Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 23
- 1305 – After a show trial, William Wallace (pictured), leader of the Scottish resistance against England during the Wars of Scottish Independence, was executed in Smithfield Market, London.
- 1839 – As it prepared for war against China's Qing Dynasty, an ensuing conflict that became known as the First Opium War, Britain captured the southeast Asia port of Hong Kong.
- 1927 – After a controversial trial, and despite worldwide protests, Italian-born American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti were executed via electrocution in Massachusetts for the charge of murder and theft.
- 1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a 10-year, mutual non-aggression treaty that was eventually broken when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union two years later.
- 1989 – Baltic Way: Approximately two million people joined their hands to form an over 600 km (373 mi) long human chain across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics during the Singing Revolution.
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