August 31 in History

The term Roman empress usually refers to the consorts of the Roman emperors, the rulers of the Roman Empire. The duties, power and influence of empresses varied depending on the time period, contemporary politics and the personalities of their husband and themselves. Empresses were typically highly regarded and respected, and many wielded great influence over imperial affairs. Several empresses served as regents on behalf of their husbands or sons and a handful ruled as empresses regnant, governing in their own right without a husband.

Al-Malik al-Kamil Nasir ad-Din Muhammad (Arabic: الملك الكامل ناصر الدين محمد; c. 1177 – 6 March 1238), titled Abu al-Maʽali (Arabic: أبي المعالي), was an Egyptian ruler and the fourth Ayyubid sultan of Egypt. During his tenure as sultan, the Ayyubids defeated the Fifth Crusade. He was known to the Latin/Frankish crusaders as Meledin, a name by which he is usually referred to in older Western sources and often but less frequently continues to be. As a result of the Sixth Crusade, he ceded West Jerusalem to the Christians and is known to have met with Saint Francis.

Frederick III ; 13 December 1272 – 25 June 1337) was the regent of the Kingdom of Sicily from 1291 until 1295 and subsequently King of Sicily from 1295 until his death. He was the third son of Peter III of Aragon and served in the War of the Sicilian Vespers on behalf of his father and brothers, Alfonso ΙΙΙ and James ΙΙ. He was confirmed as king by the Peace of Caltabellotta in 1302. His reign saw important constitutional reforms: the Constitutiones regales, Capitula alia, and Ordinationes generales.

Haakon V Magnusson (10 April 1270 – 8 May 1319) (Old Norse: Hákon Magnússon; Modern Norwegian: Håkon Magnusson) was King of Norway from 1299 until 1319. He was the younger son of King Magnus IV and succeeded his elder brother Eric II. His reign marked the end of the "golden age" of medieval Norwegian history. During his reign, Haakon sought to strengthen royal authority and the central administration, while Oslo grew in importance as a royal and administrative centre. He also oversaw the construction and strengthening of major fortifications, including Akershus Fortress and Bohus Fortress. Haakon was the last king in the male line of the House of Sverre. As he had no legitimate sons, he was succeeded in 1319 by his grandson Magnus Eriksson, who was also king of Sweden.

Henry V (16 September 1386 – 31 August 1422), also called Henry of Monmouth, was King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine from 1413 until his death in 1422. His victory at Agincourt in 1415 and his conquest of Normandy gave England the upper hand in the Hundred Years' War and led, by the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, to his recognition as heir and regent of France. This was the high-water mark of the English cause in the war. Celebrated in William Shakespeare's Henriad as one of the greatest warrior-kings of medieval England, Henry was also a forceful ruler at home, restoring public order, working closely with Parliament, and enforcing a strict religious orthodoxy. Henry of Monmouth was the eldest son of Henry IV, and became heir apparent and Prince of Wales after his father seized the throne from Richard II in 1399. During his father's reign, he gained military experience in Wales against the Glyndŵr rebellion and in fighting the powerful Percy family of Northumberland, and played an important part at the Battle of Shrewsbury when only 16. As his father's health declined, Henry took an increasingly central role in government, though disagreements between the two men led to political conflict. Henry succeeded to the throne after his father's death in March 1413 and revived the long-standing English claim to the French throne. In 1415, Henry renewed active warfare with France, opening the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War (1415–1453). His first campaign successfully besieged Harfleur and won a celebrated victory at Agincourt, which strengthened his position in England and lent weight to his claim. A second expedition from 1417 set out to conquer Normandy, recovering for the English crown a duchy lost two centuries earlier; by 1419, his army stood before Paris. Exploiting the civil war that divided France, and allying with Burgundy after the murder of Duke John the Fearless, Henry was able to impose the Treaty of Troyes on Charles VI. The treaty made him regent and heir to the French throne, disinherited the king's own son, the Dauphin Charles, and provided for his marriage to Charles's daughter Catherine of Valois. It envisaged a union of the two crowns in Henry's person on Charles's death. But Henry died in August 1422, seven weeks before the ailing Charles VI, and was succeeded by his only son, the infant Henry VI. At home, Henry restored order after the turbulence of his father's reign, strengthening the enforcement of justice and working closely with Parliament. He promoted the use of English in royal government and upheld a strict orthodoxy, crushing the Lollard movement and helping to end the Western Schism at the Council of Constance. His later fame has rested above all on his military prowess, on which there has been near-unanimity since his own day. Contemporary French and Burgundian verdicts ranged from admiration for his discipline and prudence to portrayals of a vainglorious tyrant. Modern scholars are divided in their assessments, some condemning Henry as a warmonger whose ambition bankrupted his realm, others reckoning him the greatest of England's kings. Much of the debate turns on his French conquests and how far he was to blame for their loss under his son. His biographer Christopher Allmand concludes that Henry's gifts as a ruler showed most clearly not on the battlefield but in the governing of England, and that the fuller the reckoning of his reign, the higher he stands.

