Today in History: Wednesday, Aug. 30

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526 – King Theoderic the Great dies of dysentery at Ravenna; his daughter Amalasuntha takes power as regent for her 10-year-old son Athalaric. 1282 – Peter III of Aragon lands at Trapani to intervene in the War of the Sicilian Vespers. 1363 – The five-week Battle of Lake Poyang begins, in which the forces of two Chinese rebel leaders (Chen Youliang and Zhu Yuanzhang) meet to decide who will supplant the Yuan dynasty. 1464 – Pope Paul II succeeds Pope Pius II as the 211th pope. 1574 – Guru Ram Das becomes the Fourth Sikh Guru/Master. 1590 – Tokugawa Ieyasu enters Edo Castle. (Traditional Japanese date: August 1, 1590) 1727 – Anne, eldest daughter of King George II of Great Britain, is given the title Princess Royal. 1791 – HMS Pandora sinks after having run aground on the outer Great Barrier Reef the previous day. 1799 – The entire Dutch fleet is captured by British forces under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby and Admiral Sir Charles Mitchell during the War of the Second Coalition. 1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen. 1813 – First Battle of Kulm: French forces are defeated by an Austrian-Prussian-Russian alliance. 1813 – Creek War: Fort Mims massacre: Creek "Red Sticks" kill over 500 settlers (including over 250 armed militia) in Fort Mims, north of Mobile, Alabama. 1835 – Australia: Melbourne, Victoria is founded. 1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen. 1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Richmond: Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout Union forces under General Horatio Wright. 1873 – Austrian explorers Julius von Payer and Karl Weyprecht discover the archipelago of Franz Josef Land in the Arctic Sea. 1896 – Philippine Revolution: After Spanish victory in the Battle of San Juan del Monte, eight provinces in the Philippines are declared under martial law by the Spanish Governor-General Ramón Blanco y Erenas. 1909 – Burgess Shale fossils are discovered by Charles Doolittle Walcott. 1914 – World War I: Germans defeat the Russians in the Battle of Tannenberg. 1917 – Vietnamese prison guards led by Trịnh Văn Cấn mutiny at the Thái Nguyên penitentiary against local French authority. 1918 – Fanni Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, which along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror. 1922 – Battle of Dumlupınar: The final battle in the Greco-Turkish War ("Turkish War of Independence"). 1940 – The Second Vienna Award reassigns the territory of Northern Transylvania from Romania to Hungary. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Alam el Halfa begins. 1945 – Hong Kong is liberated from Japan by British Armed Forces. 1945 – The Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Douglas MacArthur lands at Atsugi Air Force Base. 1945 – The Allied Control Council, governing Germany after World War II, comes into being. 1945 – The August Revolution ends as Emperor Bảo Đại abdicates, ending the Nguyễn dynasty. 1962 – Japan conducts a test of the NAMC YS-11, its first aircraft since World War II and its only successful commercial aircraft from before or after the war. 1963 – The Moscow–Washington hotline between the leaders of the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union goes into operation. 1967 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 1974 – A Belgrade–Dortmund express train derails at the main train station in Zagreb killing 153 passengers. 1974 – A powerful bomb explodes at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries headquarters in Marunouchi, Tokyo. Eight are killed, 378 are injured. Eight left-wing activists are arrested on May 19, 1975 by Japanese authorities. 1981 – President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar of Iran are assassinated in a bombing committed by the People's Mujahedin of Iran. 1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage. 1991 – Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Azerbaijan declares independence from Soviet Union. 1992 – The 11-day Ruby Ridge standoff ends with Randy Weaver surrendering to federal authorities. 1995 – Bosnian War: NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces. 1998 – Second Congo War: Armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and their Angolan and Zimbabwean allies recapture Matadi and the Inga dams in the western DRC from RCD and Rwandan troops. 1999 – East Timor votes for independence from Indonesia in a referendum. 2014 – Prime Minister of Lesotho Tom Thabane flees to South Africa as the army allegedly stages a coup.