Today in History — 2026-08-23

Chandrayaan-3

Chandrayaan-3 is the third mission in the Chandrayaan programme, a series of lunar-exploration missions developed by ISRO. The mission consists of Vikram, a lunar lander, and Pragyan, a lunar rover, as replacements for the equivalents on Chandrayaan-2, which had crashed on landing in 2019.

More on this day

  • 2012: Ljubljana Ljubljana is the capital and largest city of Slovenia, located along a trade route between the northern Adriatic Sea and the Danube region, north of the country's largest marsh, it has been inhabited since prehistoric times. It is the country's cultural, educational, economic, political and administrative centre and the seat of the Urban Municipality of Ljubljana.
  • 2007: Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia Alexei Nikolaevich was the last Russian tsesarevich. He was the youngest child and only son of Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. He was born with haemophilia, which his parents tried treating with the methods of peasant faith healer Grigori Rasputin.
  • 1966: Lunar Orbiter 1 The 1966 Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic spacecraft mission, part of NASA's Lunar Orbiter program, was the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon. It was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions. It was also equipped to collect selenodetic, radiation intensity, and micrometeoroid impact data.
  • 1864: American Civil War The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.
  • 1991: World Wide Web The World Wide Web is a global interconnected information system that enables content sharing over the Internet. It facilitates access to documents and other web resources according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
  • 1954: Lockheed C-130 Hercules The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is an American, four-engined, turboprop, military transport aircraft designed and built by Lockheed. Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was designed as a troop, medical evacuation, and cargo transport aircraft. Its versatile airframe has found other uses, including as a gunship (AC-130), for airborne assault, search and rescue, scientific research support, weather reconnaissance, aerial refueling, maritime patrol, and aerial firefighting. It is the main tactical airlifter for many military forces worldwide. More than 40 variants of the Hercules, including civilian versions marketed as the Lockheed L-100, operate in more than 60 nations.