August 23

1617 On August 23, 1617 the first one way streets were established in London. The city's narrow streets had become so congested that an Act was passed to regulate "disorder and rude behaviour of Carmen, Draymen and others using carts" by making 17 alleys around Thames Street one-way.

1754 Louis XVI of France was born Louis-Auguste in the Palace of Versailles on August 23, 1754. He was the second son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, and the grandson of Louis XV of France. He became the French Dauphin upon the death of his father from tuberculosis and succeeded to the throne upon the death of his grandfather when he was 19 years old. Louis' indecisiveness and conservatism contributed to the crisis that brought on the French Revolution and the abolition of the monarchy. 

1769 Zoologist and naturalist Georges Cuvier was born in Montbeliard, France on August 23, 1769 to Jean George Cuvier, a lieutenant in the Swiss Guards and Anne Clémence Chatel. His fascination with natural history was ignited by an encounter at the age of 10 with a copy of Gesner's Historiae Animalium. He laid the foundations of the sciences of comparative anatomy and paleontology through his work in comparing living animals with fossils. 

1775 King George III of Great Britain delivered his Proclamation of Rebellion to the Court of St James's on August 23, 1775 in response to the news of the Battle of Bunker Hill. The proclamation stated that the American colonies have proceeded to a state of open and avowed rebellion and ordered officials of the British Empire "to use their utmost endeavors to withstand and suppress such rebellion."

The Proclamation of Rebellion issued by King George on August 23, 1775.

1876 In her early 20s Phoebe Moses began appearing at target shooting exhibitions, where she met her future husband, Frank Butler, who was also a skilled marksman. Moses adopted the stage name Annie Oakley around 1882, and she took to the stage with Butler after they married on August 23, 1876. They did not have children. Annie had remarkable stage presence and Butler realized she should be the star of the show, and he receded into the background and became her manager.

1913 The most famous mermaid in literature is Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale The Little Mermaid, which was first published in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1837 in the third volume of Fairy Tales Told for Children. It has been translated into many languages. The famous sculpture of The Little Mermaid at the entrance to Copenhagen harbor was unveiled on August 23, 1913. 

Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen (1913)

1926 Silent film star Rudolph Valentino did not live long enough to see movies with sound replace silent movies. He died suddenly of peritonitis on August 23, 1926, at the age of 31. The subsequent extensive media coverage turned his funeral into a national event when an estimated 100,000 people lined the streets of Manhattan to pay their respects.

1933 The son of a Methodist minister, the chemist Robert Curl was born on  August 23, 1933. Curl's interest in chemistry was ignited by a chemistry set he received as a nine-year-old, He ruined his mother's stove with nitric acid from this first chemistry set. In 1996 Curl won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his co-discovery of buckmin­ster­ful­lerene, a molecule composed entirely of carbon, in the form of a hollow sphere, ellipsoid, or tube

1939 Just Before the start of World War II, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a peace agreement. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was a neutrality pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939 by foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, respectively, agreeing that they would not attack each other for ten years. It also divided Poland between them.

1943 Serial killer Rodney Alcala, who is believed to have murdered up to 130 people, was born on August 23, 1943. In the midst of his three-year killing spree in California between 1977 and 1979, Alcala was featured a contestant on The Dating Game, and was picked by the bachelorette. She never followed up on the date because she found him "creepy".

2005 The flag of Ukraine is made up of two equally sized horizontal stripes, a blue one and a yellow one. The combination of blue and yellow as a symbol of Ukrainian lands comes from the flag of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia used in 12th century. Ukraine has celebrated Flag Day each year on August 23 since 2005. The country celebrates its Independence Day the day after. 

2021 On August 23, 2021, it was announced that in November 2021 American-born French dancer, singer and actress Josephine Baker would be interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the first black woman to be honored in the secular temple to the "great men" of the French Republic.