Today in history

On Aug. 30, 30 B.C., by some estimates, the seventh and most famous queen of ancient Egypt known as Cleopatra committed suicide.

In 1862 Union forces were defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va.

In 1941 the World War II siege of Leningrad began as Nazi forces took Mga.

In 1945 Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japan and set up Allied occupation headquarters.

In 1963 the hotline between Washington and Moscow went into operation.

In 1967 the Senate confirmed Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court, making him the court’s first black justice.

In 1991 Azerbaijan declared its independence, joining the stampede of republics seeking to secede from the Soviet Union.

In 1994 Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955 helped touch off the civil rights movement, was robbed and beaten in her Detroit apartment.

In 1995 the West pounded the Bosnian Serbs with artillery and air attacks in hopes of bludgeoning them into serious peace talks.

In 1997 Americans learned of the car crash in Paris that claimed the lives of Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed and their driver, Henri Paul. (Because of the time difference, it was Aug. 31 where the crash occurred.)

In 2003 the World Trade Organization agreed to let impoverished nations import cheaper copies of patented medicines needed to fight killer diseases.

In 2005 a day after Hurricane Katrina hit, floods were covering 80 percent of New Orleans, looting continued to spread and rescuers in helicopters and boats picked up hundreds of stranded people.