• 1871 – Orville Wright was born in Dayton, Ohio. He was co-inventor, with his brother Wilbur, of the first airplane to achieve powered, sustained, and controlled flight and the first fully practical powered airplane. 
• 1901 – Wilbur Wright achieves a flight of 389 feet (118.5 m) at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in the Wright 1901 glider.
• 1909 – The Wright Military Flyer entered service in the US Army as Aeroplane No. 1
• 1911 – The Aero Club of America grants Harriet Quimby the first U. S. pilot’s license issued to a woman.
• 1927 – The Dole Derby Air Race, also known as the Dole Derby, was a tragic air race to cross the Pacific Ocean from northern California to the Territory of Hawaii in August 1927. Of the 15-18 entrant airplanes, 11 were certified to compete but three crashed before the race, resulting in three deaths. Eight eventually participated in the race, with two crashing on takeoff and two going missing during the race. A third, forced to return for repairs, took off again to search for the missing and was itself never seen again. In all, before, during, and after the race, ten lives were lost and six airplanes were total losses. Two of the eight planes successfully landed in Hawaii. 
• 1932 – Amelia Earhart makes the first transcontinental flight across the US by a woman. She flew a Lockheed Vega from Los Angeles to Newark
• 1935 – Wiley Post, the first pilot to fly solo around the world, and his passenger Will Rogers are killed in a crash in Alaska.
• 1943 – The Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and the 319th Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD), both organizations of civilian women ferry pilots employed by the U. S. Army Air Forces Air Transport Command, are merged to form the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).
• 1945 – B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay drops “Little Boy” the first nuclear weapon used in warfare over the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
• 1945 – B-29 Bockscar drops a plutonium-239 nuclear weapon, Fat Man, on Nagasaki
• 1946 – President Harry Truman signs a bill authorizing an appropriation of $50,000 to establish a National Air Museum in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. The small museum eventually becomes the National Air and Space Museum – The most visited museum in the world
• 1957 – NORAD is formed to co-ordinate US and Canadian air defense

 

You can read about the decision to drop the A-BOMB on Japan in an article written by Mark Lindberg, one of our board members.

The above list is a subset of the aviation events and milestones that took place in the month of August.  A more complete list can be found on this Wikipedia page.