This Day In History

Aug 30 1974
153 passengers are killed and 60 injured when a Belgrade - Dortmund express train jumps the tracks pulling into Zagreb terminal at full speed. It is Yugoslavia's worst rail disaster.

August 30th 1976
Tom Brokaw becomes news anchor of Today Show.


August 30th 1993
150,000,000 millionth visitor to Eiffel Tower. (pretty sick, imagine today!)

This Day In History

Aug 29 1958

Michael Jackson born in Gary, Indiana.

...Coincidentally,

Aug 29 1996
California becomes the first state in the nation to require the surgical or chemical castration of persons who have committed two or more sexual assaults on minors.

Aug 29 2005
Category 3 storm Hurricane Katrina attacks the Gulf coast with 145-mph winds. Cities in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi are declared disaster areas. Parts of New Orleans are submerged, some residents are left to scramble to their rooftops awaiting rescue. News organizations report widespread panic and looting, crowds abandoned on elevated freeways, and rumors of rape in the Superdome.

(Amazing pictures here...)

This Day In History

Aug 28 1985
Joseph DeCarlo III is born. BALLIN!! I love you, happy birthday baby.

Aug 28 1988
Three Italian fighter jets from the precision flight team Frecce Tricolori collide while attempting their "Pierced Heart" stunt during an air show at Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. The wreckage of one plane tumbles into the crowd and explodes, killing 40 spectators and seriously injuring hundreds more. The death toll reaches 69 two months later.

This Day In History

Aug 27 1967
While The Beatles are away in Bangor, Brian Epstein is found dead in his home. Officially, the cause of death was accidental overdose of sleeping pills, but many believe it was suicide. He was becoming increasingly depressed over his lack of involvement with the Beatles and also his personal turmoil caused by trying to keep his homosexuality a secret.



Aug 27 1968
TV newsman Dan Rather gets beaten up in front of cameras on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The reporter is trying to interview a delegate being dragged off the floor when the bruisers suddenly turn on the Rather. "He lifted me right off the floor and put me away. I was down, the breath knocked out of me, as the whole group blew on by me... In the CBS control room, they had switched the camera onto me just as I was slugged."



Aug 27 1979
The IRA assassinates Louis Earl Mountbatten by placing a bomb on his yacht off the coast of Ireland. Mountbatten was the Queen's cousin, a war hero, and one of the most respected people in England.

Aug 27 1990
Blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan is killed when his Bell 206B helicopter crashes into a man-made ski hill near Elkhorn, Wisconsin.

This Day In History

Aug 24 1812
The White House and other public buildings in the District of Columbia are torched by the British.

Aug 24 1981
Mark David Chapman sentenced to 20 years for killing Beatle John Lennon.

This Day In History

Aug 23 1305
Scottish patriot William Wallace ("Braveheart") hanged, disemboweled, drawn, and quartered. His head was displayed on London Bridge.




Aug 23 1926
Rudolf Valentino dies.





Aug 23 1968
The Youth International Party designates Pigasus as their choice of candidate for U.S. President. The boar hog is introduced at a press conference outside the Chicago Civic Center, with the slogan "They nominate a President and he eats the people. We nominate a President and the people eat him." The gathering is broken up shortly thereafter when the Chicago PD takes into custody the Yippie organizers and their pig.






Aug 23 1994
Inside an abandoned boathouse on the Scottish island of Jura, two members of the band KLF set fire to 20,000 fifty pound notes in front of witnesses. It takes two hours to burn all UKP 1,000,000.



Aug 23 1995
Dwayne R. Goettel, member of industrial music band Skinny Puppy, dies of a heroin overdose in a bathroom at his paents' Edmonton, Alberta home.



Aug 23 1995
St. Petersburg resident Ilshat Kuzikov arrested in his apartment in connection with the murders of Misha Bochkov and Edik Vassilevsky, whose severed heads were found in city streets. Discovered in his apartment were jars of pickled human remains, bags of ears, a pair of arms and legs, and a partially eaten "casserole".

This Day In History

Aug 22 1992
FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi fires a rifle shot that kills unarmed Vicki Weaver, at the Ruby Ridge standoff. Horiuchi claimed he was trying to shoot another man in the back. The FBI also killed Weaver's fourteen year old son Sam, and the son's dog.

Aug 22 1995
David Gahan, lead singer of rock group Depeche Mode, was hospitalized after trying to commit suicide by slashing his wrist. Gahan was found in his Hollywood home with a two-inch slit in his wrist.

Aug 22 2001
A star circus performer known as Smiley the Clown was convicted of molesting and sodomizing his teenage assistant. Smiley AKA Christopher Bayer was convicted of third-degree sodomy, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a young clown. The boy's father became suspicious that Bayer might clowning around with his son and subsequently installed a hidden camera which captured the clown in the act.

This Day In History

Aug 20 1968
The Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia.

Aug 20 1979
Social studies teacher Albert Fentress of Poughkeepsie New York lures an 18-year-old boy into his basement, ties him up, murders him, and then cooks and devours the boy's genitals. Fentress is found totally nuts and is sentenced to psychiatric care.

Aug 20 1986
Rather than submit to being fired, part-time letter carrier Pat Sherrill shoots 14 coworkers at his Edmond, Oklahoma post office.

Aug 20 1998
President Clinton orders cruise missile attacks against terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan suspected of making chemical weapons.

This Day In History

Aug 15 1969
Woodstock begins on Max Yasgur's farm in upstate New York. Tickets are $18 for three days of counterculture musical acts, including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, and Sha-Na-Na.

This Day In History

Aug 14 2126
The next scheduled perihelion for the "Doomsday Rock," also known as the Swift-Tuttle Comet. The six-mile-diameter mass is thought to be roughly the same size as the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs and will probably come within 15 million miles of planet Earth.

This Day In History

Aug 31 1888
Jack the Ripper kills his first known victim, prostitute Mary Ann Nichols, slitting her throat from ear to ear.

Aug 31 1997
Lady Diana, and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, killed in car crash inside a Paris tunnel.

Aug 31 1999
A video game machine explodes at an underground Moscow arcade, injuring perhaps thirty people and killing several others.

This Day In History

400th Anniversary of Galileo's telescope

Aug 25 1993
Snoop Dogg arrested on charges of accomplice to murder, manslaughter, in Los Angeles.

Aug 25 2001
Rhythm and blues singer Aaliyah and 8 others die in a plane crash on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas. Excessive weight aboard the tail end likely caused the plane to go down.

This Day In History

Aug 21 1986
1,700 people are killed in Cameroon when Lake Nyos emits a huge cloud of fast-moving fog, quickly enveloping the villages of Nyos, Kam, Cha, and Subum. The lethal mist, consisting mainly of carbon dioxide and water vapor, displaces the oxygen in the low-lying zones, killing thousands of cattle and even more birds and wild animals. One eyewitness later describes the landscape as being "littered with human remains and animal carcasses."