TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: AUGUST 31
1535 Pope Paul II deposed & excommunicated King Henry VIII
1756 The British at Fort William Henry, New York, surrender to Louis Montcalm of France.
1888 The body of Jack the Ripper’s first victim, Mary Ann Nichols, is found in Whitechapel in London’s East End
1919 The Communist Labor Party is founded in Chicago, with the motto, “Workers of the world unite!”
1920 John Lloyd Wright was issued a patent for “Toy-Cabin Construction,” which are known as Lincoln Logs.
1942 The British army under General Bernard Law Montgomery defeats Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps in the Battle of Alam Halfa in Egypt.
1949 Six of the 16 surviving Union veterans of the Civil War attend the last-ever encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic, held in Indianapolis, Indiana.
1961 A concrete wall replaces the barbed wire fence that separates East and West Germany, it will be called the Berlin wall.
1965 US Congress creates Department of Housing & Urban Development.
1970 Lonnie McLucas convicted of torturing and murdering fellow Black Panther Party member Alex Rackley in the first of the New Haven Black Panther Trials
1971 Dave Scott becomes 1st person to drive a car on the Moon
1980 Poland’s Solidarity labor movement had its beginnings when an agreement ending a 17-day strike was signed in Gdansk.
1985 Police capture Richard Ramirez, dubbed the “Night Stalker” for a string of gruesome murders that stretched from Mission Viejo to San Francisco, Cal.
1987 Longest mine strike in South Africa’s history ends, after 11 people were killed, 500 injured and 400 arrested.
1994 Russian Troops Leave Estonia 3 years after Estonia declared independence from the Soviet Union1994 The Irish Republican Army (IRA) announces a “complete cessation of military operations,” opening the way to a political settlement in Ireland for the first time in a quarter of a century.
1997 Princess of Wales, Diana, Dies in a Car Crash. Diana, the former wife of Charles, the heir apparent to the British Crown, was fatally injured when the driver of her car lost control while speeding away from paparazzi, and crashed in a road tunnel in Paris, France.
1998 North Korea Announces the Launch of its First Satellite
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
