Aug 12 in History

1908 — Henry Ford’s first Model T rolls off the assembly line. It leaves the factory on September 27. 1923 — Enrique Tirabocchi, Argentinian marathon swimmer, becomes the first to swim the English Channel westward, arriving in the Port of Dover 16 hours and 33 minutes after entering the water at Cape Gris-Nez, northern France, at 8am on the 11th (the fourth successful crossing in total).

1925 — Norris and Ross McWhirter, co-founders of “The Guinness Book of Records” (first published on August 27 1955), are born in London. They become sports journalists in 1950. They publish “Get to Your Marks” in 1951 and start an agency “to supply facts and figures to newspapers, encyclopaedias, yearbooks and advertisers”. Ross, an outspoken IRA critic, is assassinated by two IRA volunteers outside his home in Bush Hill Park on November 27 1975.

1928 — The Olympics Games ends in Amsterdam. The women’s 800m, on debut as an Olympic event , is won by Germany’s Lina Radke in a world-record 2:16.8. Some press reports claim that many of the competitors were exhausted or failed to finish the race. The IOC reacts by dropping the event, restricting women to races up to 200m, until 1960. The 400m is added in 1964.

1936 — US diver Marjorie Gestring, 13 years and 268 days, becomes the youngest Olympic gold medallist with a score of 89.27 in the 3m springboard in Berlin. 1969 — Rosalind Ballingall, 20, a second-year drama student at the University of Cape Town and part of the “Cosmic Butterfly” group of hippies, disappears mysteriously from the house she rents with two friends at Fisanthoek in the Knysna Forest. Dressed in jeans, a jersey and sandals and carrying a Bible, she tells her friends she is going for a walk, enters the forest and is never seen again.

1971 — Pete Sampras, US tennis player — 14 Grand Slam titles: Wimbledon (7), US Open (5), Australian Open (2) — is born in Washington D.C.

1985 — Japan Airlines Flight 123 crashes into Osutaka Ridge in Gunma Prefecture, Japan, killing 520 — still the worst single-plane air disaster. Two women and two girls (8 and 12) survive. Among the dead is singer Kyu Sakamoto, 43, famous for the hit song “Ue o Muite Aruko” (known as “Sukiyaki” in English-speaking markets), which sells more than 13-million copies.

1990 — Sue, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton found to date, is discovered by Sue Hendrickson in South Dakota. It is on display at the Field Museum in Chicago.

2014 — Lauren Bacall, 89, actress, dies in NYC. She starred in four films with Humphrey Bogart, whom she married in 1945 when she was 20 and he 45.