On this day – August 31
Advertiser Adelaide, Australia
The Mercury, Australia
Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
Aug 31 2005
1990 – About 250 militant Armenian nationalists give up their weapons
after the republic’s parliament declares a state of emergency.
1290 – Jews are exiled from England by proclamation of King Edward I.
1422 – King Henry V of England dies of dysentery in France and is
succeeded by his nine-month-old son, Henry VI. 1688 – Death in
London of John Bunyan, English author of The Pilgrim’s Progress.
1704 – Forces of Russia’s Tsar Peter the Great take Narva in Russia.
1823 – French forces storm the Trocadero and enter Cadiz in Spain.
1846 – Committee is established in Sydney to organise appeal
for Irish famine. 1871 – Basutoland is united with Cape Colony,
South Africa. 1876 – Turkey’s Sultan Murad V is deposed on plea
of insanity and is succeeded by Abdul Hamid II. 1887 – US inventor
Thomas A Edison receives a patent for his Kinetoscope, a device which
produces moving pictures. 1888 – Body of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols,
first victim of murderer “Jack the Ripper”, is found in London.
1900 – British forces under Frederick Roberts occupy Johannesburg.
1907 – Anglo-Russian Convention is signed in St Petersburg, settling
differences between the two over Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet.
1918 – Bolshevik troops attack British embassy in Petrograd, Russia.
1920 – First ever news program is broadcast by the radio station 8MK
in Detroit, Michigan. 1922 – Czech-Serb-Croat Alliance is signed at
Marienbad. 1923 – Italy occupies Corfu in Greece. 1939 – Attempts
by French Premier Daladier and British Prime Minister Chamberlain to
negotiate with Adolf Hitler of Germany fail. 1942 – German General
Irwin Rommel renews offensive against British at Alam Halfa in North
Africa in World War II but is driven back to original lines. 1950 –
Contingent of 80 men from First Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment,
leaves for the Korean War. 1957 – Malaya becomes an independent
member of the British Commonwealth. 1962 – Trinidad and Tobago becomes
independent nation within the British Commonwealth. 1967 – Diplomatic
relations between Indonesia and Malaysia are re-established, following
Indonesia’s opposition to the formation of the Malaya federation.
1968 – West Indian Garfield Sobers becomes the first cricketer to
score six sixes off one over in first-class cricket, in England.
1969 – Rocky Marciano, former world heavyweight boxing champion, is
killed in an air crash in Iowa. 1973 – Death of John Ford, US film
director. 1977 – Ian Smith wins the Rhodesian general election with
80 per cent of the overwhelmingly white electorate’s vote. 1980 –
Polish labour leaders sign agreements with Communist government,
establishing for first time in a Soviet-bloc nation the rights to
strike and to establish free trade unions. 1983 – Murdered opposition
leader Benigno Aquino is buried in Manila, with over a million
mourners being addressed by his widow Cory. 1986 – Soviet passenger
ship Admiral Nakhimov collides with a merchant vessel in the Black
Sea, causing both vessels to sink; 448 die. 1986 – Moscow’s secret
police hold US correspondent Nicholas Daniloff on spying allegations.
1987 – Government and opposition officials in South Korea agree on
revising Constitution to clear way for direct presidential elections
and other reforms. 1989 – Princess Anne and her husband Captain Mark
Phillips separate after 16 years of marriage. 1990 – East and West
Germany sign a treaty to harmonise their legal and political systems
after merging on October 3. 1990 – About 250 militant Armenian
nationalists give up their weapons after the republic’s parliament
declares a state of emergency. 1991 – Uzbekistan and Kirgyzstan
become ninth and tenth Soviet republics to declare independence.
1992 – Palestinian Arabs dismiss Israel’s self-rule proposals as
unacceptable and say peace negotiations are at an impasse. 1994 –
IRA declares an open-ended ceasefire in its 24-year campaign against
British rule of Northern Ireland. 1995 – Bomb-laden car explodes
in a crowded square outside Algeria’s national police headquarters,
killing 10 and injuring 15. 1996 – Iraq captures Irbil in northern
Iraq, a key city inside the Kurdish “safe haven” protected by US-led
forces, in Saddam Hussein’s largest military action since the end
of the Gulf War in 1991. 1997 – Princess Diana and her millionaire
companion Dodi Al Fayed are killed in a Paris car crash. 1998 – North
Korea launches a new, more powerful long-range ballistic missile that
crosses over Japan’s main island and crashes into the Pacific Ocean.
1999 – Opposition lawmakers in Venezuela pledge to defy a decision
by supporters of President Hugo Chavez to shut down the legislature,
worsening the country’s constitutional crisis. 2000 – The United
States decides to boycott several meetings in Japan dealing with
science and the environment in a protest of the expansion of Japanese
whaling. 2001 – Delegates from more than 160 countries attend the
weeklong United Nations-sponsored World Conference Against Racism in
Durban, South Africa. 2002 – A Russian Mi-24 assault helicopter is
shot down by a missile in Chechnya. Both of the gunship’s pilots are
killed. Chechen rebels claim responsibility. 2002 – Lionel Hampton,
one of America’s jazz legends, dies. He was 94. 2003 – Kenya lifts
a ban on the Mau Mau movement, which spearheaded an uprising against
British colonialists in the 1950s. 2004 – Militants in Iraq kill
12 Nepalese contract workers, in a gruesome video discovered on an
Islamic web site, showing one of them beheaded and the 11 others
shot in a methodical series of execution-style slayings. 2004 – The
US Republican Party nominates President George W Bush for a second
four-year term in the White House.
