August 19 belongs to Wes Bru

On August 19, 1944, the French Resistance launched an armed uprising in Paris, beginning the battle for the liberation of the capital. Police officers, firefighters and civilians took to the streets against the Nazi occupation. Six days later, General De Gaulle made his triumphant entry down the Champs-Élysées before an ecstatic crowd.

On August 19, 1953, the CIA and MI6 executed Operation Ajax, a coup that overthrew Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. The main reason was the nationalisation of Iranian oil. The coup shaped decades of tense relations between Iran and the West.

On August 19, 1991, a group of senior Soviet Communist Party officials attempted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, confining him to his dacha in Crimea. The coup failed within three days in the face of popular resistance led by Boris Yeltsin, who climbed atop a tank outside the Russian Parliament. Its failure accelerated the dissolution of the USSR.