[Daily article] August 15: Surrender of Japan

The surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, brought the hostilities of
World War II to a close. Together with the British Empire and China,
the United States called for the unconditional surrender of the Japanese
armed forces in the Potsdam Declaration on July 26, 1945. Japan's
leaders privately made entreaties to the publicly neutral Soviet Union
to mediate more favorable peace terms. On August 6, the United States
detonated an atomic bomb over Hiroshima. On August 8, the Soviet Union
invaded the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Hours later, the United
States dropped a second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki. Emperor Hirohito
intervened and ordered that the Allies' terms for ending the war be
accepted. Hirohito gave a recorded radio address transmitted across the
Empire on August 15, announcing the surrender of Japan. The surrender
ceremony was held aboard the battleship USS Missouri, at which
officials from the Japanese government signed the Japanese Instrument of
Surrender (pictured).

Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan>

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Today's selected anniversaries:

1461:

Byzantine–Ottoman wars: The Empire of Trebizond, the longest-
surviving Byzantine successor state, was conquered by Ottoman forces
following a month-long siege.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Trebizond_%281461%29>

1914:

On the day of his dismissal, an employee at Taliesin, Frank
Lloyd Wright's estate, killed seven people with a hatchet and set the
house on fire.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliesin_%28studio%29>

1975:

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh's founding leader, was
assassinated with most of his family in a military coup.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_August_1975_Bangladesh_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat>

2005:

The Helsinki Agreement between the Free Aceh Movement and the
Government of Indonesia was signed, ending more than 28 years of
fighting.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_in_Aceh>

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Wiktionary's word of the day:

neroli:
More fully neroli oil or oil of neroli: an essential oil distilled from
the blossoms of the bitter orange or Seville orange (Citrus × aurantium
subsp. amara) used to make perfumes.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/neroli>

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Wikiquote quote of the day:

  What are we? What is the future? What is the past? What magic
fluid envelops us and hides from us the things it is most important for
us to know? We are born, we live, and we die in the midst of the
marvelous.  
--Napoleon I of France
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Napoleon_I_of_France>

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