World roundup: August 22-23 2026

Hi everybody, it's Derek, and this is your Foreign Exchange's World News Roundup for Saturday, August 22nd, and Sunday, August 23rd, 2026.

We've got a few anniversaries.

On August 22nd, 1153, a crusader army captured the city of Ashkelon, or modern Ashkelon, from the Fatimid Caliphate, ending a nearly seven-month siege.

Ascalon had been a priority for the Crusaders since the end of the First Crusade, and its importance had only grown since then, as it served as a Fatimid beachhead into Crusader territory and was the main point of origin for Fatimid raiding parties.

With brief interruptions, the city remained in Crusader hands until the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate destroyed it in 1270 as part of its wider and ultimately successful campaign to eliminate the Crusader kingdoms altogether.

On August 22, 1864, an international convention held in Geneva produced a treaty outlining the humane rules of war, including provisions for the treatment of sick and wounded soldiers.

That treaty would subsequently be amended and expanded four times and is the basis of the first Geneva Convention, which was adopted along with the other three Geneva Conventions in 1949.

On August 23rd, 1595, an outnumbered Wallachian army under Prince Michael the Brave defeated an Ottoman army under Grand Vizier Koja Sinan Pasha at the Battle of, and I'm going to mangle this, Cialogareni.

I hope I'm not doing too badly with that, which is today located in southern Romania.

Michael had to retreat afterwards due to the Ottomans' decisive advantage in numbers, but the victory became an important symbolic event in Romanian national history.

This battle was part of the 1593-1606 Long War between the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, which ended inconclusively, but did stabilize the Ottoman-Habsburg frontier for several decades.

And on August 23, 1939, the Nazi German and Soviet governments signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that included an agreement to divvy up parts of Eastern Europe.

The accord grew out of negotiations on an economic cooperation agreement and Soviet concerns about a potential war with Germany, and the reliability of France and the UK as possible allies.

The pact paved the way for the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1st, which sparked World War II, but relations between the two countries broke down over the next several months and the Nazis terminated it when they invaded the USSR in June 1941.