Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/August 23
- 1305 - After a show trial, William Wallace (pictured), leader of the Scottish resistance against England, was executed in Smithfield Market, London.
- 1866 - Prussia defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War, and dissolved the German Confederation.
- 1939 - The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty between the Soviet Union and the German Third Reich, was signed in Moscow.
- 1944 - King Michael dismissed the pro-Nazi government of General Ion Antonescu, putting Romania on the side of the Allies for the remainder of World War II.
- 1989 - Baltic Way: Approximately two million people joined their hands to form an over 600 km long human chain across the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Soviet republics during the Singing Revolution.