On This Day - 31st August

1870 - Maria Montessori born
1903 - Arthur Godfrey born
1908 - William Saroyan born
1918 - Alan Jay Lerner born
1924 - Buddy Hackett born
1928 - James Coburn born
1932 - Roy Castle born
1935 - Frank Robinson born
1935 - Eldridge Cleaver born
1945 - Itzhak Perlman born
1945 - Van Morrison born
1949 - Richard Gere born
1957 - The Federation of Malaya becomes independent from Britain after a midnight handover ceremony.
1959 - British prime minister Harold Macmillan and American president Dwight Eisenhower give an historic live television broadcast from Downing Street.
1970 - Deborah Gibson born
1972 - Chris Tucker born
1977 - Ian Smith's ruling Rhodesian Front wins an overwhelming victory in the country's general election and WWE wrestler Jeff Hardy born
1979 - Chad Brannon born
1989 - Buckingham Palace confirms that after 16 years of marriage Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips are to live apart.
1994 - The IRA announces a "complete cessation of military operations" after 25 years of bombing and killing.
1997 - Diana, Princess of Wales, is killed after her car crashes in a Paris underpass - the driver and her friend Dodi Fayed are also died.

On This Day - 30th August

1797 - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley born
1898 - Shirley Booth born
1908 - Fred MacMurray born
1918 - Ted Williams born
1930 - Warren Buffett born
1943 - Jean-Claude Killy born
1944 - Frank "Tug" McGraw born
1947 - Peggy Lipton born
1951 - Timothy Bottoms born
1953 - Robert Parrish born
1966 - Michael Michele born
1968 - Senior members of the Royal Family attend the funeral of Princess Marina, the Duchess of Kent.
1972 - Cameron Diaz born
1973 - Lisa Ling born
1974 - Rich Cronin born
1976 - More than 100 police officers are taken to hospital after clashes at the Notting Hill Carnival in west London.
1980 - Striking Polish workers win a sweeping victory in a battle with their Communist rulers for the right to independent trade unions and the right to strike.
1982 - The leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Yasser Arafat leaves his Beirut headquarters after more than a decade and tennis player Andy Roddick born.
2001 - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is charged with genocide - the most serious of all war crimes.

On This Day - 29th August

1842 - This the first of the two Opium wars ended up foring China to open up a number of ports to British ships and to cede Hong Kong to the British
1877 - Mormon leader Brigham Young dies
1898 - Preston Sturges born
1915 - Ingrid Bergman born
1917 - Isabel Sanford born
1920 - Charlie "Bird" Parker born
1923 - Richard Attenborough born
1928 - Dick O'Neill born
1936 - John McCain born
1938 - Elliott Gould born
1939 - William Friedkin born
1941 - Robin Leach born
1947 - James Hunt born
1950 - British troops arrive in Korea to bolster the US presence there.
1958 - Michael Jackson born
1965 - Gemini V returns to Earth
1971 - Carla Gugino born
1974 - At least 220 people are arrested following disturbances at a rock festival in Windsor Great Park in Berkshire.
1975 - Dante Basco born
1986 - Britain's oldest twins reach 100 and receive telegrams from the Queen.
1992 - A protest march against right-wing attacks on refugees in Germany ends in violence after demonstrators clash with police.
2005 - Hurricane Katrina lashes New Orleans with high winds and hard rain, cutting power and flooding homes.

On This Day - 28th August

1749 - German 18th century author Johann von Goethe born
1774 - The American saint who founded the first new religious community in the US Elizabeth Ann Seton born
1828 - Leo Tolstoy born
1899 - Charles Boyer born
1925 - Donald O'Connor born
1930 - Ben Gazzara born
1943 - David Soul born
1957 - Daniel Stern born
1958 - Scott Hamilton born
1963 - The fight for racial equality moves a step closer to victory as Dr Martin Luther King tells thousands of Americans his dream for freedom.
1965 - Shania Twain born
1969 - Jason Priestley born
1972 - Prince William of Gloucester killed in plance crash
1982 - LeAnn Rimes born
1985 - An East German couple appear before Horseferry Road magistrates court in London charged under the Official Secrets Act.
1994 - Thousands of shops in England and Wales open legally for the first time following a change in the Sunday trading laws.
2003 - The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, appears before the Hutton inquiry and speaks of the "raging storm" which followed a controversial BBC report.
2004 - British athlete Kelly Holmes secures a place in Olympic history by winning the 1500m gold in Athens to go with her 8oom gold..

