August 29

708 Copper coins were minted in Japan for the first time on August 29, 708. They were called Wadōkaichin. The coins, which were round with a square hole in the center, remained in circulation until 958. 

Copper wadōkaichin coinage from the 7th century, By PHGCOM

1189 The future King John of England married Isabella of Gloucester on August 29, 1189 at Marlborough Castle, Wiltshire. Their marriage was childless and Isabella would habitually lie in bed until noon reading romances. (John liked getting up late as well.) John had their marriage annulled on the grounds of consanguinity, some time before or shortly after his accession to the throne, and Isabella was never acknowledged as queen. (She then married Geoffrey de Mandeville as her second husband). 

1462 Castile contested Gibraltar and eventually conquered it removing the Moors on August 29, 1462, after which it became part of Spain. The patron saint of Gibraltar is St Bernard of Clairvaux, for no better reason than the fact that the Moors were permanently expelled from Gibraltar on his August 29th feast day.

Gibraltar By Adam Cli - Wikipedia

1660 Following the Restoration, The Indemnity and Oblivion Act became law on August 29, 1660. It  pardoned all past treason against the crown, but specifically excluded those involved in the trial and execution of Charles I. Major-General Thomas Harrison who had been the seventeenth of the 59 commissioners to sign the death warrant, was the first regicide to be hanged, drawn and quartered as he was considered by the new government still to represent a real threat to the re-established order.

1728 Greenland's capital city, Nuuk, then known as the fort of Godt-Haab, was founded by the Dano-Norwegian governor Claus Paarss on August 29, 1728 when he relocated Hans Egede's earlier Hope Colony (Haabets Koloni) to the mainland, The city officially adopted its current name in 1979.

1756 Having got wind of the secret Treaty of Versailles whereby Austria, France, Poland, Russia, Saxony and Sweden agreed to partition Prussia, Frederick the Great invaded Saxony on August 29, 1756 and started off the Seven Years War. Despite having his territories repeatedly invaded and suffering some severe defeats, the Prussian army always managed to recover, with the help of British funding. In 1763, deserted by Britain. Frederick made peace with Austria at the Treaty of Hubertsburg.

Frederick the Great leading the Prussians at the Battle of Zorndorf, by Carl Röchling

1768 Jean-Jacques Rousseau began his association with illiterate seamstress Therese La Vaseur who had been an inn servant at the age of 31, while in Paris. She was apparently without beauty, education or intelligence and was hopelessly vulgar and immoral as well as a taker of many liberties. Therese became Rousseau's mistress before marrying him on August 29, 1768. The Swiss philosopher treated her well and she lived to be 79.

1831 Michael Faraday discovered the fundamentals of electromagnetic induction on August 29, 1831, when after ten years of experiments, he found that moving an iron ring through five cells of copper wire caused an electric current to flow through the wire. Faraday produced the homopolar generator, the first electric producing generator four months later. His discoveries formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became viable for use in technology. 

1842 Britain and China signed the Treaty of Nanking to end the First Opium War, on August 29, 1842. The island that is now the site of Hong Kong was ceded to Britain. The Treaty of Nanking represented a turning point in China's relationship with Western powers and the beginning of the "unequal treaties" era, during which China was subjected to further territorial losses, economic exploitation, and political pressures by various foreign powers. 

1842 Giuseppina Strepponi was the famed soprano who sang the part of Abigaille in Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco. The opera composer fell in love with her though she was living with another man and had three children with him. By 1847 they were living together in Paris, before moving to Busetto in 1849. Their relationship created a great scandal for the times. Verdi and Giuseppina eventually married on August 29, 1859 and she was a great support to him for the rest of the composer's life.

Giuseppina Strepponi (c. 1845)

1868 German-Swiss chemist Christian Friedrich Schönbein died on August 29, 1868. He was first to isolate Ozone in 1839 during experiments on the electrolysis of water at the University of Basel. Schönbein named the pungent gas after the Greek for 'to smell' which is 'ozein'. For this reason, Schönbein is generally credited with the discovery of ozone. 

