August 15 in History

1483 – Pope Sixtus IV consecrated the Sistine Chapel and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary.

1519 – Panama City, Panama, was founded.

1549 – Jesuit priest Francis Xavier came ashore at Kagoshima, Japan.

1843 – Tivoli Gardens, one of the oldest still intact amusement parks in the world, opened in Copenhagen, Denmark. It may be best known for its wooden roller coaster, Rutschebanen, or Bjergbanen (the Mountain Coaster), later built in 1914

1868 (Earthquake) Ecuador

1914 – The Panama Canal opened with the transit of the cargo ship SS Ancon.

1935 – Entertainer Will Rogers and pilot Wiley Post were killed after their aircraft developed engine problems during takeoff in Barrow, Alaska.

1939 – The Wizard of Oz premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California.

1947 – India gained Independence from the British Indian Empire.

1948 – CBS launched the first network TV news broadcast.

#1 Hit August 15, 1960 – September 18, 1960: Elvis Presley – It’s Now or Never

#1 Hit August 15, 1964 – August 21, 1964: Dean Martin – Everybody Loves Somebody

1965 – The Beatles played at Shea Stadium in New York. It is considered the first major rock concert. There were only a few hundred watts of sound for the band, who did not have monitors to hear each other and could not be heard over the screaming of 60,000 fans.

1969 – The Woodstock Music & Art Fair opened in upstate New York. Tickets for the three-day event were $18 in advance and $24 at the gate, and there was sufficient sound for the 500,000 attendees.

1973 – The United States bombing of Cambodia ended.

1977 – The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, received a radio signal from deep space – “6EQUJ5.” The event was named the “Wow! signal” from the notation made by Jerry Ehman on the project. The signal appears to have come to the northwest of the globular cluster of M55 in the constellation Sagittarius, near the Chi Sagittarii star group.

 #1 Hit August 15, 1981 – October 16, 1981: Diana Ross and Lionel Richie – Endless Love

1985 – Michael Jackson paid $47.5 Million for the publishing rights to the Beatles’ song catalog.

#1 Hit August 15, 1992 – November 13, 1992: Boyz II Men – End Of The Road

1992 – Nickelodeon began airing their Saturday night programming known as SNICK.

2002 – Hairspray (Broadway Musical) Opened on August 15, 2002, and closed on January 4, 2009

#1 Hit August 15, 2020 – August 21, 2020: Watermelon Sugar – Harry Styles