TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2018

On this day in history:

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.

1882 - Cricket’s legend of The Ashes is born with the first of two mock obituaries lamenting England’s loss to Australia.

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

1933 - The township of Stuart in the Northern Territory is renamed Alice Springs.

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

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

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

1990 - UN 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 harmonising 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.

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.

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.