On This Day - 27th August

1908 - Lyndon B. Johnson born
1910 - Mother Teresa born and the first 'talky' film is demonstrated by Edison
1916 - Martha Raye born
1942 - Daryl Dragon born
1943 - Tuesday Weld born
1947 - Barbara Bach born
1950 - The BBC transmits the first ever live television pictures across the Channel.
1952 - Paul "Pee-wee Herman" Reubens born
1953 - Alex Lifeson born
1967 - The Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein, is found dead at his Belgravia home in London.
1978 - The Queen's cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten, is killed by a bomb blast on his boat in Ireland
1979 - 18 British soldiers are killed in two booby-trap bomb attacks at Warrenpoint, South Down, close to the border with the Irish Republic.
1979 - Lord Mountbatten murder by IRA bomb
1987 - Robert Maclennan MP succeeds David Owen as leader of the SDP party.

On This Day - 26th August

1895 - The Niagara Falls Hydroelectric plant is opened
1904 - Christopher Isherwood born
1921 - Ben Bradlee born
1926 - Rudolf Valentino dies
1935 - Geraldine Ferraro born
1959 - American President Dwight D Eisenhower, vows to stand by West Germans in their efforts to remain strong and free, the US President pledges.
1960 - Branford Marsalis born
1975 - Talks between the Rhodesian Government and the African National Council collapse acrimoniously.
1980 - Macaulay Culkin born
1985 - Controversial athlete Zola Budd breaks the world 5,000m record.
1994 - A man is given the world's first battery-operated heart in a pioneering operation in Britain.

On This Day - 25th August

1814 - British troops burn the Whitehouse down
1875 - Captain Webb becomes the first person to swim the English Channel
1900 - Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche dies
1905 - Clara Bow born
1909 - Ruby Keeler born
1916 - Van Johnson born
1917 - Mel Ferrer born
1918 - Leonard Bernstein born
1923 - Monty Hall born
1930 - Sean Connery born
1933 - Regis Philbin born
1944 - General Charles de Gaulle enters the capital of France after French and US troops force a German surrender.
1946 - Rollie Fingers born
1949 - Gene Simmons born
1950 - Willy DeVille born
1954 - Elvis Costello born
1958 - Tim Burton born
1961 - Billy Ray Cyrus born
1967 - The leader of the American Nazi party, George Lincoln Rockwell, is shot and killed by a sniper at a shopping centre in Arlington, Virginia.
1970 - Claudia Schiffer born
1974 - A woman fired from a cannon in Bristol fails to break the English record for the second time.
1978 - Kel Mitchell born
1989 - The unmanned Voyager 2 spacecraft sends back the first close-up pictures of Neptune and its satellite planets.
1997 - A court in Berlin sentences the former East German leader, Egon Krenz, to six-and-a-half years in prison.
2003 - Two powerful bomb blasts hit the Indian city of Bombay within minutes of each other, killing at least 44 and injuring nearly 150.
2012 - Neil Armstrong (First man to walk on the Moon) dies aged 82.

On This Day - 24th August

1890 - Duke Kahanamoku born
1912 - Durward Kirby born
1929 - Yasser Arafat born
1954 - Brazilian president Getulio Vargas resigns under pressure from the military and then commits suicide just hours later.
1958 - Steve Guttenberg born
1960 - Cal Ripken born
1962 - Craig Kilborn born
1965 - Marlee Matlin born
1967 - Two penguins from Chessington Zoo are taken on a day trip to a local ice-rink to cool off during sweltering London temperatures.
1973 - Dave Chappelle born
1981 - Chad Michael Murray born
1985 - Five year old John Shorthouse is shot dead in a police raid on his home in Birmingham.
1988 - Rupert Grint born
1990 - The Irish hostage, Brian Keenan, is released in Beirut after more than four years in captivity.
1993 - Police in Los Angeles investigate allegations of child abuse made against singer Michael Jackson.

