ON THIS DAY – AUG. 31

News24, South Africa
Aug. 31, 2006

Today is Thursday, August 31, the 243rd day of 2006. There are 122
days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1990 – After Armenian Republic’s parliament declares a state of
emergency, 250 militant nationalists give up their weapons.

1290 – Jews are exiled from England by proclamation of King Edward 1.

1704 – Forces of Russia’s Czar Peter the Great take Narva in Russia.

1876 – Turkey’s Sultan Murad V is deposed on plea of insanity and is
succeeded by Abdul Hamid 2.

1886 – In one of America’s worst disasters, 110 people are killed
when an earthquake rocks Charleston, South Carolina.

1888 – Mary Ann Nicholls is found murdered in London’s East End. She
is the first victim of Jack the Ripper.

1900 – British forces under Frederick Roberts occupy Johannesburg,
South Africa.

1918 – Bolshevik troops attack British Embassy in Petrograd, Russia.

1922 – Czech-Serb-Croat Alliance is signed at Marienbad.

1923 – Italy starts a brief occupation of the Greek island of Corfu
after the murder of a boundary delegation.

1935 – United States President Franklin D Roosevelt signs an act
prohibiting the export of US arms to belligerents.

1942 – German general Rommel renews offensive against British at
Alam Halfa in North Africa in World War 2, but is driven back to
original lines.

1947 – The US Investigating Committee recommends that Great Britain
give up control of Palestine.

1957 – Malaysia gains independence as Federation of Malaya.

1962 – Trinidad and Tobago become independent nation within British
Commonwealth.

1971 – Cuba terminates the airlift that has brought 246 000, Cuban
refugees from Havana to Florida since December 1965.

1977 – Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith’s party wins the election and
gains all 50 white seats in parliament. The vote gives Smith a mandate
to negotiate with black leaders on greater political representation
for the country’s six million blacks.

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.

1982 – El Salvador defences minister Jose Guillermo Garcia Merino
discloses that the armed forces have suffered 3 657 casualties in a
year; bringing the number of people killed by rightists during the
three-year civil war to more than 35 000.

1986 – Moscow’s secret police hold US news correspondent Nicholas
Daniloff on spying allegations. His wife calls it a frame-up.

1987 – Government and opposition officials in South Korea agree on
revising constitution to clear way for direct presidential elections
and other reforms.

1990 – After Armenian Republic’s parliament declares a state of
emergency, 250 militant nationalists give up their weapons.

1991 – Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan become the ninth and tenth Soviet
republics to declare independence.

1994 – Irish Republican Army declares an open-ended cease-fire in
its 24-year campaign against British rule of Northern Ireland.

1995 – A 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. It is Saddam Hussein’s
largest military action since the end of the Gulf War in 1991.

1997 – Typhoon Rex veers away from Japan’s main island of Honshu, but
the record rainfall it spawned forces thousands to flee their homes.

Flooding and landslides caused by the rains kill 14 people and
injure 45.

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. The test draws strong protests from Japan and the US.

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.

2004 – Militants in Iraq kill 12 Nepalese contract workers, in a
gruesome video discovered on an Islamic website, showing one of
them beheaded and the 11 others shot in a methodical series of
execution-style slayings.

2005 – Panicked by rumours of a suicide bomber, thousands of Shi’ite
pilgrims break into a stampede on a bridge in Baghdad during a
religious procession, crushing one another or plunging into Tigris
River. Nearly 1 000 die, mostly women and children.

Today’s Birthdays: Theophile Gautier, French author (1811-1872); Maria
Montessori, Italian doctor and educator (1870-1952); William Saroyan,
US writer (1908-1981); Buddy Hackett, US actor/comedian (1924-2003);
Van Morrison, Irish singer (1945); Itzhak Perlman, Israeli violinist
(1945); Richard Gere, US actor (1949).

Thought for Today: Show me the country in which there are no strikes
and I’ll show you that country in which there is no liberty – Emma
Goldman, American anarchist (1869-1940).