What happened on 26 August?

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

1. 1768 Captain Cook's first Pacific voyage Charts New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, observes the transit of Venus.
2. 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man French National Assembly's foundational statement of universal rights.
3. 1071 Battle of Manzikert Seljuk Turks defeat the Byzantine army and capture Emperor Romanos IV; Turkish settlement spreads across Anatolia in the following decades, part of the background to Byzantium's ap
4. 1968 Chicago 1968 Democratic Convention riots Police clash with anti-war protesters outside the DNC.
5. 1346 Battle of Crécy Edward III's outnumbered English army crushes French chivalry with the longbow; transformative battle in medieval warfare.
6. 1914 Battle of Tannenberg Germans encircle and destroy the Russian Second Army on the Eastern Front.
7. 1968 The Moscow Protocol Abducted to Moscow in handcuffs during the invasion, Dubček and his colleagues are worked over for four days until they sign the protocol that unwinds their own reforms — all but o
8. 1922 Battle of Dumlupınar Kemal's Great Offensive breaks the Greek line in western Anatolia; within two weeks his army is in Smyrna and the Greco-Turkish War is won.
9. 1743 Born: Antoine Lavoisier Father of modern chemistry; identified oxygen and was guillotined in the Terror.
10. 1278 Battle on the Marchfeld Rudolf I defeats and kills Ottokar II of Bohemia in one of medieval Europe's largest cavalry battles, winning Austria for his sons — the Habsburg heartland for 640 years.
11. 1676 Born: Sir Robert Walpole Britain's first de facto Prime Minister; ran the Whig government for two decades.
12. 1619 Bohemia elects the Winter King The rebel Bohemian estates depose their Habsburg king and offer the crown to the Protestant Frederick V of the Palatinate — who takes it against all advice. His reign lasts a singl
13. 1895 Adams Power Plant at Niagara Falls Westinghouse's Tesla-system generators at Niagara Falls begin sending alternating current 26 miles to Buffalo — victory for AC.
14. 1913 The Dublin Lockout Dublin's employers lock out 20,000 workers to break Jim Larkin's transport union in the bitterest labour dispute in Irish history. Out of the struggle comes James Connolly's Irish
15. 1819 Born: Prince Albert Victoria's husband and Prince Consort; co-creator of the Great Exhibition.
16. 1978 Pontificate of John Paul I The 'smiling pope' dies after 33 days, the shortest reign in four centuries; the conspiracy theories never quite die, and the year of three popes ends with Wojtyła.
17. 1846 Mendelssohn's Elijah Conducted by Mendelssohn at the Birmingham Festival, the oratorio is an instant triumph, with eight numbers encored, and becomes a pillar of Victorian choral life.
18. 1841 Deutschlandlied August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben writes 'Das Lied der Deutschen' on Heligoland to Haydn's imperial melody — a liberal call for a united Germany, later appropriated by the