This Week In History
August 12, 1883
The last quagga, distinguished from other zebras by its pattern of brown and white stripes on the front of the body and plain brown rear, died at a zoo in Amsterdam 1898: Spain relinquished Cuba and ceded Puerto Rico to the United States at the end of the Spanish-American War 1996: Iran and Turkey struck a huge gas deal a week after the US started to block investment in Iran 2008: Russia ordered an end to fighting in South Ossetia after a five-day conflict that killed 2,500 people 2008: Mark Chapman was denied parole for a fifth time for the murder of ex-Beatle John Lennon in 1980
August 13, 2007
Satellite imagery revealed that Angkor, the Khmer Empire capital from the 9th to the 15th centuries, covered around 3,000sq km, with up to half a million inhabitants 1876: Wagner’s Ring Cycle was first performed in its entirety in Bayreuth 1998: Financier George Soros described the state of Russia’s stock markets as “terminal”
2001: Nasa’s giant solar-powered “flying wing”, Helios, set a new altitude record for non-rocket-powered aircraft 2015: China devalued the yuan for a third day, exascerbating fears that the world’s second largest economy was headed for a lengthy slowdown
August 14, 1880
The construction of Cologne Cathedral was completed. Building began in 1248 but was stopped in 1473. After a 400-year gap it was completed to the original plan 1908: The world’s first international beauty contest was held at the Pier Hippodrome at Folkestone, England 2003: France declared a medical state of emergency amid a record heatwave which caused 14,800 deaths 2003: A major power blackout hit the northeastern US and Canada, leaving around 50 million people without electricity 2015: The US flag was raised in a ceremony at the newly reopened embassy in Havana, Cuba
August 15, 54BC
Ten thousand men of the 7th and 10th Roman legions under Julius Caesar landed in southern England, although this initial incursion was unsuccessful 1843: The Tivoli Pleasure Gardens, one of the world’s oldest amusement parks, was opened in Copenhagen, Denmark 1848: The dental chair, which rose up and down as well as reclined, was patented in Syracuse, New York 1918: The United States severed diplomatic relations with Russia in the wake of the Bolshevik takeover 1998: A car bomb in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killed 29 people
August 16, 1958
Madonna Louise Ciccone was born in Bay City, Michigan. She is the world’s best-selling female recording artist, with
1933: The Australian state of Victoria paid £800 for a Yorkshire cottage, once the childhood home of Captain Cook 1989: A solar flare created a geomagnetic storm that halted trading on Toronto’s stock market
2008: At the Beijing Olympics sprinter Usain Bolt of Jamaica won gold in the 100m in a world record time of 9.69 seconds 2010: China overtook Japan as the world’s second-largest economy
August 17, 1988
President Zia ul-Haq and the US ambassador to Pakistan were among 32 people killed when their plane exploded after take-off from Bahawalpur airport
1970: Venera 7, the first spacecraft to land successfully on the surface of another planet, Venus, was launched 1978: Three Americans completed the first crossing of the North Atlantic in a hot-air balloon
1998: Russian president Boris Yeltsin devalued the rouble, despite recent promises to the contrary 2017: A van ploughed into tourists on Las Ramblas in Barcelona, killing 14 people and injuring at least 130 others August 18, 1938 The Thousand Islands Bridge, in reality five bridges over the St Lawrence River between the US and Canada, was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt 1868: French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovered helium after analysing the solar spectrum 1958: Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita, about a sexually precocious 12-year old girl, was published in the United States
2003: Ma Li Hua of Singapore toppled 303,621 dominoes, then a world record 2005: A massive power outage on the Indonesian island of Java affected almost 100 million people