August 29 in History

Prime Minister Francisco Morales Bermudez launched a bloodless coup from the garrison city of Tacna, forcing the ailing President Juan Velasco Alvarado to resign and assuming the presidency himself. The takeover reversed Velasco's radical land reforms and nationalization programs, steering Peru toward a gradual return to civilian democratic rule.

An Aghlabid army storms the walls of Melite after a grueling siege, compelling the city's surrender and ending centuries of Byzantine rule over Malta. This conquest shifts the island's cultural and religious landscape toward Islam, establishing a foundation that would shape Maltese identity for nearly three hundred years before Norman arrival.

The 1315 Battle of Montecatini was a decisive upset: Pisa's forces under the warlord Uguccione della Faggiuola routed the combined armies of Naples and Florence despite being heavily outnumbered. The victory temporarily shifted the balance of power in Tuscany away from the Guelf alliance.

The Treaty of Picquigny in 1475 ended what could have been a major Anglo-French war before it started. Edward IV of England had invaded France with a large army, expecting his Burgundian allies to support him. The Burgundians didn't show. Louis XI of France offered Edward a lump sum of 75,000 crowns plus an annual pension of 50,000 crowns to go home. Edward took it. The English army, which had crossed to France for glory, was paid off and sailed back. Louis XI later said he had won the war with venison pies and good wine. He was largely right.

The Battle of Mohács on August 29, 1526 lasted about two hours. The Ottoman army of Suleiman the Magnificent — estimated at 60,000 to 100,000 men — destroyed the Hungarian army of roughly 25,000. King Louis II of Hungary drowned while fleeing, his horse falling on him in a marsh. Twenty thousand Hungarians were killed in the battle or the rout. Buda fell three weeks later. Medieval Hungary as an independent kingdom ceased to exist. The territory was divided between the Ottomans, the Habsburgs, and the Transylvanian principality for the next 160 years. August 29 remains a day of national mourning in Hungary.

Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued a nationwide sword hunting ordinance that stripped peasants of weapons while reserving them exclusively for the samurai class. This brutal enforcement solidified Japan's rigid social hierarchy, effectively ending peasant uprisings and securing his centralized authority over the archipelago.

Warsaw fell to Charles X Gustav of Sweden on August 29, 1655, in an episode so complete and so fast that it became known as the Deluge — the Polish word is Potop. The Swedish king arrived with a force that was technically smaller than the Polish defenders, but the Polish nobility had been surrendering to him in batches for weeks, each calculation individually rational and collectively catastrophic. Warsaw itself fell without a fight. Poland went from a major European power to a country occupied by Swedes, Russians, Brandenburgers, and Transylvanians simultaneously. It took years to recover. The nobility who surrendered mostly survived.

The city of Nuuk, now Greenland's capital, began as the modest Danish colonial fort of Godt-Haab ("Good Hope") established by royal governor Claus Paarss in 1728. It remains the world's smallest national capital by population.

A massive eruption of Oshima–Ōshima triggered a devastating tsunami that drowned at least 2,000 people along the Japanese coast on August 29, 1741. This disaster reshaped local settlements and forced communities to reconsider coastal living near active volcanic zones.

The Treaty of Easton carved out land at Indian Mills for the Lenape, creating the first designated American Indian reservation in America. This agreement ended hostilities between the British and Delaware tribes during the French and Indian War, allowing colonial forces to focus their military campaigns against French strongholds without a hostile frontier.