January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December

The following events occurred in August 1911:

Aurel Vlaicu (Romanian pronunciation: [a.uˈrel ˈvlajku] ( listen); November 19, 1882 – September 13, 1913) was a Romanian engineer, inventor, airplane constructor and early pilot.

Aurel Vlaicu was born in Binţinţi (now renamed Aurel Vlaicu), Geoagiu, Transylvania. He attended Calvinist High School in Orăştie (renamed "Liceul Aurel Vlaicu" in his honour in 1919) and took his Baccalaureate in Sibiu in 1902. He furthered his studies at Technical University of Budapest and Technische Hochschule München in Germany, earning his engineer's diploma in 1907.

After working at Opel car factory in Rüsselsheim, he returned to Binţinţi and built a glider he flew in the summer of 1909. Later that year, he moved to Bucharest, in the Kingdom of Romania, where he began the construction of Vlaicu Nr. I airplane; it flew for the first time on June 17, 1910 over Cotroceni field.

With his Vlaicu Nr. II model, built in 1911, Aurel Vlaicu won several prizes summing 7,500 Austro-Hungarian krone (for precise landing, projectile throwing and tight flying around a pole) in 1912 at Aspern Air Show near Vienna, where he competed against 42 other aviators of the day, including Roland Garros.The press of that time considered Aurel Vlaicu the second pilot of the contest after the famous French aviator Roland Gaross.

Võ Nguyên Giáp (born 25 August, 1911) is a retired Vietnamese officer in the Vietnam People’s Army and a politician. He was a principal commander in two wars: the First Indochina War (1946–1954) and the Vietnam War (1960–1975). He participated in the following historically significant battles: Lạng Sơn (1950); Hòa Bình (1951–1952); Điện Biên Phủ (1954); the Tết Offensive (1968); the Easter Offensive (1972); and the final Hồ Chí Minh Campaign (1975). He was also a journalist, an interior minister in President Hồ Chí Minh’s Việt Minh government, the military commander of the Việt Minh, the commander of the Vietnam People’s Army (PAVN), and defense minister. He also served as Politburo member of the Lao Động Party.

He was the most prominent military commander, beside Hồ Chí Minh, during the war and was responsible for major operations and leadership until the war ended.

Giáp was born in the village of An Xá, Quảng Bình Province. His father and mother, Võ Quang Nghiêm and Nguyen Thi Kien, worked the land, rented some to neighbors, and lived a relatively comfortable lifestyle. At 14, Giáp became a messenger for the Haiphong Power Company and shortly thereafter joined the Tân Việt Cách Mạng Đảng, a romantically styled revolutionary youth group. Two years later, he entered Quốc Học (also known in English as the “National Academy”), a French-run lycée in Huế, from which two years later, according to his own account, he was expelled for having organized a student strike. Although he has denied it, Giáp is said^{[by whom?]} to have also spent a few years in the prestigious Hanoian Lycée Albert Sarraut, where the local elite was educated to serve the colonial regime. He was apparently in the same class as Phạm Văn Đồng, future Prime Minister, who has also denied having studied at Albert Sarraut, and Bảo Đại, the last emperor of Annam. In 1933, at the age of 22, Giáp enrolled in the University of Hanoi.

Joseph Jacob "Joe" Foss (April 17, 1915–January 1, 2003) was the leading fighter ace of the United States Marine Corps during World War II and a 1943 recipient of the Medal of Honor, recognizing his role in the air combat during the Guadalcanal Campaign. In postwar years, he achieved fame as a General in the Air National Guard, the 20th Governor of South Dakota, and the first commissioner of the American Football League, as well as a career as a television broadcaster.

Born on a farm near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as the oldest son of Olouse and Mary Lacey Foss, Foss grew up in a farmhouse without electricity. When he was 12, he visited a local airfield in Renner to see Charles Lindbergh on tour with his aircraft, the Spirit of St. Louis. Four years later, he and his father paid $1.50 apiece to take their first aircraft ride in a Ford Trimotor at Black Hills Airport with a famed South Dakota aviator, Clyde Ice.

In 1933, while coming back from the fields during a storm, his father died when he drove over a downed electrical cable and was electrocuted as he stepped out of his automobile. Dropping out of school, young Foss, at the age of 17, with his mother, took over the running of the family farm. Farming was made difficult by dust storms, which over the next two years took its toll on crops and livestock. After watching a Marine Corps aerial team, led by Capt. Clayton Jerome, perform aerobatics in open-cockpit biplanes, he was determined to become a Marine aviator. Foss worked at a service station to pay for books and college tuition, and to begin flight lessons from Roy Lanning, at the Sioux Skyway Airfield in 1938, scraping up $65 to pay for the instruction. His younger brother took over the management of the farm and allowed Foss to go back to school and graduate from Sioux Falls College.

Martin Sandberger (17 August 1911 – 30 March 2010) was an SS Standartenführer (Colonel) and commander of Sonderkommando 1a of the Einsatzgruppe, as well as commander of the Sicherheitspolizei and SD in Estonia. He played an important role in the mass murder of the Jews in the Baltic states. He was also responsible for the arrest of Jews in Italy and their deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp. Sandberger was the second-highest official of Einsatzgruppe A to be tried and convicted.

Martin Sandberger was born in Charlottenburg, Berlin as a son of a director of IG Farben. Sandberger studied law at the Universities of München, Köln, Freiburg and Tübingen. At the age of 20 he joined the NSDAP and the SA. From 1932 - 1933 Sandberger was a Nazi student activist and student leader in Tübingen. On 8 March 1933 Sandberger and fellow student Erich Ehrlinger raised the Nazi flag in front of the main building at the University of Tübingen. (Like Sandberger, Ehrlinger would take charge of an Einsatzkommando in 1941, and in so doing, commit thousands of murders.)