William Livingston (November 30, 1723 – July 25, 1790) was an American politician and lawyer who served as the first governor of New Jersey (1776–1790) during the American Revolutionary War. As a New Jersey representative in the Continental Congress, he signed the Continental Association and the United States Constitution. He is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and a founding father of New Jersey.

The War of the First Coalition was a set of wars between a coalition of several European powers and France fought from 1792 to 1797. The coalition was only loosely allied and fought without much coordination; each power wanted to annex a different part of France should they defeat the French, something that never occurred.

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 (Irish: Éirí Amach 1798; Ulster Scots: "The Turn Out"/"The Hurries") was a popular insurrection against the British Crown in what was then the separate, but subordinate, Kingdom of Ireland. The main organising force was the Society of United Irishmen. First formed in Belfast by Presbyterians opposed to the landed Anglican establishment, the Society, despairing of reform, sought to secure a republic through a revolutionary union with the country's Catholic majority. The grievances of a rack-rented tenantry, and of market-town traders, journeymen and weavers drove recruitment. While assistance was being sought from the French Republic and from democratic militants in Britain, martial-law seizures and arrests forced the conspirators into the open. Beginning in late May 1798, there were a series of uncoordinated risings: in the counties of Carlow and Wexford in the southeast where the rebels met with some success; in the north around Belfast in counties Antrim and Down; and closer to the capital, Dublin, in counties Meath and Kildare. In late August, after the rebels had been reduced to pockets of guerrilla resistance, the French landed an expeditionary force in the west, in County Mayo. Unable to effect a conjunction with a significant rebel force, they surrendered on 9 September. In the last open-field engagement of the rebellion, the local men they had rallied on their arrival were routed at Killala on 23 September. On 12 October, a second French expedition was defeated in a naval action off the coast of County Donegal leading to the capture of the United Irish leader Wolfe Tone. In the wake of the rebellion, Acts of Union 1800 abolished the Irish legislature and brought Ireland under the crown of a United Kingdom through the Parliament at Westminster. The centenary of the rebellion in 1898 saw its legacy disputed by nationalists who wished to restore a legislature in Dublin, by republicans who invoked the name of Tone in the cause of complete separation and independence, and by unionists opposed to all measures of Irish self-government. Renewed in a bicentenary year that coincided with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the debate over the interpretation and significance of 1798 continues.

