August 31 is a popular day for historic events & Independece

• 1888 – Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper's confirmed victims.
• 1895 – German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin patents his Navigable Balloon.
• 1897 – Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope, the first movie projector.
• 1907 – Count Alexander Izvolsky and Sir Arthur Nicolson sign the St. Petersburg Convention, which results in the Triple Entente alliance.
• 1920 – The first radio news program is broadcast by 8MK in Detroit, Michigan..
• 1939 – Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, creating an excuse to attack Poland the following day thus starting World War II in Europe.
• 1941 – World War II: Serbian paramilitary forces defeat Germans in the Battle of Loznica.
• 1943 – The USS Harmon, the first U.S. Navy ship to be named after a black person, is commissioned.
• 1949 – The retreat of the Democratic Army of Greece in Albania after its defeat on Gramos mountain marks the end of the Greek Civil War.
• 1957 – The Federation of Malaya (now Malaysia) gains its independence from the United Kingdom.
• 1962 – Trinidad and Tobago becomes independent.
• 1963 – Sarawak, North Borneo and Singapore achieve technical independence pending accession to the Federation of Malaysia
• 1980 – After two weeks of nationwide strikes, the Polish government was forced to sign the Gdańsk Agreement, allowing for the creation of the trade union Solidarity.
• 1991 – Kyrgyzstan declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1992 – Pascal Lissouba is inaugurated as the President of the Republic of the Congo.
• 1994 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army declares a ceasefire.
• 1996 – Saddam_Hussein´s troops seized Irbil after the Kurdish Massoud_Barzani appealed for help to defeat his Kurdish rival PUK. ^[1],^[2]
• 1997 – Diana, Princess of Wales, her companion Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul die in a car crash in Paris.
• 2010 – The last episode of The Bill, the longest-running police procedural television series in the United Kingdom, is aired on ITV1.