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[GermanStar]

Aug 11 1772
The summit of Papandayan volcano in West Java suddenly implodes, unleashing a catastrophic debris avalanche which blankets an area of 250 square km. Tumbling boulders flatten 40 villages and their 2,957 inhabitants.

Aug 11 1965
A white motorcycle cop from the California Highway Patrol pulls over a car at 116th and Avalon, near Watts. When Marquette Frye fails the field sobriety test, the CHP officer places him under arrest and radios for a transportation unit and a tow truck. 15 minutes later, with more than 1,000 spectators gathered to watch the scene, a scuffle breaks out between police officers and members of the driver's family. This altercation sets the stage for the bloody Watts riots two days later.

Aug 11 1975
Paratroopers from Indonesia invade the island of East Timor, ostensibly to end a civil war, but in reality to seize the territory. They perpetrate a reign of terror against the inhabitants, which continues to this day.

Aug 11 1984
Not realizing that his weekly radio address is already on the air, President Ronald Reagan quips into his live microphone: "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes."

Aug 11 1997
Responding to reports of a domestic disturbance at the L'Elysee condominiums in West Los Angeles, LAPD officers encounter Christian Slater "swinging his arms and yelling incoherently" in the building stairwell. The movie actor reveals to police that "the Germans are coming and they will kill us." He also mentions that he has been awake for most of two days, and the last thing he remembers is "snorting a couple of lines of cocaine this morning." When officers attempt to put him in handcuffs, Slater knocks one of them to the floor and makes an unsuccessful grab for the cop's weapon. His punishment? 59 days in jail.

[GermanStar]

Aug 12 30 BC
Cleoptara, Queen of Egypt and former wife to Julius Caesar, commits suicide by means of venomous snakebite to the mammary gland.

Aug 12 1676
Wampanoag chieftain Metacom (or "Philip") is killed in a swamp near Mount Hope. Thus ends King Philip's War, the first war between Indians and European settlers.

Aug 12 1869
In San Francisco, Emperor Norton I issues a stern edict outlawing both the Republican and Democratic political parties. Violators face a prison term of five-to-ten years.

Aug 12 1948
Russian schoolteacher Oksana Kosenkina is injured when she jumps out the window of the Soviet Consulate in New York City. Soviet officials claim they had rescued her from "White Russian" kidnappers, but Kosenkina says she was trying to escape from the Soviets. The US later expels the consul general, and the Soviets close their consulate.

Aug 12 1951
Dr. Jean Vieu discovers two patients stricken with abdominal pain and grotesque hallucinations in Pont St. Esprit, France. They are just the first of more than 230 afflicted townspeople, thanks to bread tainted with ergot.

Aug 12 1953
In Siberia, the Soviet Union successfully tests its first thermonuclear device, based on Andrei Sakharov's fission-fusion "Layer Cake" design: alternating layers of uranium and hydrogen fuel sandwiched together and wrapped around a conventional Atomic Bomb. The fission explosion compresses the hydrogen, causing a fusion reaction.

Aug 12 1985
30 minutes after takeoff, JAL flight 123 loses all hydraulic pressure, rendering the controls inoperable. The crew attempts a return to Tokyo-Haneda airport by adjusting power to the engines, but the 747 crashes into a mountain ridge near Mt. Osutaka. When rescue workers arrive the following morning, they find 4 survivors and 520 dead.

[GermanStar]

Aug 13 1521
After an 80-day siege, Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés captures Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire. When the Spaniards fail to discover Montezuma's treasure, they torture Cuauhtemoc by pouring hot oil over his feet. The emperor responds by asking, "Am I on a bed of roses?" They hang him three years later.

Aug 13 1926
Fidel Castro is born on his father's 23,000-acre sugar cane plantation near Biran, Cuba.

Aug 13 1942
Walt Disney's Bambi premieres in New York City.

Aug 13 1986
11 Mexican peace officers abduct DEA special agent Victor Cortez, Jr. along with an informant. The two are taken to a Guadalajara police station, where the men are beaten and tortured for four hours in an attempt to extract the names of other American drug enforcement agents operating in Mexico. The pair are freed only after Cortez's superior somehow arrives at the station and demands their immediate release.

[GermanStar]

Aug 14 410
Visigoths under King Alaric sack Rome after slave co-conspirators open the city gates for them. Looting lasts for six days.

Aug 14 1941
Corporal Josef Jakobs, a German spy, is the final prisoner executed at the Tower of London. Having a broken ankle, he is seated in a fine wooden Windsor chair and executed by an eight man firing squad of Scots Guards.

