Artillery was used in Russia for the first time on this day in 1382 when the invading hordes of the Tatar Khan Tokhtamysh laid siege to Moscow.

Count Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky, a prominent Russian statesman and diplomat was born on this day in 1809.  In his capacity as Governor-General of Eastern Siberia, the count led many geographic expeditions across the vast region. In 1858 he signed the Aigun treaty with the Chinese establishing the Russo-Chinese border along the Amur River.  In 1860 Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky hoisted the Russian flag in what is now  Vladivostok. In his assimilation effort he actively enlisted the help of the local intellectuals and political exiles. The Count proposed building the Trans-Siberia Railway decades before the strategic railroad was actually commissioned.  

The Red Army won a final victory in the Battle of Kursk on this day in 1943. The battle went down in history books for the unprecedented number of tanks involved on both sides. The fate of the Third Reich was now sealed…

On August 23 of 1959 the US government made the Russian language mandatory in 400 high schools around the nation. 

We are moving to August 24…

On this day in 1572 the Catholics began their slaughter of the French Protestants in Paris. The killings called the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre claimed about 3,000 lives and have since been synonymous with man’s utmost cruelty.

The famous eye doctor and public activist Fyodor Gaaz was born in Germany on this day in 1780.  Graduating from Jena and Vienna universities, Fyodor Gaaz, then a 22-year-old young man, arrived in Moscow and soon emerged as one of the city’s most respected doctors.  During his travels in the Caucasus, he discovered a number of medicinal springs there. In 1814 Fyodor Gaaz joined the Russian army and finished the war in Paris.  For many years Doctor Gaaz, whom people called “a Saint Doctor” served as chief medical officer of the city’s prison system opening a prison hospital and a school the inmates’ children could go to. Engraved on his headstone in Moscow is the motto “Haste to do people good” Dr. Gaaz pursued all his life.

August 25…

The Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible was born on this day in 1520. Still remembered for his tyrannical ways, Ivan the Terrible was one of the best-educated men of his time, a man of phenomenal memory and theological insight.

On this day in 1819 they found in the Swiss Alps a mineral spring officially registered as Spring No 64.  Since then its water has been hailed as the purest, healthiest and saturated mineral water around.

On August 25 of 1830 a revolution broke out in The Netherlands’ southern, Belgian, province where liberal burghers declared Belgian independence. By September the Dutch troops had already been forced to vacate almost the entire territory of the province. The revolution led to the creation of a sovereign Belgian state.

On this day in 1875, Captain Matthew Webb swam from Dover, England, to Calais, France making him the first person to swim the English Channel. The feat took 21 hours and 45 minutes. 

August 26…

The man who discovered America, Christopher Columbus was born on this day in 1451. 

August 27…

According to tradition, the Chinese philosopher Confucius was born on this day in 551 BCE. 

The Greek forces under the leadership of the Spartan Pausanias defeated the Persians in the battle of Plataea fought on this day in 479 BCE. In the fall the Greeks consolidated their military gains by routing the Persian fleet, a major debacle that dashed once and for all Persian King Xerxes’ plans of conquering Hellas.

On August 27 of 1666 royal court architect Sir Christopher Wren devised a reconstruction plan for the towering St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. In an amazing coincidence, only a week after, the old cathedral, along with most of the city, was gutted by the Great Fire of London. Sir Christopher was charged with reconstructing the city and London’s leading church. St. Paul’s Cathedral he recreated became the pinnacle of his architectural career. 

Colonel Edwin Drake drilled America’s first oil well in a small northwestern Pennsylvania town of Titusville on this day in 1859 signaling the birth of the US oil and gas industry. Ten years earlier, Russian engineer Fyodor Semyonov drilled a similar oil well near Baku in what is now Azerbaijan. Before that oil was simply scooped up with buckets from wells 40 and less meters deep. 

On this day in 1913, Lt. Pyotr Nesterov of the Imperial Russia Air Service performed a loop in a Nieuport monoplane, the so-called Nesterov Loop. 

The Guinness Book of World Records was first published in 1955. Initially it came out as a solid, no-nonsense reference book but it later mellowed up a bit registering also a wealth of funny an extravagant records. 

August 28…

Early in the morning on August 28 of 1697 the Russian Emperor Peter I arrived in Holland under the assumed name of Pyotr Mikhailov to learn skills and acquire experience.  The house where Czar Peter stayed is now a museum. There is a bed there whose small size once surprised Napoleon who said: “Nothing is too small for someone who is truly great…”

The German Romantic poet, dramatist, thinker and scholar, Johan Wolfgang Goethe was born on this day in 1749. The author of the famous tragedy “Faust”, many plays and poems that have gone down in world literary, Goethe was a real visionary who left a strong impact on Russian literature. 

And we have finally arrived at August 29…

The Northern War between Russia and Sweden broke out on this day in 1700. Scoring a string of major victories, Peter the Great secured a foothold on the Baltic Sea.

On August 29 of 1862 during his march on the Papal States, Giuseppe Garibaldi was wounded in a battle in Calabria and taken prisoner. The great Russian surgeon Alexander Pirogov saved his leg from amputation and an angry international outcry eventually forced the Sardinian authorities to pardon Italy’s national hero and exile Garibaldi to Caprera island in the Mediterranean.