| 87931 | August 4 | Event | 1936 – Prime Minister of Greece Ioannis Metaxas suspends parliament and the Constitution and establishes the 4th of August Regime. |
| 87932 | August 4 | Event | 1944 – The Holocaust: A tip from a Dutch informer leads the Gestapo to a sealed-off area in an Amsterdam warehouse, where they find and arrest Jewish diarist Anne Frank, her family, and four others. |
| 87933 | August 4 | Event | 1946 – An earthquake of magnitude 8.0 hits northern Dominican Republic. One hundred are killed and 20,000 are left homeless. |
| 87934 | August 4 | Event | 1947 – The Supreme Court of Japan is established. |
| 87935 | August 4 | Event | 1958 – The Billboard Hot 100 is published for the first time. |
| 87936 | August 4 | Event | 1964 – American civil rights movement: Civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney are found dead in Mississippi after disappearing on June 21. |
| 87937 | August 4 | Event | 1964 – Gulf of Tonkin incident: U.S. destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy report coming under attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. |
| 87938 | August 4 | Event | 1965 – The Constitution of the Cook Islands comes into force, giving the Cook Islands self-governing status within New Zealand. |
| 87939 | August 4 | Event | 1969 – Vietnam War: At the apartment of French intermediary Jean Sainteny in Paris, American representative Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese representative Xuân Thuỷ begin secret peace negotiations. The negotiations will eventually fail. |
| 87940 | August 4 | Event | 1974 – A bomb explodes in the Italicus Express train at San Benedetto Val di Sambro, Italy, killing 12 people and wounding 22. |
| 87941 | August 4 | Event | 1975 – The Japanese Red Army takes more than 50 hostages at the AIA Building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The hostages include the U.S. consul and the Swedish Chargé d'affaires. The gunmen win the release of five imprisoned comrade |
| 87942 | August 4 | Event | 1977 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy. |
| 87943 | August 4 | Event | 1984 – The Republic of Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso. |
| 87944 | August 4 | Event | 1987 – The Federal Communications Commission rescinds the Fairness Doctrine which had required radio and television stations to present controversial issues "fairly". |
| 87945 | August 4 | Event | 1991 – The Greek cruise ship MTS Oceanos sinks off the Wild Coast of South Africa. |
| 87946 | August 4 | Event | 1993 – A federal judge sentences Los Angeles Police Department officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison for violating motorist Rodney King's civil rights. |
| 87947 | August 4 | Event | 1995 – Operation Storm begins in Croatia. |
| 87948 | August 4 | Event | 2002 – Soham murders: Ten-year-old school girls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells go missing from the town of Soham, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom. |
| 87949 | August 4 | Event | 2006 – A massacre is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger (known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF). |
| 87950 | August 4 | Event | 2007 – NASA's Phoenix spacecraft is launched. |
| 87951 | August 4 | Birth | 1222 – Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester, English soldier (d. 1262) |
| 87952 | August 4 | Birth | 1290 – Leopold I, Duke of Austria (d. 1326) |
| 87953 | August 4 | Birth | 1521 – Pope Urban VII (d. 1590) |
| 87954 | August 4 | Birth | 1604 – François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French cleric and author (d. 1676) |
| 87955 | August 4 | Birth | 1701 – Thomas Blackwell, Scottish historian and scholar (d. 1757) |
| 87956 | August 4 | Birth | 1704 – Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Orléans (d. 1752) |
| 87957 | August 4 | Birth | 1719 – Johann Gottlob Lehmann, German mineralogist and geologist (d. 1767) |
| 87958 | August 4 | Birth | 1721 – Granville Leveson-Gower, 1st Marquess of Stafford, English politician, Lord President of the Council (d. 1803) |
| 87959 | August 4 | Birth | 1755 – Nicolas-Jacques Conté, French soldier and painter (d. 1805) |
| 87960 | August 4 | Birth | 1792 – Percy Bysshe Shelley, English author, poet, and playwright (d. 1822) |