August 8
1549 France declares war on England.
1876 American inventor Thomas A. Edison receives a patent for his mimeograph.
1900 The United States defeats Great Britain in the first Davis Cup Tennis Tournament
1940 American engineer and car manufacturer Walter Chrysler dies.
1945 US President Harry S. Truman signs the United Nations Charter.
1953 The United States and South Korea sign a mutual defence treaty.
1960 Cuba nationalises American and foreign-owned property in the nation.
1962 Jamaica becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1963 Britain’s ‘Great Train Robbery’ see thieves steal £2.6 million (Dh12.5 million) in banknotes.
1970 Three men hijack a Czech airliner en route from Prague to Bratislava, forcing it to land in Vienna. The men, all Czechs, request political asylum.
1980 General Mohammad Yahya Khan, former president of Pakistan, dies in Rawalpindi military hospital after protracted illness.
1983 Guatemalan President Efrain Rios Montt is ousted in a military coup after a brief resistance by loyal troops in which five people are killed.
1991 Lebanese kidnappers free British TV producer John McCarthy after holding him hostage for five years.
1992 President Denis Sassou-Nguesso loses his seat in Republic of Congo’s first presidential election since 1963.
1994 Israel and Jordan open the first road linking the two nations after 46 years.
2000 A bomb rips through a crowded underground walkway in central Moscow, killing 12 people and injuring 108 others.
2001 Mohammad Khatami is sworn in for a second term as Iran’s president.
2005 Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia retains his men’s 10,000 metres title at the world athletics Championships in Helsinki.
2006 Kim Gevaert wins the 100 metres title to become Belgium’s first female European champion.
2008 Six are killed and dozens injured after a bridge collapses on a train in Czech Republic.
2010 American actress Patricia Neal dies at the age of 84.
2012 Sarat Attar becomes the first Saudi woman to compete in Olympic athletics in London.
2014 WHO declares killer Ebola epidemic a global emergency.
2015 England defeats Australia in the fourth cricket Test at Trent Bridge, to regain the Ashes.
2016 A suicide bomber kills more than 70 people at a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan.
HIGHLIGHT
1992
Carl Lewis sprints out in a blaze of glory
Carl Lewis ran out of the Olympics in a blaze of glory, scooping his eighth gold medal and a world relay record, the first of two for the American athlete. Lewis looked to the sky and shouted “Yes, yes, yes” before joining his team mates in a tumultuous victory lap. It was a fitting departure for one of the great Olympians — Lewis, his legs pumping like superheated pistons, stormed away on the anchor leg to carry the 4x100 US team home in a record 37.40 seconds. Lewis, running what was expected to be his last Olympic race, thundered down the home straight to finish one tenth of a second faster than the world mark the US team set in Tokyo last year. “The guys are coming. You’d better run,” Dennis Mitchell screamed as he shoved the baton at Lewis. He did. Nigeria were a distant second and Cuba third.