1877 Led by Brigham Young, the first Mormon pioneers endured an epic thousand-mile trek across desert country, reaching the valley of the Great Salt Lake in Utah in July 1847. On their arrival the Mormon pioneers began to construct a society in isolation, including the open practice of plural marriage, Brigham Young married a total of 55 wives, 54 of them after he converted to Mormonism. By the time of his death on August 29, 1877, Young had 56 children by 16 of his wives.

1885 German engineer Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler and his lifelong business partner Wilhelm Maybach developed in 1885 a high-speed internal combustion engine, which fitted to a bicycle to create the first internal combustion motorcycle. The design was patented on August 29, 1885. The inventors called their invention the Reitwagen ("riding car"). It was designed as an expedient test bed for their new engine, rather than a true prototype vehicle.

The Reitwagen (1885). By Joachim Köhler Wikipedia

1893 The zip fastener was invented by a Chicago engineer named Whitcomb L. Judson. He patented his device on August 29, 1893 and exhibited it at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in his home city. Whitcomb's fastener, which he called a "Clasp Locker or Unlocker for Shoes" was based on a string of hook-and-eye fasteners.

1895 The rugby league was founded on August 29, 1895 as a Northern Union, when clubs in North England broke away from the rugby football union who refused players "broken time" payments for loss of earnings when playing on Saturdays. The historic gathering was attended by delegates of 22 clubs from Lancashire and Yorkshire. These decided to resign forthwith from the Rugby Union and establish their own Northern Union, which would permit payment of legitimate expenses for players. 

1915 The film star Ingrid Bergman was born on August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, to a Swedish father, Justus Bergman, and his German wife, Frieda (née Adler) Bergman. She was named after Princess Ingrid of Sweden. Bergman's first acting role in America came when Hollywood producer David O. Selznick brought her to America in 1936 to star in Intermezzo: A Love Story. Bergman's nickname on set early in her career was ‘Betterlater’, owing to her saying after nearly every take: "I’ll be better later."

1920 The jazz saxophone giant Charlie Parker was born in Kansas City, Kansas on August 29, 1920. He was the only child of Adelaide "Addie" (Bailey) and Charles Parker. In 1939 Charlie Parker (playing at a Harlem jam session) begins experimenting with a style which was first called ReBop, then Bebop. Bebop is synonymous with fast improvisation and complicated chord structures and Charlie Parker's exciting alto saxophone flights won him the popular nickname of Bird.

1949 The Soviet Union successfully conducted its first nuclear weapons test on August 29, 1949. The test, code-named "First Lightning" or "Joe 1," involved the detonation of a nuclear device named RDS-1 (Reaktivnyy Dvigatel' Specialnyy 1), also known as "Ivan" in its design phase. The test took place at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan.

1958 Michael Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana. He was the eighth of Katherine and Joe Jackson's ten children. Jackson's father was a steel mill worker. In 1965, Michael joined the Jackson Brothers—a band formed by their father and which included brothers Jackie, Tito, and Jermaine—as backup musicians playing congas and tambourine. When Jackson was 8 he started being the band's main singer with Jermaine. The group's name then changed to The Jackson 5.

1966 The last concert appearance of The Beatles before paying fans was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on August 29, 1966.  Due to various factors such as the overwhelming noise from screaming fans, technical limitations of the time, and the band's desire to focus on studio work, the Beatles had become increasingly disillusioned with live performances. The Candlestick Park concert was the culmination of this sentiment, and they decided to cease touring after this event.

2004 Michael Schumacher won his fifth consecutive Formula One Drivers' championship (and 7th overall) at the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix by finishing second to Kimi Räikkönen on August 29, 2004. In doing so, he beat the 47-year-old record held by Juan Manuel Fangio. 

2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle. The cause of the majority of the death and destruction during Katrina was on August 29, 2005 when there were over fifty breaches in New Orleans's hurricane surge protection. An estimated 1,836 people died and total property damage was estimated at $108 billion (2005 USD), making it the costliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.