August - 1969

• August 4 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, U.S. representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuan Thuy begin secret peace negotiations. They eventually fail since both sides cannot agree to any terms.
• August 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 7 makes its closest fly-by of Mars (3,524 kilometers) and proto-punk band The Stooges releases their homonym debut album.
• August 8
  • The Beatles at 11:30 have photographer Iain Macmillan take their photo on a zebra crossing on Abbey Road.
  • A fire breaks out in Bannerman's Castle in the Hudson River; most of the roof collapses and crashes down to the lower levels.
• August 9
  • The Haunted Mansion attraction opens at Disneyland California. Later versions open in Florida, Tokyo and Paris.
  • Followers of Charles Manson murder Sharon Tate, (who was 8 months pregnant), and her friends: Folgers coffee heiress Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, and Hollywood hairstylist Jay Sebring at the home of Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski, in Los Angeles. Also killed is Steven Parent, leaving from a visit to the Polanski's caretaker. More than 100 stab wounds are found on the victims, except for Parent, who had been shot almost as soon as the Manson Family entered the property.
• August 10 – The Manson Family kills Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, wealthy Los Angeles businessman and his wife.
• August 12 – Violence erupts after the Apprentice Boys of Derry march in Derry, Northern Ireland, resulting in a three-day communal riot known as the Battle of the Bogside.
• August 13 – Serious border clashes occur between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.
• August 14 – British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland following the three-day Battle of the Bogside.
• August 15 – Captain D's is founded as "Mr. D’s Seafood and Hamburgers" by Ray Danner with its first location opening in Donelson, Tennessee.
• August 15–August 18 – The Woodstock Festival is held in upstate New York, featuring some of the top rock musicians of the era.
• August 17 – Category 5 Hurricane Camille, the most powerful tropical cyclonic system at landfall in history, hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).
• August 20 – Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument is established in Florissant, CO, USA
• August 21
  • Donald and Doris Fisher open the first Gap store on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco.
  • Australian Denis Michael Rohan sets the Al-Aqsa Mosque on fire.
  • Strong violence on demonstration in Prague and Brno, Czechoslovakia. Military force contra citizens. Prague spring finally beaten.

August 1968

• August 5–August 8 – The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. President and Spiro Agnew for Vice President.
• August 11 – The last steam passenger train service runs in Britain. A selection of British Railways steam locomotives make the 120-mile journey from Liverpool to Carlisle and return to Liverpool – the journey is known as the Fifteen Guinea Special.
• August 18 – Two charter buses are pushed into the Hida River on National Highway Route 41 in Japan, in an accident caused by heavy rain; 104 are killed.
• August 20–August 21 – The Prague Spring of political liberalization ends, as 750,000 Warsaw Pact troops and 6,500 tanks with 800 planes invade Czechoslovakia. It is dated as the biggest operation in Europe since WWII ended.
• August 21 – The Medal of Honor is posthumously awarded to James Anderson, Jr.—he is the first black U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor.
• August 24 – France explodes its first hydrogen bomb.
• August 22–August 30 – Police clash with anti-war protesters in Chicago, Illinois, outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. President, and Edmund Muskie for Vice President. The riots and subsequent trials were an essential part of the activism of the Youth International Party.
• August 28 – John Gordon Mein, US Ambassador to Guatemala, is assassinated on the streets of Guatemala City. First US Ambassador assassinated in the line of duty.
• August 29 – Crown Prince Harald of Norway marries Sonja Haraldsen, the commoner he has dated for 9 years, in Oslo.

August 1967

• August 1 – Race riots in the United States spread to Washington, D.C..
• August 2 – The Turkish football club Trabzonspor is established in Trabzon.
• August 5 – Pink Floyd releases their debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn in the United Kingdom.
• August 6 – A pulsar is noted by Jocelyn Bell and Antony Hewish. The discovery is first recorded in print in 1968: "An entirely novel kind of star came to light on Aug. 6 last year [...]". The date of the discovery is not recorded.
• August 7
  • Vietnam War: The People's Republic of China agrees to give North Vietnam an undisclosed amount of aid in the form of a grant.
  • A general strike in the old quarter of Jerusalem protests Israel's unification of the city.
• August 8 – The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is founded in Bangkok, Thailand.
• August 9 – Vietnam War – Operation Cochise: United States Marines begin a new operation in the Que Son Valley.
• August 10 – Belgian mercenary Jean Schramme's troops take the Congolese border town of Bukavu.
• August 13 – The first line-up of Fleetwood Mac makes their live debut at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival.
• August 13 – Night of the Grizzlies sparks national concern over bear drama, from PBS in Montana's Glacier National Park.
• August 14 – Wonderful Radio London shuts down at 3:00 PM in anticipation of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act. Many fans greet the staff upon their return to London that evening with placards reading "Freedom died with Radio London."
• August 15 – The United Kingdom Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declares participation in offshore pirate radio illegal. Radio Caroline defies the Act and continues broadcasting.
• August 18 – The State of Tamil Nadu, India is established.
• August 19 – West Germany receives 36 East German prisoners it has "purchased" through the border posts of Herleshausen and Wartha.
• August 21
  • A truce is declared in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
  • The People's Republic of China announces that it has shot down United States planes violating its airspace.
• August 25 – American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell is assassinated in Arlington, Virginia.
• August 27
  • The East Coast Wrestling Association is established.
  • Beatles manager Brian Epstein is found dead in his locked bedroom.
• August 29 – The final episode of The Fugitive airs on ABC. The broadcast attracts 78 million viewers, one of the largest audiences for a single episode in U.S. television history.
• August 30 – Thurgood Marshall is confirmed as the first African American Justice of the United States Supreme Court.