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by the Iberian nations Spain and Portugal, along with the United Kingdom, against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. It overlapped with the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) and the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812–1814). The war can be said to have started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, but it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation. It is also significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare. In 1808, the Spanish army in Andalusia defeated the French at the Battle of Bailén, considered the first open-field defeat of the Napoleonic army on a European battlefield. Besieged by 70,000 French troops, a reconstituted national government, the Cortes—in effect a government-in-exile—fortified itself in the secure port of Cádiz in 1810. The British army, under Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, guarded Portugal and campaigned against the French alongside the reformed Portuguese Army and provided whatever supplies they could get to the Spanish, while the Spanish armies and guerrillas tied down vast numbers of Napoleon's troops. In 1812, when Napoleon set out with a massive army on what proved to be a disastrous invasion of Russia, a combined allied army defeated the French at Salamanca and took the capital Madrid. In the following year the Coalition defeated King Joseph Bonaparte's army at the Battle of Vitoria, paving the way for victory in the war in the Iberian Peninsula. Pursued by the armies of Britain, Spain and Portugal, Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult, no longer getting sufficient support from a depleted France, led the exhausted and demoralized French forces in a fighting withdrawal across the Pyrenees during the winter of 1813–1814. The years of fighting in Spain were a heavy burden on France's Imperial Army. While the French won several battles they were eventually defeated, as their communications and supplies were severely tested and their units were frequently isolated, harassed or overwhelmed by Spanish partisans fighting an intense guerrilla war of raids and ambushes. The Spanish armies were repeatedly beaten and driven to the peripheries, but they would regroup and relentlessly hound and demoralize the French troops. This drain on French resources led Napoleon, who had unwittingly provoked a total war, to call the conflict the "Spanish ulcer". For France, the Peninsular War bogged down Napoleon's troops, which allowed the rest of Europe to challenge Napoleon once more, including in the War of the Fifth Coalition and the French invasion of Russia, and culminating in Napoleon's defeat in the War of the Sixth Coalition. The war against Napoleon's occupation led to the Spanish Constitution of 1812, promulgated by the Cortes of Cádiz, later a cornerstone of European liberalism. Though victorious in war—France would never again threaten a full-scale invasion of Spain—the burden of war destroyed the social and economic fabric of both Portugal and Spain, and the following civil wars between liberal and absolutist factions ushered in revolts in Spanish America that led to the independence of all of Spain's colonies on the American mainland, and the beginning of an era of social turbulence, increased political instability, and economic stagnation in Iberia itself.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

The sultans of the Ottoman Empire, who were all members of the Ottoman dynasty, ruled over the transcontinental empire from its perceived inception in 1299 to its dissolution in 1922. At its height, the Ottoman Empire spanned an area from Hungary in the north to Yemen in the south and from Algeria in the west to Iraq in the east. Administered at first from the city of Söğüt from before 1280 and then from the city of Bursa from 1323 or 1324, the empire's capital was moved to Adrianople in 1363 following its conquest by Murad I and then to Constantinople in 1453 following its conquest by Mehmed II.

An earthquake struck Charleston, South Carolina, and surrounding areas about 9:50 p.m. local time on August 31, 1886. It caused 60 deaths and $5–6 million ($197.08 million in 2025) in damage to 2,000 buildings in the Southeastern United States. It is one of the most powerful and damaging earthquakes to hit the East Coast of the United States. Scientists have classified it as an intraplate earthquake, and said that it had an estimated moment magnitude of 6.9–7.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Very little to no historical earthquake activity had occurred in this region, which sits on the Charleston seismic zone, which is unusual for any seismic area.

Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly Nichols (née Walker; 26 August 1845 – 31 August 1888), was the first canonical victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have murdered and mutilated at least five women in and around the Whitechapel district of London between late August and early November 1888. The two earlier murders linked to the Whitechapel murderer are unlikely to have been committed by Jack the Ripper. When Nichols's murder was first associated with the series, it heightened both press and public interest in the criminal activity and general living conditions of the inhabitants of London's East End.

Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin (German: Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin; 8 July 1838 – 8 March 1917) was a German general and later inventor of the Zeppelin rigid airships. His name became synonymous with airships and dominated long-distance flight until the 1930s. He founded the company Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.

The Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907 was a treaty signed between United Kingdom and the Russian Empire on 31 August 1907 in Saint Petersburg. It marked the end of the "Great Game" in Central Asia, where a longstanding rivalry had ensued between the two European colonial empires. The treaty also furthered the Anglo-Russian interest to outflank the German Empire, which was threatening to establish a railroad from Berlin to Baghdad and align with the weakened Ottoman Empire. The Convention ended the long dispute over Persia between the two parties. The United Kingdom promised to stay out of northern Persia, and Russia recognized southern Persia as part of the British sphere of influence. Russia also promised to stay out of Tibet and Afghanistan. In exchange, London extended loans and some political support. The convention brought shaky British–Russian relations to the forefront by solidifying boundaries that identified respective control in Persia, Afghanistan, and Tibet. This agreement would eventually form a component of the Triple Entente.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths, including those in war crimes and genocides. The war also helped spread the Spanish flu pandemic. The conflict saw important developments in weaponry, including the first large-scale use of machine guns, artillery, aircraft, chemical weapons, and tanks.

