On This Day - What happened 12 August

Godfrey of Bouillon further secures the Frankish position by defeating an Egyptian relief force at the Battle of Ascalon in August 1099.

On 12 August 1519, Leonardo's remains were interred in the Collegiate Church of Saint Florentin at the Château d'Amboise.

Ferdinand returned to Vienna from Innsbruck on August 12, 1848. Soon after his return, the working-class populace hit the streets again on August 21, 1848, to protest high unemployment and the government's decree to reduce wages.

On 12 August [O.S. 30 July] 1906, Russian artillerymen and military engineers rose in revolt in the fortress of Sveaborg (later called Suomenlinna), Helsinki. The Finnish Red Guards supported the Sveaborg Rebellion with a general strike, but the mutiny was quelled within 60 hours by loyal troops and ships of the Baltic Fleet.

On August 12, at their annual convention, the Northeastern Federation of Colored Women's Clubs (NFCWC) denounced the rioting and burning of negroes' homes, asking President Wilson "to use every means within your power to stop the rioting in Chicago and the propaganda used to incite such."

The Imperial General Headquarters (GHQ) in Tokyo, content with the gains acquired in northern China following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, initially showed reluctance to escalate the conflict into full-scale war. The KMT, however, determined that the "breaking point" of Japanese aggression had been reached. Chiang Kai-shek quickly mobilized the central government's army and air force, placed them under his direct command, and laid siege to the Japanese area of Shanghai International Settlement, where 30,000 Japanese civilians lived with 30,000 troops on August 12, 1937.

On August 13, 1937, Kuomintang soldiers and warplanes attacked Japanese Marine positions in Shanghai, leading to the Battle of Shanghai.

On August 14, Kuomintang planes accidentally bombed the Shanghai International Settlement, which led to more than 3,000 civilian deaths. In the three days from August 14 through 16, 1937, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) sent many sorties of the then-advanced long-ranged G3M medium-heavy land-based bombers and assorted carrier-based aircraft with the expectation of destroying the Chinese Air Force. However, the Imperial Japanese Navy encountered unexpected resistance from the defending Chinese Hawk III and P-26/281 Peashooter fighter squadrons.

Churchill was in Moscow from 12 to 16 August and had four lengthy meetings with Stalin. Although they got along quite well together on a personal level, there was little chance of any real progress given the state of the war with the Germans still advancing in all theatres. Stalin was desperate for the Allies to open the Second Front in Europe, as Churchill had discussed with Molotov in May, and the answer was the same.

On August 12, 1944, Kennedy's older brother, Joe Jr., a navy pilot, was killed while volunteering for a special and hazardous air mission. His explosive-laden plane blew up when the plane's bombs detonated prematurely while the aircraft was flying over the English Channel.

On August 12, 1945, the Emperor informed the imperial family of his decision to surrender. One of his uncles, Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, asked whether the war would be continued if the kokutai (national polity) could not be preserved. The Emperor simply replied "Of course."

On Saturday, 12 August 1961, the leaders of the GDR attended a garden party at a government guesthouse in Döllnsee, in a wooded area to the north of East Berlin. There, Ulbricht signed the order to close the border and erect a wall.

The War Cabinet met at least daily until it was dissolved on 12 August.

The crashes of Japan Airlines Flight 123 on August 12, 1985, is the single-aircraft disaster with the highest number of fatalities: 520 people died on board a Boeing 747. The aircraft suffered an explosive decompression from an incorrectly repaired aft pressure bulkhead, which failed in mid-flight, destroying most of its vertical stabilizer and severing all of the hydraulic lines, making the 747 virtually uncontrollable. Pilots were able to keep the plane flying for 32 minutes after the mechanical failure before crashing into a mountain. All 15 crew members and 505 of the 509 passengers on board died.

On 12 August 1990, Saddam "propose that all cases of occupation, and those cases that have been portrayed as occupation, in the region, be resolved simultaneously". Specifically, he called for Israel to withdraw from occupied territories in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, Syria to withdraw from Lebanon, and "mutual withdrawals by Iraq and Iran and arrangement for the situation in Kuwait".

On 12 August 1992, the name of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was changed to Republika Srpska (RS).

Shakira's first live album, MTV Unplugged, was recorded in New York City on 12 August 1999. Highly acclaimed by American critics, it is rated as one of her best-ever live performances. The live album earned the Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album in 2001 and gained sales of five million worldwide.

Ronaldo became Manchester United's first-ever Portuguese player when he signed before the 2003–04 season. His transfer fee of £12.24 million made him, at the time, the most expensive teenager in English football history. Although he requested the number 28, his number at Sporting, he received the number 7 shirt, which had previously been worn by such United players as George Best, Eric Cantona and David Beckham.

On August 12, 2010, Oracle sued Google over claimed infringement of copyrights and patents related to the Java programming language. Oracle originally sought damages up to $6.1 billion, but this valuation was rejected by a United States federal judge who asked Oracle to revise the estimate. In response, Google submitted multiple lines of defense, counterclaiming that Android did not infringe on Oracle's patents or copyright, that Oracle's patents were invalid, and several other defenses. They said that Android's Java runtime environment is based on Apache Harmony, a clean room implementation of the Java class libraries, and an independently developed virtual machine called Dalvik. In May 2012, the jury, in this case, found that Google did not infringe on Oracle's patents, and the trial judge ruled that the structure of the Java APIs used by Google was not copyrightable. The parties agreed to zero dollars in statutory damages for a small amount of copied code. On May 9, 2014, the Federal Circuit partially reversed the district court ruling, ruling in Oracle's favor on the copyrightability issue, and remanding the issue of fair use to the district court.

On 12 August 2013, Musk unveiled a concept for a very high-speed transportation system, named Hyperloop, incorporating reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on an air cushion driven by linear induction motors and air compressors. Where such a transport system might be built between the Greater Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Just a week after Messi announced his international retirement, Argentine newspaper La Nación reported that he was reconsidering playing for Argentina at the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers in September. On 12 August, it was confirmed that Messi had reversed his decision to retire from international football, and he was included in the squad for the national team's upcoming 2018 World Cup qualifiers.

The marketing campaign, designed by advertising agency GSD&M started on August 12, 2019, with a tweet on Popeyes' Twitter feed. The new sandwich went viral immediately and prompted responses from nearly every fast-food chain including McDonald's, Chick-Fil-A, and Wendy's.

The Battle of Mohacs was fought between Ottoman invaders of Hungary and the Holy Roman Emperor.

Lord Howard of Effingham, commander of the English fleet, called off his chase of the Spanish Armada off the coast of Scotland.

The Italian composer who brought madrigal music to England has passed away at the age of 45.

Von Biber, a violinist and composer, was baptized in Wartenberg.