On This Day - 23rd August

1912 - Gene Kelly born
1923 - US Vice President Calvin Coolidge becomes President
1930 - Vera Miles born
1932 - Mark Russell born
1934 - Barbara Eden born
1949 - Shelley Long born
1961 - Police launch a murder hunt after a man is found shot dead and his companion seriously wounded in a lay-by in Bedfordshire.
1970 - River Phoenix born
1977 - Nicole Bobek born
1978 - Kobe Bryant born
1979 - Kurds in Iran oust government troops from a large area near the Iraqi border.
1985 - The head of West German counter-intelligence is unmasked as an East German spy.
1990 - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein appears on state television with western hostages, provoking a storm of outrage.
1991 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev begins his purge of cabinet members and officials involved in the failed coup four days ago.

On This Day - 22nd August

1851 - The first Americas cup race is held
1862 - Classical composer Claude Debussy born
1893 - Dorothy Parker born
1904 - Deng Xiaoping born
1911 - The Mona Lisa is stolen
1917 - Blues legend John Lee Hooker born
1920 - Ray Bradbury born
1922 - Irish Nationalist Michael Collins is killed
1934 - Norman Schwarzkopf born
1939 - Carl Yastrzemski born
1940 - Valerie Harper born
1942 - Brazil declares war on Germany and Italy
1947 - Cindy Williams born
1963 - Musician Tori Amos born
1966 - Britain's largest manufacturing company Imperial Chemical Industries announces 1,000 redundancies at its nylon-fibre producing factories.
1972 - Rhodesia is thrown out of the Olympic Games with just four days to go before the opening ceremony in the German city of Munich.
1978 - The Kenyan president, Jomo Kenyatta, dies aged 89 at his home in Mombasa.
1986 - Deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester police John Stalker is cleared of misconduct.
1999 - A 54-year old Tony Martin is arrested after a suspected burglar was killed at his farmhouse in Norfolk.

On This Day - 21st August

1872 - Illustrator and author Aubrey Beardsley born
1904 - Jazz Musician Count Basie born
1924 - Actor Jack Weston born
1932 - American actor, director, screenwriter, playwright, novelist and composer Melvin Van Peebles born
1936 - NBA basketball player Wilt Chamberlain born
1938 - Country singer Kenny Rogers born
1940 - Leon Trotsky murdered
1956 - Actress Kim Cattrall born
1968 - 'Prague Spring', dozens are killed in a massive Soviet military clampdown in Czechoslovakia.
1973 - The coroner presiding over the "Bloody Sunday" inquest accuses the British army of "sheer unadulterated murder".
1983 - Philippines opposition leader Benigno Aquino is assassinated minutes after returning home from exile.
1986 - At least 1,200 people are feared dead after volcanic gases escape from a lake in Cameroon.

On This Day - 20th August

1833 - 23rd President of the U.S. Benjamin Harrison born
1890 - Horror and fantasy author H.P. Lovecraft born
1914 - Pope Pius X dies
1921 - Valley of the Dolls' author Jacqueline Susann born
1942 - Musician and 'South Park's' Chef Isaac Hayes born
1948 - LED ZEP frontman Robert Plant born
1954 - Al Roker born
1962 - Buffy and Angel actor James Marsters born
1970 - The England soccer captain, Bobby Moore, is cleared of charges of stealing in a trial in Colombia.
1971 - Limp Bizkit musician Fred Durst born
1978 - Two people die during an attack on a bus carrying Israeli airline staff in central London.
1989 - 30 people killed in Marchioness Cruise boat disaster
1992 - Intimate photographs of the Duchess of York and a Texan businessman are published in a tabloid newspaper.

