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1825 - On this date in 1825, Haden Edwards was given a contract to settle family in what was later to be known as Edwards Colony.

1835 - A Committee of Safety and Correspondence for the jurisdiction of Columbia met on August 15, 1835. Committees of Safety and Correspondence similar to those in the American Revolution were organized in Texas as early as 1832. At first these bodies were not hostile to the Mexican government. Their purpose was to secure the organization of the militia for defense against Indians. Later, they kept people in touch with developments and made possible organized, effective resistance in the Texas Revolution.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/mdc07 ]

1836 - Philip Sublett nominated Sam Houston for president of the Republic of Texas. Sublett, a Kentucky native, had participated in the battle of Nacogdoches in 1832 and was a delegate to the conventions of 1832 and 1833. In 1835 he was elected chairman of the San Augustine Committee of Safety and Correspondence.

On October 6 he submitted a resolution appointing Houston commander-in-chief of the forces of San Augustine and Nacogdoches until the Consultation should meet. Sublett was commissioned lieutenant colonel in October and in December 1835 was present at the siege of Bexar. He returned to his farm east of San Augustine after the battle of Concepción. Sam Houston resided in Sublett's home while recuperating from wounds received at San Jacinto. Sublett died in San Augustine on February 25, 1850.

1838 - On this date in 1838, John Kirby Allen, one of the Allen brothers that founded Houston, died at the age of 28.

1844 - President Houston calls out the militia to put down the Regulator-Moderator War. [ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jcr01 ]

1854 – Alonzo Sledge, one of Texas’ first black legislators, was born in Chappell Hill, Texas. He was elected in 1878, representing Washington and Burleson Counties.

1855 - The first Feast of the Assumption celebration was held in the small Czech community that was renamed Praha three years later. Praha, in southern Fayette County, was originally known as Mulberry and Hottentot. During the mid-1850s a Bohemian immigrant named Mathias Novak came to the region. Other Bohemian immigrants followed, and in 1858 the Bohemian settlers changed the town's name to Praha in honor of Prague, the capital of their homeland.

In 1865 Joseph Bithowski, a Bernardine father, built a small frame church in the town. An annual celebration of the Feast of the Assumption on August 15 attracts more than 5,000 visitors, many of them Czechoslovakian. Mass is celebrated in the historic church, with its extraordinary interior painted by Godfrey Flury, Czech food is served, and Texas Czech bands play throughout the evening.

1895 - The first U.S. battleship to be named Texas was commissioned. Its name was changed to USS San Marcos in 1911.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/qtt01 ]

1917 - Ira Clarence Eaker(born at Field Creek, Texas) was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Infantry Section, Officers Reserve Corps, on August 15, 1917, and assigned to the Sixty-fourth Infantry at Fort Bliss, Texas. In July 1919 he was appointed commander of the Second Aero Squadron and sent to the Philippines for a two-year tour.

He was promoted to full colonel in December 1941 and to brigadier general in January 1942, when he was assigned to England to form and command the Eighth Bomber Command. He was instrumental in the development and application of daylight precision bombing in the European Theater. This tactic was a major factor in the defeat of the Germans. In December 1942 Eaker became commander of the Eighth Air Force in England.

On September 13, 1943, he received promotion to lieutenant general, and on October 15, 1943, he assumed overall command of both American air forces in the United Kingdom, the Eighth and the Ninth. Among his more than fifty decorations were the Congressional Gold Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Order of the Partisan Star (First Class), the Silver Star, and the Wright Trophy; he was also made a Knight of the British Empire.

He was promoted from lieutenant general to general by an act of Congress in 1985. General Eaker died on August 6, 1987, at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

1919 - Camp Bowie was closed on August 15, 1919. After the camp closed it was quickly converted to a residential area, as builders took advantage of utility hookups left by the army. The camp, in the Arlington Heights neighborhood about three miles west of downtown Fort Worth, was established by the United States War Department to give training to the Thirty-sixth Infantry Division.

Camp Bowie's greatest average monthly strength was recorded in October 1917 as 30,901. On April 11, 1918, the Thirty-sixth went on parade in the city for the first time. The four-hour event drew crowds estimated at 225,000, making it possibly the biggest parade in Fort Worth's history.

1935 - Texas native Wiley Post and humorist Will Rogers were killed in a plane crash at Point Barrow, Alaska.

1945 - The Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, also called the Longhorn Ordnance Works, is a facility for the production of munitions located on a 10,000-acre site beside Caddo Lake at Karnack, Harrison County. By August 15, 1945, the plant had turned out 414,805,500 pounds of TNT. The facility closed sometime in November 1945 and remained on standby until February 1, 1952, when it was reopened; it subsequently produced munitions and a variety of pyrotechnic devices under the management of the Universal Match Corporation until 1956.
[ https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dml03 ]

1983 - In Galveston and Houston, TX, Hurricane Alicia killed 21 people. (August 15-21)

1993 - Nolan Ryan got his 324th and final victory. The Texas Rangers beat the Indians 4-1.