Melbourne Herald Sun, Australia
The Mercury, Australia
Sunday Times, Australia
Advertiser, Australia
Aug 26 2004
On this day
26aug04
1896 – Armenian revolutionaries attack the Ottoman Bank in
Constantinople, provoking a three-day battle in which at least 6,000
Armenians die.
55BC – Roman forces under Julius Caesar invade Britain.
580 – It is thought that toilet paper is invented by the Chinese.
1346 – A cannon is used for the first time in a European battle as
Edward III of England defeats Philip VI of France.
1541 – Suleiman I, Sultan of Turkey, takes Buda and annexes Hungary.
1847 – Liberia is proclaimed an independent republic.
1859 – Britain and Japan sign a commercial treaty.
1883 – A huge eruption of a volcano on Krakatoa island in the Sundra
Strait between Java and Sumatra continues. The two-day eruption and
associated tidal waves kill about 36,000 people and destroy
two-thirds of the island.
1883 – Cricket’s Ashes trophy is created when a defeated English
captain is presented with an urn containing ashes of the 1882-3
stumps following Australia’s victory.
1884 – A patent is granted to German immigrant Ottmar Mergenthaler
for the Linotype machine, which allowed mass production of
newspapers.
1896 – Insurrection begins in the Philippines against the Spanish;
Armenian revolutionaries attack the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople,
provoking a three-day battle in which at least 6,000 Armenians die.
1912 – The first Tarzan story by William Rice Burroughs appears in a
US magazine.
1913 – A Russian pilot, Lieutenant Peter Nesterov, is credited with
becoming the first person to perform the loop-the-loop.
1914 – More than 30,000 Russian troops are killed during WWII as they
are out-manoeuvred by German troops at the battle of Tannenberg.
1915 – German army captures Brest-Litovsk in Russia during World War
I.
1920 – The 19th Amendment to the American Constitution is ratified,
giving women the vote.
1930 – Death of US silent movie actor Lon Chaney who became known as
the man of a thousand faces.
1936 – Treaty ends British occupation of Egypt, except Suez Canal
zone, and Britain and Egypt form alliance for 20 years.
1937 – Japan blockades Chinese shipping; the first televised major
league baseball games is shown in the United States, a doubleheader
between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
1942 – German army reaches Stalingrad in Soviet Union during World
War II.
1945 – Japanese envoys board US battleship Missouri to receive
surrender instructions at the end of World War II.
1947 – The UN Security Council passes a resolution for both the Dutch
and Indonesians to adhere to a ceasefire order.
1952 – Floods caused by monsoon rains inundate 90 per cent of Manila,
causing at least eight deaths. It is Manila’s third flood in a month.
1957 – Soviet Union announces it has successfully tested an
intercontinental ballistic missile.
1959 – Chinese troops cross into India’s north-eastern territory
after a border dispute.
1964 – Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, bans two black nationalist movements;
student and Buddhist riots force resignation of government of Premier
Nguyen Khanh in South Vietnam.
1967 – Andreas Papandreou, former Greek cabinet minister and son of
ex-premier George Papandreou, is indicted on treason charges and
accused of leading the Aspid (Shield) army conspiracy.
1970 – North Vietnam sends its chief negotiator back to Vietnam peace
talks in Paris after an eight and a half month boycott of
negotiations.
1972 – The summer Olympics games open in Munich, West Germany; death
of British yachtsman Sir Francis Chichester.
1973 – The Cambodian military reports that Khmer Rouge rebel troops
had severed Phnom Penh’s two vital supply roads – one leading to the
seaport and the other to rice fields.
1974 – Death of US aviator Charles Lindbergh.
1978 – Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice is elected as Pope John Paul
I.
1981 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin wrap up a two-day summit in Alexandria with the return
of the Sinai peninsula to Egypt scheduled for next April.
1982 – Argentine government lifts a ban on political parties.
1985 – A special French investigator issues a report clearing
France’s Socialist government and the intelligence service of
involvement in the sinking of the Greenpeace protest vessel Rainbow
Warrior in Auckland harbour on July 10.
1988 – Nationwide strike paralyses government and transportation in
Burma and anti-government rallies spread; tens of thousands of civil
rights marchers gather in Washington, DC, on the eve of the 25th
anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
1990 – Number of US soldiers, airmen and sailors in the Gulf reaches
60,000.
1991 – Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev promises new national
elections after the signing of the Union Treaty, but there appears to
be little support for the treaty in the wake of a failed coup
attempt.
1992 – Serb militiamen pound Sarajevo with rockets and mortars,
setting fire to medieval Turkish baths and the main library in the
Bosnian capital.
1993 – Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and 14 others are charged in the World
Trade Centre attack and New York bombing plot.
1994 – US officials acknowledge that the present session of Congress
won’t pass legislation for universal health insurance coverage, which
US President Bill Clinton made the centrepiece of his legislative
agenda.
1995 – The Communist Party in Russia starts a campaign that calls for
resurrection of the Soviet state that collapsed in 1991.
1996 – Former military strongman Chun Doo-hwan is sentenced to death
after being convicted of mutiny and treason in South Korea. His
successor, Roh Tae-woo, is also found guilty and sentenced to 22-1/2
years in prison. They were pardoned a year later.
1997 – South Africa’s last white president, F W De Klerk, resigns as
head of the National Party and leaves politics.
1998 – A three-week-old rebellion reaches the outskirts of Congo’s
capital Kinshasa, and hundreds of soldiers are wounded and killed.
1999 – Anti-independence militiamen rampage through Dili, the capital
of East Timor, raising doubts about the viability of an upcoming vote
on the Indonesian territory’s future.
2000 – Somalis celebrate the election of Abdiqasim Salad Hassan,
their first president in nearly a decade; in a widely covered visit
to Africa US President Bill Clinton appealed to the leaders of
oil-rich Nigeria to set aside political acrimony and concentarte on
lifting its citizens out of poverty.
2001 – Ethnic Albanians rebels hand over machine-guns, mortar tubes
and other heavy weaponry on first day of a NATO mission to collect
arm’s from Macedonia’s militants.
2002 – US President George W Bush admits he is worried about the
economy’s “paltry” growth and, without making promises, assures steel
company executives and workers that protecting domestic steel is a
national security priority.
2003 – Rwandan President Paul Kagame is the overwhelming winner of
presidential elections. The election was the first since the 1994
genocide.