Aug 14 1945
Over the radio, Hirohito announces his unconditional surrender to Allied forces, thus bringing an end to World War II. This broadcast is the first chance the Japanese people have had to hear their god-emperor's speaking voice.

Aug 14 1951
Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst dies at home in Beverly Hills, California.

Aug 14 1965
Salvatore Bono and Cherilyn Sarkisian La Pierre capture #1 on the American pop charts with their song "I Got You Babe," launching the careers of Sonny & Cher.

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.

[GermanStar]

Aug 15 1057
Macbeth is killed in the Battle of Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire. He had been king of Scotland for 17 years.

Aug 15 1935
Will Rogers, the most famous man in America, dies near Barrow, Alaska when his sea plane plunges into a lagoon. At the time, he and one-eyed aviator Wiley Post were surveying possible flight paths between Seattle and the Soviet Union.

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.

Aug 15 1994
International terrorist Carlos the Jackal is jailed in France. The assassin was turned over by the Sudanese government after he checked into a Khartoum hospital for varicose vein surgery on one of his testicles.

[GermanStar]

Aug 16 1819
60 cavalrymen charge into a crowd of approximately 70,000 protesters at St. Peter's Field in Manchester, England. The soldiers begin to hack away at the people with their sabers and trample them under hoof. 11 die and 400 are wounded in the Manchester Massacre, also called the Battle of Peterloo.

Aug 16 1938
Blues musician Robert Johnson, who presumably sold his soul to the devil (the story somewhat being told by the movie Crossroads), is poisoned by a jealous husband in Three Forks, Mississippi.

Aug 16 1960
Emmett O. Hashfield abducts Avril Terry, an 11-year-old girl in Booneville, Indiana. He then proceeds to murder, dismember, and eat portions of her, before tossing the leftovers in a river.

Aug 16 1977
Elvis Presley dies in his home at the age of 42, while sitting on the toilet. In the bathroom, he had been reading The Scientific Search for the Face of Jesus. Presumably, Elvis' search was concluded shortly thereafter.

Aug 16 1987
Mercury, Venus, and Mars all get bunched up near the Sun in what some call the Harmonic Convergence. Thousands of nutballs clustered at sacred locations like Mount Shasta, California begin meditating their asses off for some damn reason.

Aug 16 1997
Aida Nur El-Din, a night nurse at Alexandria University's El-Mairy Hospital, confesses to Egyptian authorities that she killed at least 18 ICU patients by injecting them with drugs stolen from the pharmacy. Before she can be taken downtown, El-Din jumps out a three-story window in a failed suicide attempt.

[GermanStar]

Aug 17 1896
Bridget Driscoll, a 44-year-old mother of two, becomes the world's first automobile fatality when she steps in front of a car outside the Crystal Palace in London. At the coroner's inquest, Arthur Edsall states he had been driving at only 4 mph. The motorist also claims that when he saw the pedestrian, he rang his bell and shouted "Stand back!" For whatever reason, the coroner accepts Edsall's preposterous story.

Aug 17 1948
Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard is arrested for bad checks in San Luis Obispo, California. In court a fortnight later, Hubbard pays the $25 fine.

Aug 17 1980
Dingos snatch baby Azaria from a campground near Ayers Rock, Australia. Her mother, Lindy Chamberlain, is later convicted of murder and spends three years in prison, but the conviction is ultimately overturned. Apparently there have been a number of baby/dingo incidents over the years, the dingo not differentiating animals from humans. (The fact that if you rearrange the letters in LINDY CHAMBERLAIN you get CHILDREN BY ANIMAL is just a coincidence.)

Aug 17 1987
Rudolf Hess found hanged by an electrical cord at Spandau Prison, aged 93. He was incarcerated there for 40 years, 21 of those years as the solitary inmate. In 1941 Hess flew to Scotland with ideas of peace in his head, making Hitler very very upset.

Aug 17 1996
Belgian police discover the bodies of two eight-year-old children kidnapped for pedophilic purposes in the town of Jumet, a suburb of Charleroi. The children had starved while Marc Dutroux was jailed for theft, there being nobody to feed them. Along with the two is the body of Bernard Weinstein, one of the perpetrators of the kidnappings. In early September, two additional teenage bodies are discovered in a house owned by Marc Dutroux. The revelations send the entire Belgian nation into shock.

Aug 17 1998
Long-running comic strip Jerkcity begins. It was created by Rands using Microsoft's abandoned Comic Chat, a chat client featuring artwork by Jim Woodring, as a harness for the artwork. Slurping and drooling and hurrrr.

[GermanStar]

Aug 18 1227
Genghis Khan dies in his sleep, after a fall from his horse. His old age and drinking probably contributed to his death, which the Mongols manage to keep secret for some time.