The Polish–Soviet War was fought primarily between the Second Polish Republic and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, following World War I and the Russian Revolution.

The Neutrality Acts were a series of acts passed by the US Congress in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 in response to the growing threats and wars that led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following the US joining World War I, and they sought to ensure that the US would not become entangled again in foreign conflicts. The legacy of the Neutrality Acts is widely regarded as having been generally negative since they made no distinction between aggressor and victim, treating both equally as belligerents, and limited the US government's ability to aid Britain and France against Nazi Germany. The Acts were largely repealed in 1941, in the face of the Lend-Lease Act.

Nazi Germany, officially the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. The Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", was the Nazi claim that Nazi Germany was the successor to the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918); the Nazis called it the Thousand-Year Reich, but it ended just 12 years later in May 1945, when the Allies defeated Germany and entered Berlin, ending World War II in Europe.

On August 31, 1940, Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19, a new Douglas DC-3, was flying from Washington, D.C. to Detroit with a stopover in Pittsburgh. While the aircraft was flying near Lovettsville, Virginia at 6,000 feet (1,800 m) and approaching the West Virginia border, Flight 19 encountered an intense thunderstorm. Numerous witnesses reported seeing a large flash of lightning shortly before it nosed over and plunged to earth in an alfalfa field. With limited accident investigation tools at the time, it was at first believed that the most likely cause was the plane flying into windshear, but the Civil Aeronautics Board report concluded that the probable cause was a lightning strike. U.S. Senator Ernest Lundeen was among the 21 passengers and 4 crew members killed. Also on board were "a Special Agent of the FBI, a second FBI employee, and a prosecutor from the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice." At the time of the crash, the FBI was investigating Sen. Lundeen's ties to George Sylvester Viereck, a top German agent working in the U.S. to spread pro-Nazi and antisemitic propaganda. The crash occurred during a severe rainstorm, and recovery efforts were hindered by impassable flooded roads and poor communications: the crash cut the only telephone lines in the area. Wreckage was scattered over a broad area, and it is believed that all aircraft occupants died instantly on impact. At the time, the crash was the deadliest disaster in the history of U.S. commercial aviation. Flight 19 was under the command of Captain Lowell V. Scroggins with First Officer J. Paul Moore. The pilot and copilot had over eleven thousand and six thousand hours experience respectively, although only a few hundred of those hours were on DC-3s. The aircraft was carrying 21 revenue passengers, a single flight attendant, and a deadheading airline manager riding in the jump seat in the cockpit. The DC-3A was newly delivered from Douglas Aircraft on May 25, 1940, equipped with twin Curtiss-Wright R-1820 Cyclone 9 engines (also designated as G-102-A). The CAB investigation of the accident was the first major investigation to be conducted under the Bureau of Air Commerce act of 1938.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

