By Day: Historical Events on August 19th

Benjamin Banneker, the son of a free Black American woman and a formerly enslaved African man from Guinea, writes a letter to Thomas Jefferson, then-Secretary of State. On the letter, Banneker criticizes Jefferson’s hypocritical stance on slavery in respectful but unambiguous terms, using Jefferson’s own words to make his case for the abolition of slavery. Jefferson brief response thanked him for the letter, expressed his ambivalence about slavery ("…no body [sic] wishes more sincerely than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit in your letter, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men") and endorsed Banneker’s accomplishments. More

Afghan Independence Day (Afghan Victory Day) It commemorates the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919

Hitler becomes President of Germany; 89.9 percent of German voters approved granting Chancellor Adolf Hitler additional powers, including the office of president.

The Dieppe Raid, an Allied amphibious assault on the German-occupied port of Dieppe, France, ends in a heavy defeat and high casualties.

A U.S. CIA and UK supported coup d'état by the Iranian military topples the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. It favored strengthening the monarchical rule of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and all but insuring access to Iranian oil by the U.S. and the U.K. Sixty years later, in 2013, the National Security Archive released declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the controversial operation. Although American and British involvement, had long been public knowledge, the released documents were the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup and participated in smoothing over the aftermath. More

Soviet hardline Communists staged a coup, temporarily removing Mikhail Gorbachev from power. The coup failed within 72 hours as democratic reformer Boris Yeltsin rallied the Russian people. Yeltsin then became the leading power in the country. The Communist Party was soon banned and by December the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. More