On This Day - 19th August

1871 - Aviator Orville Wright born
1902 - Poet Ogden Nash born
1919 - Publisher Malcolm Forbes born
1921 - Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry born
1931 - American jockey Willie Shoemaker born
1940 - Actress Jill St. John born
1942 - A total of 3,623 of the 6,086 men who made it ashore are either killed, wounded, or captured (almost 60%)during the 'Battle of Dieppe'.
1944 - Conductor Sir Henry Wood dies
1946 - Former U.S. president Bill Clinton born
1951 - Queen bass guitarist John Deacon born
1955 - Actor Peter Gallagher born
1956 - Actor Adam Arkin born
1960 - The United States pilot, Francis Gary Powers, is sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Soviet military court.
1966 - American country music singer LeAnn Womack born
1969 - Actor Matthew Perry born
1975 - Campaigners calling for the release of robber George Davis from prison vandalise the pitch at Headingley cricket ground in Leeds.
1987 - Michael Ryan kills 14 people in Hungerford
1991 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is overthrown in a coup as Communist hardliners take over.
2003 - A massive bomb wrecks the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, killing 17 people including the UN's chief envoy to Iraq.
2012 - Film Director Tony Scott commits suicide aged 68.

On This Day - 18th August

1774 - US explorer of the Missouri and the Rockies Meriwether Lewis born
1922 - Actress Shelley Winters born
1933 - Film director Roman Polanski born
1937 - Actor Robert Redford born
1943 - Actor Martin Mull born
1954 - Actor Patrick Swayze born
1964 - South Africa are barred from taking part in the 18th Olympic Games in Tokyo over its refusal to condemn apartheid.
1969 - Actors Christian and Edward Norton, as well as House of Pain rapper Erik "Everlast" Schrody born
1969 - Four days and nights of sex, drugs and rock and roll come to a peaceful end as the Woodstock music festival winds down a day later than planned.
1970 - Film director, actor and musician Malcolm-Jamal Warner born
1971 - The British Army is accused of shooting dead an unarmed, disabled man during disturbances in Northern Ireland.
1989 - Manchester United Football Club is sold for £20m in the biggest takeover deal in the history of British football.
1992 - Conditions in two Serbian detention camps are condemned as "hell on earth" by the man leading a delegation to inspect them.

On This Day - 17th August

1786 - Davy Crockett born. Famous for his death at the Alamo he spent his formative years murdering indians before holding various politcal positions.
1892 - Actress Mae West born
1920 - Actress Maureen O'Hara born
1926 - Jiang Zemin General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1989 to 2002 born
1943 - Actor Robert De Niro born
1960 - Film actor and director Sean Penn born
1969 - Actor and singer Donnie Wahlberg born
1970 - Tennis player Jim Courier born
1978 - Three Americans make the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by hot air balloon. Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman and Max Anderson took six days to complete the flight from Maine in the US to France.
1987 - Former Deputy Furher and Hitler's right-hand man Rudolf Hess, is found dead in Spandau Prison having commited suicide
1998 - President of the United States, Bill Clinton, admits having an inappropriate relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
1999 - The most powerful earthquake to hit Turkey (measuring six-point-seven on the Richter scale) leaves at least 17,000 people dead.

On This Day - 16th August

1819 - The Peterloo Massacre. The Manchester Yeomanry mounted on horseback charge a 60,000 strong crown who had turned up at a pro-reform rally at St Peters Field, Manchester. Officially there were but a handfull of deaths although over 600 injured.
1913 - Former Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin born
1920 - American Poet and Novelist Charles Bukowski born
1925 - Actor Fess Parker born
1928 - Actress and singer Ann Blyth born
1930 - Actor Robert Culp and American footballer Frank Gifford born
1946 - Actress Lesley Ann Warren born
1952 - Flash flood rips through Lynmouth in the worst flash flood that Britain had suffered in the 20th century leaving 34 people dead
1954 - Film director James Cameron born
1958 - Madonna and actress Angela Bassett born
1960 - Actor Timothy Hutton born
1972 - 'Dixie Chick' Emily Robison born
1977 - 'The King' Elvis Presley, whose singing and style revolutionized popular music in the 1950s, dies after collapsing at his home aged 42.
1980 - American singer songwriter Vanessa Carlton born
2003 - The notorious former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin dies in exile in a Saudi Arabian hospital.
2005 - Flash floods devastate a north Cornwall coastal village after the area's average August rainfall fell in just two hours.

