1945Sukarno and Hatta proclaim the independence of Indonesia
For more than three centuries the islands of the East Indies had been ruled from the Netherlands, first by the Dutch East India Company and then by the Dutch state. In 1942 Japan swept the Dutch away and occupied the islands, and as the war turned against it, it allowed the nationalist leaders Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta to prepare for self-rule. When news came that Japan had surrendered, younger activists pressed the two men to act at once, before the Allies and the Dutch could return.
Through the night of 16 August Sukarno, Hatta and Ahmad Soebardjo drafted a short text in a house in Jakarta, and at about ten the next morning, 17 August 1945, Sukarno read it aloud to a small crowd outside his home at Jalan Pegangsaan Timur 56. The red and white flag was raised. The Dutch refused to accept the new republic, and four years of fighting and negotiation followed before they handed over sovereignty in December 1949, but Indonesians date their nation from that morning.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: State Secretariat of the Republic of Indonesia: Detik-detik Proklamasi, 17 Agustus 1945 ↗
1960Gabon becomes independent from France
The forests and coast of Gabon came under French control during the 19th century, and Libreville, founded as a settlement for freed slaves in 1849, became the centre of the colony. From 1910 Gabon was part of French Equatorial Africa. After the Second World War its people won seats in French assemblies and a growing say at home, and in 1958 Gabon voted to become a self-governing republic within the French Community.
Full independence was proclaimed on 17 August 1960, one of a wave of French African colonies to go free that year, with Léon M’ba as head of government. M’ba became president in 1961 and kept close ties with France; when army officers overthrew him in 1964, French troops restored him to power. After his death in 1967 he was succeeded by Albert-Bernard, later Omar, Bongo, whose family would rule Gabon for more than half a century.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US Department of State, Office of the Historian: Gabon ↗
1862Killings at Acton set off the Dakota War in Minnesota
In treaties of 1851 the Dakota people of Minnesota gave up most of their land in return for a narrow reservation along the Minnesota River and yearly payments in money and food. By the summer of 1862 the payments were late, crops had failed, traders were refusing credit and families were going hungry, while settlers kept pressing on to the land the Dakota had lost.
On Sunday 17 August 1862 four young Dakota men out hunting near Acton quarrelled over some eggs on a settler’s farm and shot dead five settlers. That night their leaders debated what to do, and Taoyateduta, known as Little Crow, agreed to lead a war he expected to lose. The next morning Dakota warriors attacked the Lower Sioux Agency. In six weeks of fighting hundreds of settlers and soldiers were killed before the Dakota were defeated; 38 Dakota men were hanged together at Mankato in December, and most of the Dakota were expelled from Minnesota.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Minnesota Historical Society: The Acton incident ↗
1978Double Eagle II completes the first balloon crossing of the Atlantic
People had dreamed of floating across the Atlantic since the first balloons rose in the 1780s, but the ocean defeated every attempt: by 1978 there had been seventeen, and seven people had lost their lives. Two of the latest failures belonged to Ben Abruzzo and Maxie Anderson of Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose balloon Double Eagle had come down off Iceland the year before.
With a third pilot, Larry Newman, they took off from Presque Isle in Maine on the evening of 11 August 1978 in Double Eagle II, a helium balloon 112 feet tall. Riding the winds in a small open gondola, they crossed the ocean in a little under six days, and at 7.48 p.m. on 17 August 1978 they landed in a wheat field at Miserey, west of Paris, where crowds had gathered to meet them. The flight of 137 hours and about 3,100 miles was the first across the Atlantic by balloon.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum: Gondola, Double Eagle II ↗
