August 1953

• Operation Big Switch: Prisoners of war are repatriated after the Korean War.

• Soviet prime minister Georgi Malenkov announces that the Soviet Union has a hydrogen bomb.
• London Agreement on German External Debts concluded, writing off 50% of repayable war debt by the Federal Republic of Germany to its creditors.
• Sam Beckett (Quantum Leap) was born at 12:30

• Pete Schoening saves members of the American K2 expedition, one of the most famous events in mountaineering history.

• A magnitude 7.2 earthquake devastates most of the Ionian Sea islands in Greece's worst natural disaster in centuries.
• Soviet atomic bomb project: "Joe 4" – The first Soviet thermonuclear weapon is detonated at Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakh SSR.

• Four million workers go on strike in France to protest against austerity measures.

Born: James Horner, American film composer (d. 2015)

• The first planning session of Narcotics Anonymous is held in Southern California (see October 5).

• The second Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, is published in the US.

• Cold War: The CIA helps to overthrow the government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, and retain Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the throne (see Operation Ajax).

• The French government ousts King Mohammed V of Morocco and exiles him to Corsica.
• The United States returns to West Germany 382 ships it had captured during World War II.

• The general strike ends in France.

• Nippon TV launches, becoming Japan's First Commercial Television Channel.

• Died:
  • Gaetano Merola, Italian conductor (b. 1881)
  • Maurice Nicoll, British psychiatrist (b. 1884)