What Happened in August?

A McDonnell Douglas MD-82, operating as Northwest Airlines Flight 255, crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airport, about 8:46 pm EDT.  resulting in the deaths of 156 people; 148 of the 149 passengers, along with two people on the ground and all six crew members. The sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl named Cecelia Cichan, who sustained serious injuries.  Expand +

The Ray Brothers’ family home in Arcadia, Florida burns down. It was almost certainly a case of arson fueled by fear and ignorance. The three boys- Ricky, Robert and Randy- were born with hemophilia and were 10, 9 and 8 at the time. They had been diagnosed positive with HIV in 1986 and were not allowed to attend school following their positive test results. Expand +

A ceasefire in the Iran-Iraq War takes affect on August 20, 1988 ending eight years of conflict and marking the end of one of the longest and deadliest wars of the 20th century. The cease fire agreement was brokered by the United Nations (UN) under Security Council Resolution 598. 

Iraq invades Kuwait on August 2, 1990 and five days later, on August 7, 1990 U.S. President George H.W. Bush orders Operation Desert Shield, the US operational name for the US buildup of forces and Saudi Arabia's defense which lasted until January, 16 1991 in preparation to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.  Expand +

The largest-ever Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton is discovered on a cliff near Faith, South Dakota. The 65-million-year-old specimen is dubbed Sue, after its discoverer fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson. South Dakota. More

English computer scientist Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee also known as TimBL, makes public the files describing his concept and ideas for the World Wide Web (WWW) including the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) system and announces WWW as a publicly available service on the internet. He created a page titled "World Wide Web", featuring links to additional pages with information on himself, his team of scientists and the history of the project. It is these links which represented the web's real breakthrough. The website’s landing page described the World Wide Web (WWW) as "a wide-area hypermedia information retrieval initiative with the aim of giving universal access to a large universe of documents." Today, we know it as just the web. More

Soviet hardline Communists staged a coup, temporarily removing Mikhail Gorbachev from power. The coup failed within 72 hours as democratic reformer Boris Yeltsin rallied the Russian people. Yeltsin then became the leading power in the country. The Communist Party was soon banned and by December the Soviet Union itself disintegrated. More

Latvia declares its independence from the Soviet Union. It had been occupied and annexed by the U.S.S.R. in 1940. Latvia is a country in northeastern Europe, situated on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. It's one of the three Baltic States, along with Estonia and Lithuania. Latvia has a population of around 1.8 million people. The capital and largest city is Riga. The official language is Latvian. More

Ukraine declares its independence from the Soviet Union on August 24, 1991 just before the Soviet Union dissolution later that year. Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe after Russia. Expand +

Moldova, officially the Republic of Moldova, declares its independence from the Soviet Union. Moldova s a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, with an area of 33,843 km2 (13,067 sq mi) and a population of 2.38 million.  Expand +

Kyrgyzstan declares independence from the Soviet Union and a democratic government is established as the Republic of Kyrgyzstan and it gained full independence In 1992. Kyrgyzstan joined the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). On 5 May 1993, following the adoption of a new constitution, the official name changed from the Republic of Kyrgyzstan to the Kyrgyz Republic. Its 2025 population is estimated to be 7.3 million.

An Air France Concorde flight originating in New York circles the globe in a record-breaking 31 hours, 27 minutes, and 49 seconds, achieving nearly twice the speed of sound. The flight, with refueling stops in several cities, broke both westbound and eastbound world records for round-the-world flights on the Concorde.

The U.S. Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania are bombed with truck bombs. The terrorist attacks killed 224 people, among them, 12 Americans, and wounded more than 4,500. 

United States President Clinton orders cruise missile strikes against suspected Al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in retaliation for the 1998 embassy bombings In response to the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. The strikes targeted training camps in Afghanistan and the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, which the US believed was producing chemical weapons for al-Qaeda. More

The catastrophic magnitude 7.6 Izmit earthquake struck the Kocaeli Province of Turkey, causing extensive damage and approximately 17,000 deaths. Named for the quake’s proximity to the northwestern city of İzmit, It is widely remembered as one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern Turkish history. More

The Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sinks to the bottom of the Barents Sea while on a naval exercise inside the Arctic Circle. The entire 118-strong crew perished According to the Russian navy, it had not been carrying nuclear warheads. The cause of the disaster remains unknown although it was attributed to an accidental torpedo explosion. The wreck was brought up from the seabed by a Dutch salvage team more than a year after the accident. More

The turret of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor is lifted out of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Hatteras N.C. The historic warship sank on December 31 1862 during a storm as it was being towed around Cape Hatteras on its way to Beaufort, North Carolina, to join a fleet being assembled for an attack on Charleston. Many of the sailors were rescued, but 16 of its crew members perished, More

A major power blackout affects parts of the northeastern and midwestern United States, as well as Ontario, Canada, leaving millions without electricity. More 

The Summer Games of the XXVIII Olympiad open in Athens, Greece. It was an Internaional multi-sport event which lasted until August 29th. Athens had hosted the first modern Summer Games in 1896. There were 10,625 athletes competing from 201 countries. 

Hurricane Katrina , a devastating Category 5 hurricane causes immense destruction along the U.S. Gulf Coast, particularly in New Orleans; causing catastrophic flooding after the city's levee system fails, submerging roughly 80% of the city. The storm, which made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, led to over 1,800 deaths and displacing hundreds of thousands. The damage was estimated at over $160 billion, making it the most costly U.S. hurricane at the time. More