By: HISTORY.com Editors

1954

United States decides to support noncommunist nations in Southeast Asia

Published: November 16, 2009Last Updated: May 27, 2025

President Eisenhower approves a National Security Council paper titled “Review of U.S. Policy in the Far East.” This paper supported Secretary of State Dulles’ view that, in light of U.S. fears of a regional attack by communist China, the United States should support Vietnamese prime minister Ngo Dinh Diem, while encouraging him to broaden his government and establish more democratic institutions. Ultimately, however, Diem would refuse to make any meaningful concessions or institute any significant new reforms and U.S. support was withdrawn. Diem was subsequently assassinated during a coup by opposition generals on November 2, 1963.

How the Vietnam War Ratcheted Up Under 5 US Presidents

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all deepened U.S. involvement in the decades-long conflict.

By: Jesse Greenspan

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on August 20th

1619

First enslaved Africans arrive in Jamestown, setting the stage for slavery in North America

Some 20 Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrive in the British colony of Virginia and are then bought by English colonists. The arrival of the enslaved Africans in the New World marks a beginning of two and a half centuries of slavery in North America.

1794

Battle of Fallen Timbers

The Battle of Timbers, on August 20, 1794, was the last major conflict of the Northwest Territory Indian War between Native Americans and the United States.

1804

Corps of Discovery suffers its only death

Sergeant Charles Floyd dies three months into the voyage of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, becoming the only member of the Corps of Discovery to die during the journey. Lewis and Clark left St. Louis the previous May, heading up the Missouri River with a party of 35 men, called the Corps of Discovery. Among […]

2:32m read

1833

Benjamin Harrison is born

Future President Benjamin Harrison is born in North Bend, Ohio on August 20, 1833. Politics had long been the Harrison family business. At the time of his birth, Harrison’s father was serving Ohio in the United States House of Representatives, while his grandfather, William Henry Harrison, was serving as a senator from Indiana and only eight […]

1:28m read

1862

Horace Greeley’s “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” is published

New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley publishes a passionate editorial calling on President Abraham Lincoln to declare emancipation for all enslaved people in Union-held territory. Greeley’s blistering words voiced the impatience of many Northern abolitionists; but unbeknownst to Greeley and the public, Lincoln was already moving in the direction of emancipation. In 1841, Greeley launched the […]

1:40m read

1911

Blazingly fast around-the-world telegram sent, 66 years before Voyager II launch

On August 20, 1911, a dispatcher in the New York Times office sends a blazingly fast telegram around the world via commercial service. Exactly 66 years later, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sends a different kind of message—a phonograph record containing information about Earth for extraterrestrial beings—shooting into space aboard the unmanned spacecraft […]

2:46m read

1918

“Valley of the Dolls” author Jacqueline Susann born

On August 20, 1918, Jacqueline Susann, the author of Valley of the Dolls, the 1966 mega-hit novel about the showbiz lives of three women (reportedly modeled in part after Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and Grace Kelly), is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Like her characters in Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann moved to New York […]

1:54m read

1920

Early football leagues consolidate into precursor of the NFL

On August 20, 1920, seven men, including legendary all-around athlete and football star Jim Thorpe, meet to organize a professional football league at the Jordan and Hupmobile Auto Showroom in Canton, Ohio. The meeting led to the creation of the American Professional Football Conference (APFC), the forerunner to the hugely successful National Football League. Professional […]

2:20m read

1940

Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico

Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky is fatally wounded by an ice-ax-wielding assassin at his compound outside Mexico City. The killer—Ramón Mercader—was a Spanish communist and probable agent of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Trotsky died from his wounds the next day. Born in the Ukraine of Russian-Jewish parents in 1879, Trotsky embraced Marxism as a teenager […]

3:08m read

1944

Soviets thwart German army in Romania

On August 20, 1944, Soviet forces launch Second Jassy-Kishinev Offensive, an offensive in northeastern Romania in which they ultimately surround the invading German Sixth Army. One of the most successful, and little-remembered, joint operations between Soviet and American forces (who provided air support), the operation succeeded ultimately in convincing Romania’s king to sign an armistice […]

1945

17-year-old becomes youngest to hit MLB home run

On August 20, 1945, 11 days after the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, Brooklyn Dodgers utility player Tommy Brown homers to drive in his team’s only run in an 11-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates. It seems insignificant, aside from the fact that, at 17 years old, Brown remains the youngest player to homer in a Major […]

1:54m read

1968

Soviets invade Czechoslovakia

On the night of August 20, 1968, approximately 200,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 5,000 tanks invade Czechoslovakia to crush the “Prague Spring”—a brief period of liberalization in the communist country. Czechoslovakians protested the invasion with public demonstrations and other non-violent tactics, but they were no match for the Soviet tanks. The liberal reforms of First […]

1974

Gerald Ford selects Nelson Rockefeller as vice president

It all happened in the wake of President Nixon's resignation.

1975

Viking 1 launched to Mars

Viking 1, an unmanned U.S. planetary probe, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Mars. On June 19, 1976, the spacecraft entered into orbit around Mars and devoted the next month to imaging the Martian surface with the purpose of finding an appropriate landing site for its lander. On July 20–the seventh […]

1:04m read

1989

The Menendez brothers murder their parents

Lyle and Erik Menendez shoot their parents, Jose and Kitty.

1:54m read

Vietnam War

41 videos

Vietnam War

Behind the Image: Fall of Saigon Helicopter Evacuation

The dramatic rooftop photo was long mistakenly misidentified.

Vietnam War

Fall of Saigon: What Led to the Final, Chaotic Moments

The conflict in Vietnam ended in turmoil with the largest helicopter evacuation of its kind in history.

Vietnam War

Why the Battle for Hamburger Hill Was So Controversial

After 10 days of bruising battle, U.S. forces took the hill, only to abandon it days later. Sniper fire was so intense, one soldier called it 'a human meat grinder.'

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