Aug 18 1503
Pope Alexander VI dies. He was the father of seven illegitimate children, and during his reign chose as his lover the lovely sixteen year old Guilia Farnese. A portrait of Guilia dressed as the Virgin Mary appeared over Alexander's bedchamber door, but by no means was she his only liaison.

Aug 18 1590
Sent to England to get supplies three years prior, John White finally returns to Roanoke Island and discovers his colony "strongly enclosed with a high palisade of great trees, with [curtain walls] and [bastions] -- very fort-like." There is no sign of the settlers or where they may have gone.

Aug 18 1999
A giant black rainbow encircles the Earth, sucking all oxygen from the atmosphere. The air returns shortly thereafter, but only after millions die from asphyxiation. On the bright side, the survivors go on to build a utopian civilization. It all happens precisely as predicted in the 1950s by Criswell, the TV psychic immortalized in the movie Plan 9 from Outer Space.

[GermanStar]

Aug 19 1934
Adolf Hitler wins absolute power when 89.9% of the German electorate consolidates the positions of President and Chancellor into a single office, occupied by him.

Aug 19 1960
The Soviet Union convicts U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers of espionage, sentencing him to 3 years in prison and 7 years of hard labor.

Aug 19 1960
The Soviet Union launches Sputnik V into orbit. On board are two dogs (Belka and Strelka), along with 2 unnamed rats and 40 mice. The menagerie is recovered safely the next day from the landing capsule.

Aug 19 1978
More than 400 people are killed when arsonists lock the exits and set fire to the Rex Cinema in Abadan, Iran. Although the blaze was probably the work of students of fundamentalist Islam, most Iranians immediately assume that it was started by government agents on order of the Shah.

Aug 19 1983
Heisman trophy winner Billy Cannon (from LSU) is sentenced to five years in prison for counterfeiting.

Aug 19 1996
After Miss Universe Alicia Machado gains 40 pounds in just 3 months, she is ordered to lose 27 pounds in two weeks or forfeit the crown.

[GermanStar]

Aug 20 1191
Crusaders massacre 3,000 bound Muslim prisoners at Acre, after a breakdown in negotiations over payment of their ransom. The killings take place in full view of the army from which they were taken.

Aug 20 1940
Leon Trotsky dies while in exile in Mexico after the Stalinist assassin Jacques Mornard stabs him in the head with a pickaxe. Mornard receives the Order of Lenin (Orden Lenina) upon his release from a Mexican prison.

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 1989
Born Free conservationist George Adamson and two assistants are gunned down by Somali poachers at Kampi Ya Simba, Kenya.

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.

[GermanStar]

Aug 21 1614
Erzsebet Bathory, ruler of Transylvania, dies at 54. She had sought immortality by killing young virgins and bathing in their blood. It didn't work.

Aug 21 1985
Just seconds after stepping off the plane, opposition candidate Benigno Aquino is gunned down by assassins at Manila Int'l Airport, on orders of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos.

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."

Aug 21 1996
Superfreak Rick James (prisoner J29237) is released from Folsom Prison after serving a two year sentence for drugs and assault. He had planned to marry his fiance, Tanja Anne Hijazi, upon release but she had been nicked for shoplifting a pair of boots two days earlier. They do make a cute couple.

[GermanStar]

Aug 22 1485
Richard III slain at Bodsworth.

Aug 22 1776
George Washington asks the Continental Congress for permission to burn New York City, to stop the city from being used to quarter troops arriving via the British fleet. It is declined, but his soldiers set 1/4th of the town ablaze on September 21.

Aug 22 1911
Mona Lisa stolen.

Aug 22 1989
Huey Newton murdered.

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.

[GermanStar]

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 1939
Germany and Russia signed the Molotov-Ribbentropp non-aggression pact (1939)

Aug 23 1951
Ninety West Point cadets are expelled for cheating, including most of the Academy's football team.

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 parents' 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".

[GermanStar]

Aug 24 79
Pompeii buried by Vesuvius, apparently to punish the debauchery that made the town famous. Tens of thousands of people perished only to have plaster casts made centuries later of the hollows their bodies once occupied.

Aug 24 1572
Troops loyal to the French crown alongside Catholic civilians massacre the Protestant Huguenots of Paris, estimates range between 20,000 and 100,000 deaths. At news of this carnage of this St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, a gleeful Pope Gregory XIII ordered celebrations and a medal to be struck.

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

Aug 24 1958
Red China commences the shelling of the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, which hold one-third of Chiang Kai Shek's troops. The United States threatens nuclear retaliation for this, but the American people do not support the stance. A very strange compromise is worked out, permitting China to shell the islands on odd dates and Chiang Kai Shek's troops to resupply the islands on even dates.