USS Harmon (DE-678) was a Buckley-class destroyer escort of the United States Navy. USS Harmon was named after Mess Attendant Leonard Roy Harmon, who was posthumously awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on the cruiser USS San Francisco during the Battle of Guadalcanal. USS Harmon was the first warship to be named after an African-American. Harmon was launched 25 July 1943 by Bethlehem Steel Co., Quincy, Massachusetts; sponsored by Mrs. Nau-nita Harmon Carroll, mother of Mess Attendant Harmon; and commissioned 31 August 1943. After shakedown out of Bermuda, Harmon departed Norfolk on 7 November 1943, and transited the Panama Canal to take up duty with the 3rd Fleet. Arriving Nouméa on 25 December, she remained in that area serving as escort ship until 18 September 1944, when she proceeded to Pearl Harbor for overhaul and training. Harmon returned to Manus 24 November 1944, and joined the 7th Fleet as a unit of Admiral R. L. Conolly's Luzon Reinforcement Group. Harmon sortied from Manus 2 January 1945 with this large convoy and sailed through dangerous waters, arriving at the transport area on the eastern side of Lingayen Gulf on 11 January. On 5 March Harmon arrived off Iwo Jima to act as escort and antisubmarine screen. This duty lasted until 27 March 1945, when she proceeded to Pearl Harbor and reported to the 1st Fleet for training. She remained there until August when Harmon was ordered to Mare Island to increase her firepower by replacing her 3-inch (76 mm) guns with 5-inch mounts. The war over, Harmon departed San Diego on 7 January 1946 for the Canal Zone where she conducted training operations with submarines. Clearing Cristobal 28 March, Harmon arrived in New London 3 April 1946. Here she trained with submarines until December, then decommissioned at Green Cove Springs, Florida on 25 March 1947, and joined the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. Harmon was struck from the Navy Directory on 1 August 1965, and sold to North American Smelting Co., Wilmington, Delaware on 30 January 1967 to be scrapped. Harmon received three battle stars for World War II service.

The Democratic Army of Greece, also called the Democratic Army and known by its acronym DSE, was the army founded by the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), on 28 October 1946, as the General Headquarters of Partisans, which was renamed to Democratic Army of Greece on 27 December 1946. It served as the army of the Provisional Democratic Government during the Greek Civil War (1946–1949). At its height, it had a strength of around 50,000 men and women. The DSE was backed by the Popular Civil Guard, the KKE's security police force.

TWA Flight 903 was a regularly scheduled flight from Bombay International Airport, India to New York-Idlewild Airport, via Cairo-King Farouk Airport and Rome-Ciampino Airport. On 31 August 1950, the flight crashed in Egypt due to engine failure.

Malaya, officially the Federation of Malaya, was a country in Southeast Asia from 1948 to 1963. It succeeded the Malayan Union and, before that, British Malaya. It comprised eleven states – nine Malay states and two of the Straits Settlements, Penang and Malacca. It was established on the 1st of February 1948.

A letter bomb is an explosive device sent via the postal service, and designed with the intention to injure or kill the recipient when opened. They have been used in terrorist attacks such as those of the Unabomber. Some countries have agencies whose duties include the interdiction of letter bombs and the investigation of letter bombings. The letter bomb may have been in use for nearly as long as the common postal service has been in existence, as far back as 1764 (see Examples).

Trinidad and Tobago, officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, is the southernmost archipelagic country in the Caribbean, comprising the main islands of Trinidad and Tobago, along with several smaller islets. The capital city is Port of Spain, while its largest and most populous municipality is Chaguanas. Trinidad and Tobago comprises the southernmost islands of the Caribbean eastern islands chain, and it is close to the continent of South America, being north to northeast of Venezuela and northwest of Guyana. Trinidad and Tobago is located six nautical miles (11 km; 6.9 mi) north to northeast off the coast of Venezuela, 70 nautical miles (130 km; 81 mi) south of Grenada, and 155 nautical miles (287 km; 178 mi) southwest of Barbados. Indigenous peoples inhabited Trinidad for centuries prior to Spanish colonisation, following the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1498. Spanish governor José María Chacón surrendered the island to a British fleet under Sir Ralph Abercromby's command in 1797. Trinidad and Tobago were ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens as separate states and unified in 1889. Trinidad and Tobago obtained independence in 1962, and became a republic in 1976. Unlike most Caribbean countries and territories, which rely heavily on tourism, the economy is primarily industrial, based on large reserves of oil and gas. The country sees fewer hurricanes than most of the Caribbean because it is farther south. Trinidad and Tobago is well known for its African and Indian Caribbean cultures, reflected in its large and famous Trinidad and Tobago Carnival, Hosay, and Diwali celebrations, as well as being the birthplace of the steelpan, the limbo, and musical styles such as calypso, soca, rapso, chutney music, and chutney soca.

