic gas kills 1700 in Cameroon
• 1987 - President Ronald Reagan proclaims September 11 1987 as 9-1-1 Emergency Number Day
• 2003 - Columbia Accident Investigation Board releases it's final reports on Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on August 27, 2003

• 1676 - Robert Walpole, British prime minister in 1721-1742 (d. 1745)
• 1740 - Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, inventor, worked on first hot air balloon (d. 1810)
• 1743 - Antoine Lavoisier, chemist (d. 1794)
• 1845 - Mary Anne Nicholls, the first confirmed victim of Jack the Ripper (d. 1888)
• 1873 - Lee DeForest, inventor of the vacuum tube (d. 1961)
• 1880 - Guillaume Apollinaire, poet, art critic (d. 1918)
• 1897 - Yoon Boseon, President of South Korea (d. 1990)
• 1898 - Peggy Guggenheim, art collector (d. 1979)
• 1900 - Hellmuth Walter, engineer and inventor (d. 1980)
• 1901 - General Maxwell Taylor, soldier (d. 1987)
• 1904 - Christopher Isherwood, writer (d. 1986)
• 1906 - Albert Sabin, polio researcher (d. 1993)
• 1909 - Jim Davis, actor (d. 1981)
• 1921 - Benjamin Bradlee, journalist
• 1922 - Irving R. Levine, journalist
• 1935 - Geraldine Ferraro, U.S. Vice Presidential candidate in 1984
• 1941 - Barbet Schroeder, director
• 1944 - Richard Alexander Walter Windsor, Duke of Gloucester
• 1946 - Valerie Simpson, singer
• 1952 - Michael Jeter, actor (d. 2003)
• 1960 - Branford Marsalis, saxophonist, bandleader
• 1971 - Thalía, Mexican actress
• 1980 - Macaulay Culkin, actor

• 1278 - Premysl Ottokar II
• 1850 - Louis-Philippe of France
• 1930 - Lon Chaney, actor
• 1945 - Franz Werfel, writer
• 1974 - Charles Lindbergh, aviator
• 1975 - Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia
• 1977 - H.A. Rey, author
• 1978 - Charles Boyer, actor
• 1979 - Mika Waltari, author
• 1980 - Tex Avery, cartoonist
• 1981 - Roger Nash Baldwin, founder of the ACLU
• 1984 - Truman Capote, author
• 1986 - Ted Knight, actor
• 1989 - Irving Stone, author

• Namibia Day (Namibia)
• Sultan's Birthday (Zanzibar)
• St Zephyrinus Day