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

Aug 24 2005
Howard on the FCC: "I pray to God the FCC hands down a fine against this station for my broadcast in February so that we can see them enact this ridiculous policy." The broadcast: Sex toys and porn stars. The policy: The FCC wants Infinity (CBS Radio) to immediately suspend any DJs targeted by formal complaints.

[GermanStar]

Aug 25 1835
The New York Sun publishes stunning revelations that Sir John Hershel has observed little men living on the surface of the moon. The stories, now generally believed to be false, brings the paper record circulation.

Aug 25 1900
Nietzsche is dead.

Aug 25 1989
Homosexual Congressman Barney Frank confirms that he paid a male whore, Stephen L. Gobie, for sex on several occasions. Frank later hires the man as a housekeeper, but scandal erupts when Gobie is discovered using the congressman's apartment as a sodomite bordello.

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 crashes on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas. Excessive weight aboard the tail end likely caused the plane to go down.

[GermanStar]

Aug 26 1903
The St. Petersburg newspaper Znamya ("Banner") serializes a set of articles revealing the dual menace of the Freemasons and international Jewry. The series is just the first incarnation of what is later called the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Aug 26 1980
Hotel workers discover a 1,000-pound time bomb at Harveys Resort & Casino in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. Attached to the device is a ransom note, demanding that $3 million be delivered to a remote location by helicopter. After the delivery goes bad, bomb squad personnel are left to defuse the gadget by robot. The resulting blast blows a five-story hole in the structure and causes $12 million in damage.

Aug 26 1987
A rampaging elephant in Bangkok, Thailand, destroys a radio center and kills two people.

[GermanStar]

Aug 27 1883
After three massive explosions over the previous 16 hours, the volcanic island of Krakatoa suffers a final, inconceivably destructive blast. The noise is heard 3,000 miles away in Madagascar. Two-thirds of the island's land mass collapses into the ocean, and the resulting 175-foot tsunami wipes away 163 coastal towns and villages along the Sunda Straight, killing 36,417 inhabitants.

Aug 27 1928
The Kellogg-Briand Pact outlaws war forever.

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 1987
Jello Biafra's obscenity trial ends in Los Angeles, with the jury deadlocked 7-5 in favor of acquittal. Prosecutors had hoped to throw the Dead Kennedys singer in jail for including an H.R. Giger poster in the packaging of his band's latest album, Frankenchrist.

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.

[GermanStar]

Aug 28 1968
U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala John Gordon Mein is shot to death after guerrillas force his car off the road in Guatemala City. It is the first assassination of a U.S. Ambassador in the line of duty.

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.

Aug 28 1995
Calvin Klein withdraws an ad campaign after drawing wide criticism for mimicking the look and feel of child pornography. Although all the underwear models were legal adults, they appeared to be adolescents photographed in a sleazy motel room.

Aug 28 2005
Death Row Records founder Suge Knight is shot in the leg during an early morning party in Miami Beach, Florida.

[GermanStar]

Aug 29 1904
David Hyrum Smith, son of Mormon founder Joseph Smith, dies in an insane asylum after 27 years of lunacy. His father in 1844 had predicted that his unborn son would be named David and that he would be "President and King of Israel". At least he got the name right.

Aug 29 1966
The Beatles hold their final concert at Candlestick Park.

Aug 29 1993
Brazilian police, upset over the killing of four of their own, roam the streets of Rio de Janiero and slaughter 21 street people at random. This incident comes several weeks after police had killed five boys in a similar fashion.

Aug 29 1994
The Orange County Register breaks the story that China has been harvesting organs from executed prisoners prior to their executions. What's more, executions are scheduled according to organ transplant priorities.

Aug 29 1996
Dick Morris, the top political adviser to President Bill Clinton and also a married man, resigns abruptly after the Star reveals his long-term relationship with a Washington prostitute. Morris had divulged secret White House information to Sherry Rowlands, even allowing the hooker to secretly listen in on some of his telephone conversations with the President.

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.

[GermanStar]

Aug 30 1859
At the University of Göttingen, PhD candidate Albert Niemann isolates the alkaloid C17H21NO4 from leaves of the plant Erythroxylum coca. Niemann names his white, powdery discovery "cocaine" and observes firsthand its peculiarly strong anesthetic effect: "it benumbs the nerves of the tongue, depriving it of feeling and taste."

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.

Aug 30 1976
A riot at the Notting Hill Carnival in London sends over 100 police officers and 60 carnival-goers to the hospital. Sixty-six are arrested.

Aug 30 2001
Former president of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević is charged with genocide. He avoids charges by heart attacking in his cell before the trial can finish.