WEDNESDAY, Aug. 12, 2026

1121-Battle of Didgori: Georgian army under King David the Builder wins a decisive victory over the renowned Seljuk commander Ilghazi

1480-Ottoman troops conquer Otranto in southern Italy after a 15-day siege, killing 12,000, enslaving 5,000, and beheading 800 Christians for refusing to convert to Islam

1851-American inventor Isaac Singer patents his famous sewing machine

1908-Ford Motor Company builds its first Model T car, which Henry Ford himself tests on a hunting trip to Wisconsin and northern Michigan

1978-China and Japan sign a peace treaty

1979- Iranian press censors start massive book burnings

1981-Don Estridge unveils the company's first personal computer, the IBM PC, at New York’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, priced at $1,565 with 16 kilobytes of RAM, helping bring computing to the masses

1988-Nelson Mandela is treated for tuberculosis at a Tygerberg Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa

2004-Lee Hsien Loong succeeds Goh Chok Tong as Prime Minister of Singapore