August 31
Today's:

1823 - Ferdinand VII was restored to the throne of Spain when invited French forces entered Cadiz. The event is known as the Battle of Trocadero.

1852 - The first pre-stamped envelopes were created with legislation of the U.S. Congress.

1881 - The first tennis championships in the U.S. were played.

1886 - 110 people were killed when an earthquake struck Charleston, SC.

1887 - The kinetoscope was patented by Thomas Edison. The device was used to produce moving pictures.

1888 - Mary Ann "Polly" Nicholls was found murdered in London. The murder is generally accepted as the first "Jack the Ripper" crime.

1920 - The first news program to be broadcast on radio was aired. The station was 8MK in Detroit, MI.

1935 - The act of exporting U.S. arms to belligerents was prohibited by an act signed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1940 - Lawrence Olivier and Vivian Leigh were married.

1941 - The radio program "The Great Gildersleeve" made its debut on NBC.

1946 - Superman returned to radio on the Mutual Broadcasting System after being dropped earlier in the year.

1950 - Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers hit four home runs in a single game off of four different pitchers.

1954 - 70 people were killed when Hurricane Carol hit the northeastern coast of the U.S.

1959 - Sandy Koufax set a National League record by striking out 18 batters.

1962 - The Caribbean nations Tobago and Trinidad became independent within the British Commonwealth.

1964 - California officially became the most populated state in America.

1965 - The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

1969 - The boxer Rocky Marciano died in an airplane crash in Iowa.

1980 - Poland's Solidarity labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17-day strike.

1981 - The 30-year contract between Milton Berle and NBC-TV expired.

1981 - In Ramstein, West Germany, a bomb exploded at the U.S. Air Force European headquarters. Brigadier General Joseph D. Moore and 19 others were injured.

1985 - The "Night Stalker" killer, Richard Ramirez, was captured by residents in Los Angeles, CA.

1986 - 82 people were killed when a small private plane collided with a Aeromexico DC-9 over Cerritos, CA.

1986 - The Admiral Nakhimov, a Soviet passenger ship, collided with a merchant vessel in the Black Sea. 448 people were killed when both ships sank.

1988 - A Delta Boeing 727 crashed during takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in Texas. Fourteen people were killed in the accident that was later blamed on the crew's failure to set the wing flaps in their proper position.

1989 - Jim Bakker had an apparent breakdown in his attorney's office. This interrupted the fraud and conspiracy trial the PTL founder was undergoing.

1989 - Great Britain's Princess Anne and Mark Phillips announced that they were separating. The marriage was 16 years old.

1990 - U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar met with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to try and negotiate a solution to the crisis in the Persian Gulf.

1990 - East and West Germany signed a treaty that meant the harmonizing of political and legal systems.

1991 - Uzbekistan and Kirghiziz declared their independence from the Soviet Union. They were the 9th and 10th republics to announce their plans to secede.

1991 - In a "Solidarity Day" protest hundreds of thousands of union members marched in Washington, DC.

1992 - Randy Weaver, a white separatist, surrendered to authorities after an 11 day siege at his cabin in Naples, ID.

1993 - Russia withdrew its last soldiers from Lithuania.

1994 - A cease-fire was declared by the Irish Republican Army after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.

1994 - Russia officially ended its military presence in the former East Germany and the Baltics after a half-century.

1995 - Judge Lance Ito ruled that only two tapes of racist comments by Mark Fuhrman could be played in the trial of O.J. Simpson.

1996 - Nadine Lockwoods body was found in her family's apartment by New York City police. The four-year-old girl had been starved to death.

1997 - Princess Diana of Wales died at age 36 in a car crash in Paris. Her companion, Dodi Fayed, and their chauffeur were also killed.

1998 - A ballistic missile was fired over Japan by North Korea. The missile landed in stages in the waters around Japan. There was no known target.

1998 - U.S. embassies in Ghana and Togo were closed indefinitely because of security threats.

1998 - An explosion in a market in Algiers, Algeria killed at least 17 and wounded approximately 60.

1998 - "Titanic" became the first movie in North America to earn more than $600 million.

1999 - At least 69 people were killed when a Boeing 737 crashed just after take off in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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