On This Day - 15th August

1769 - Napoleon Bonaparte born
1879 - Actress Ethel Barrymore born
1912 - American chef and author Julia Child born
1925 - Actress 'Baby' Rose Marie born
1925 - Actor Mike Connors born
1944 - Allied invasion of Southern France
1944 - American journalist Linda Ellerbee born
1945 - Allied nations across the globe rejoice on Victory in Japan day that marks the end of World War II.
1946 - Song writer Jimmy Webb born
1950 - Princess Anne born
1965 - Riots begin in Los Angeles and last six days, leaving 34 dead and about 1,000 people injured. Nearly 4,000 people were arrested and hundreds of buildings were destroyed.
1971 - Controversial horse rider Harvey Smith is stripped of his £2,000 winnings and a major show jumping title for allegedly making a rude gesture.
1972 - Actor Ben Affleck born
1985 - The speedboat Virgin Atlantic Challenger capsizes off the south-west of England scuppering Richard Branson's attempt at the fastest-ever Atlantic crossing.
1998 - 29 people die after a massive car bomb in the town of Omagh in Northern Ireland.
2005 - Israeli troops meet peaceful resistance as they deliver the first eviction notices to settlers in the Gaza Strip.

On This Day - 14th August

1834 - The Poor Law is amended in Britain causing the Work House to be established
1925 - Russell Baker born
1941 - US President Franklin D Roosevelt and UK PM Winston Churchill agree plans for downfall of Hitler. David Crosby and Lynne Cheney born
1945 - Steve Martin born
1946 - Susan St. James born
1947 - Danielle Steel born
1950 - Gary Larson born
1959 - Earvin "Magic" Johnson born
1968 - Halle Berry born
1969 - The British Government sends troops into Northern Ireland in what it says is a "limited operation" to restore law and order.
1970 - Kevin Cadogan born
1979 - Dozens of yachts are lost and at least three people killed after a freak storm blows during the Fastnet yacht race.
1980 - Shipyard workers in Gdansk, Poland, strike in protest over the dismissal of a trade union activist
2000 - A rescue operation is underway to save the lives of more than 100 sailors on board a Russian submarine grounded at the bottom of the Barents Sea.
2001 - The IRA says it is withdrawing a proposal it made last week on putting its weapons beyond use.
2003 - Massive power failures cause chaos across the eastern United States and Canada, hitting cities such as New York and Ottawa.

On This Day - 13th August

1860 - Annie Oakley born
1895 - Bert Lahr born
1899 - Alfred Hitchcock born
1919 - George Shearing born
1926 - Fidel Castro born
1929 - Pat Harrington born
1930 - Don Ho born
1951 - Dan Fogelberg born
1961 - Troops in East Germany seal off the border between East and West Berlin, shutting off the escape route for thousands of refugees from the East.
1966 - China announces plans for a "new leap forward" after the first meeting in four years of the Communist Party's Central Committee.
1977 - More than 200 protesters are arrested after demonstrations in Lewisham against a National Front march.
1985 - A three-year-old boy from Dublin becomes the world's youngest heart and lung transplant patient.
1991 - The Prince of Wales resigns as the patron of Scotland's national museum over a competition to design a new building.

On This Day - 12th August

1881 - Cecil B. DeMille born
1896 - Gold is found in the Klondike sparking a Gold Rush
1908 - The first Model Ford built
1911 - Cantinflas born
1912 - Jane Wyatt born
1926 - John Derek born
1931 - William Goldman born
1939 - George Hamilton born
1964 - A massive manhunt is underway across Britain after Charlie Wilson, one of the gang involved in the Great Train Robbery breaks out of a high-security prison in Birmingham.
1969 - The Royal Ulster Constabulary uses tear gas for the first time in its history after nine hours of rioting in the Bogside area of Londonderry.
1971 - Pete Sampras born
1980 - Dominique Swain born
1985 - A Japan Airlines jumbo jet crashes on a remote mountainside 70 miles from Tokyo in Japan.
1990 - A British man attempting to escape in a convoy from Iraqi-occupied Kuwait is shot by Iraqi soldiers.
2000 - The family of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne is joined by friends and hundreds of members of the public for a memorial service.
2003 - BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan answers questions from the Hutton Inquiry over his report that the government "sexed up" a weapons dossier on Iraq