The Crown Colony of North Borneo was a Crown colony on the island of Borneo established in 1946 shortly after the dissolution of the British Military Administration. The Crown Colony of Labuan joined the new Crown colony during its formation. It was succeeded as the state of Sabah through the formation of the Federation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963.

The Congress of Carrara, held from 31 August to 5 September 1968, in the eponymous city, is one of the major anarchist congresses of the 20th century. Led by anarchist federations from 31 countries—primarily European—the congress aimed to coordinate anarchists on an international scale and founded the International of Anarchist Federations (IAF), one of the main anarchist organizations to this day.

Aeroflot Flight 558 was a scheduled Ilyushin Il-18V domestic passenger flight from Karaganda to Moscow that crashed into a field in the Abzelilovsky District on August 31st 1972 as a result of a fire stemming from exploded passenger baggage, killing all 102 people on board.

Aeroméxico Flight 498 was a scheduled commercial flight from Mexico City, Mexico, to Los Angeles, California, United States, with several intermediate stops. On Sunday, August 31, 1986, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 operating the flight was clipped in the tail section by a Piper PA-28 Cherokee owned by the Kramer family, and crashed into the Los Angeles suburb of Cerritos, killing all 64 on the DC-9, all 3 in the Piper, and an additional 15 people on the ground. Eight on the ground also sustained minor injuries. Blame was assessed equally on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the pilot of the Cherokee. No fault was found with the DC-9 or the actions of its crew.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.

Thai Airways Flight 365 was a Thai Airways Company Boeing 737-200 with the registration number HS-TBC. On 31 August 1987, the plane crashed during a scheduled flight from Hat Yai International Airport to Phuket International Airport, killing all 83 people on board: 74 passengers and 9 crew. It was the deadliest aviation accident in Thailand at the time, before being surpassed four years later by the crash of Lauda Air Flight 004. Concerned by another aircraft in their vicinity, the crew reduced their approach speed while attempting to land, and failed to recover from an aerodynamic stall. In addition to pilot error, the air traffic controller was blamed for failing to keep Flight 365 and the other aircraft adequately separated.

Delta Air Lines Flight 1141 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight between Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, Texas, and Salt Lake City International Airport, Utah. On August 31, 1988, the flight, operated by a Boeing 727-200 series aircraft, crashed during takeoff at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, resulting in 14 deaths and 76 injuries among the 108 on board. The cause of the crash was the crew's failure to configure the airplane's flaps or slats for takeoff. The aircraft's take-off warning system (TOWS) also malfunctioned and failed to warn the crew of the problem. Recordings from the cockpit voice recorder revealed that the crew had improperly engaged in casual conversation on various matters unrelated to the operation of the flight, which may have distracted them from properly performing their duties. The recordings, which were broadcast repeatedly by the press, proved so embarrassing that a law was subsequently passed to prohibit the release of cockpit voice recordings. Since the passage of that law, only written transcripts have been released rather than the voice recordings themselves.

CAAC Flight 301, a Hawker Siddeley Trident operated by CAAC Guangzhou Regional Administration from Guangzhou Baiyun to Hong Kong Kai Tak, ran off the runway in Hong Kong on 31 August 1988 after clipping approach lights. Six crew members and one passenger perished in the accident. The crash shut down Kai Tak Airport for more than six hours after the accident.

Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, formerly known as Kirghizia, is a landlocked country located in Central Asia, lying in the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain ranges. It is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Uzbekistan to the west, Tajikistan to the south, and China to the east and southeast. The capital and largest city is Bishkek which lies on the northern border with Kazakhstan. Ethnic Kyrgyz make up the majority of the 7.5 million people, followed by significant minorities of Uzbeks and Russians.

Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and the Russian semi-exclave of Kaliningrad Oblast to the southwest, with a maritime border with Sweden to the west. Lithuania covers an area of 65,300 km2 (25,200 sq mi), and has a population of 2.9 million. Its capital and largest city is Vilnius; other major cities include Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys. Lithuanians are the titular nation, belong to the ethnolinguistic group of Balts, and speak Lithuanian.

Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Russia. The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland, the larger islands of Saaremaa and Hiiumaa, and over 2,300 other islands and islets on the east coast of the Baltic Sea. Its capital city of Tallinn, along with the city of Tartu, are the country's two largest urban areas. The Estonian language, of the Finnic family, is the official language and the first language of the majority of nearly 1.4 million people. Estonia is one of the least populous member states of the European Union.

Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the far south of South America. It covers an area of 2,780,085 km2 (1,073,397 mi2), making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourth-largest country in the Americas, and the eighth-largest country in the world. Argentina shares the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, and is also bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast, Uruguay and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Drake Passage to the south. Argentina is a federal state divided into twenty-three provinces, and one autonomous city, which is the federal capital and largest city of the nation, Buenos Aires. The provinces and the capital have their own constitutions, but exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, and a part of Antarctica.

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an Iraqi politician and revolutionary who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 1979 until his overthrow in 2003. He also served as prime minister of Iraq from 1979 to 1991 and later from 1994 to 2003. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.

Diana, Princess of Wales, was a member of the British royal family. She was the first wife of Charles III and mother of Princes William and Harry. Her activism and glamour made her an international icon and earned her enduring popularity.

In September 1999, a series of explosions hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk, killing more than 300, injuring more than 1,000, and spreading a wave of fear across the country. The bombings, together with the 1999 war of Dagestan, triggered the Second Chechen War. The handling of the crisis by Vladimir Putin, who was prime minister at the time, boosted his popularity greatly and helped him attain the presidency within a few months.

Líneas Aéreas Privadas Argentinas, more commonly known by the acronym LAPA, was an airline based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At its heyday, the carrier operated international services to the United States and Uruguay, as well as an extensive domestic network within Argentina. Additionally, the company also operated charter services. Domestic and regional flights were operated from downtown's Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, whereas an international service to Atlanta was operated from Ministro Pistarini International Airport. LAPA was the first carrier to break a monopolistic market controlled by Aerolíneas Argentinas and its sister company Austral Líneas Aéreas, offering competitive prices.

Typhoon Rusa was a deadly and destructive typhoon that severely affected South Korea in 2002. The twenty-first tropical depression, the fifteenth named storm, and the tenth typhoon of the 2002 Pacific typhoon season, Rusa developed on August 22 from a monsoon trough in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, to the southeast of Japan. For several days, Rusa moved northwestward, eventually intensifying into a powerful typhoon. On August 26, the storm moved across the Amami Islands, where it left 20,000 people without power and caused two fatalities. The typhoon dropped torrential rainfall across Japan, peaking at 902 mm (35.5 in) in Tokushima Prefecture.

The Al-Aimmah Bridge disaster occurred on August 31, 2005 when 965 people died following a panic, and subsequent crowd crush, on the Al-Aaimmah Bridge, which crosses the Tigris river in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Edvard Munch was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work The Scream has become one of the most iconic and acclaimed images in all of Western art.

Dilma Vana Rousseff, known mononymously as Dilma, is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She is the only woman to have held the Brazilian presidency to date. Since March 2023, she has been the chair of the New Development Bank. She also served in the cabinet of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during his first presidency—first as Minister of Mines and Energy, from 2003 to 2005, then as Chief of Staff from 2005 to 2010.

On 31 August 2019, an Airbus AS350 helicopter operated by a contracted Helitrans pilot from Sweden crashed in the mountains of Skoddevarre in Alta Municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. The crash happened during a sightseeing tour, killing all six people on board. The tour was offered by a local music festival, Høstsprell, who had been providing the service for seven years. The helicopter, registered as LN‑OFU, had recently been delivered and had undergone security checks hours before takeoff.

On 31 August 2024, a Mil Mi-8 helicopter operating a scheduled charter flight crashed in Kamchatka Krai, Russia, killing all 22 people on board. The aircraft, which was operated by Vityaz-Aero on a sightseeing tour over the Vachkazhets volcano, crashed in poor weather shortly after take-off.

On 31 August 2025, a landslide destroyed the village of Tarasin in the Marrah Mountains in Central Darfur, western Sudan, killing between 375 and 1,500 people.