What happened on 20 August?

13 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1667 Milton's Paradise Lost English blank-verse epic on the Fall of Man; pinnacle of 17th-century English poetry.
2. 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia Warsaw Pact forces crush Prague Spring liberalisation.
3. 1944 Born: Rajiv Gandhi Former Prime Minister of India; assassinated 1991.
4. 1991 Estonia declares independence from USSR Estonia restores independence ahead of full USSR collapse.
5. 1882 Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture Concert overture commemorating Russia's defence against Napoleon; cannons and bells included.
6. 1828 Ram Mohan Roy founds the Brahmo Sabha A reformed Hindu congregation without idols or caste, and the institutional root of the Bengal Renaissance.
7. 2018 Greta Thunberg's school strike Swedish teenager's lone climate strike outside parliament inspires a worldwide movement.
8. 1996 Pony (Ginuwine) Timbaland's stuttering, burping synth bass announces a new production era.
9. 1940 Assassination of Leon Trotsky In his fortified house in Coyoacán, Mexico, Trotsky is struck with an ice axe by the Soviet agent Ramón Mercader, ending Stalin's long hunt for his rival.
10. 1897 Ross proves mosquitoes transmit malaria Dissecting a mosquito in a sweltering Secunderabad lab, Ronald Ross finds the malaria parasite in its gut — 'Mosquito Day', and Britain's first Nobel in medicine.
11. 1905 Tongmenghui founded In Tokyo Sun Yat-sen unites Chinese revolutionary societies into the Revolutionary Alliance, pledged to expel the Manchus and found a republic.
12. 1191 Massacre of Ayyadieh Richard I orders the execution of 2,700 Muslim prisoners outside Acre after Saladin delays the agreed ransom.
13. 1857 Les Fleurs du mal obscenity trial Weeks after publication, Baudelaire and his publisher are convicted of offending public morals; six poems are banned from the book until 1949.