01|Sviatoslav Richter, one of the world's greatest pianists, dies at his home near Moscow, aged 82. Born in Zhitomir, Ukraine, Richter gave his first concert in 1934, and gradually became the Soviet Union's leading pianist. He won the Stalin Prize in 1949, but remained a mystery figure in the West until 1960, when he performed a solo concert in Chicago, U.S.A.|
01|Kenya faces an economic crisis as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) suspends a 208-million-dollar loan to the country. The IMF says it made the decision because President Daniel arap Moi's government has failed to tackle corruption in public services and reform the energy sector.|
02|Stuart Diver, a 27-year-old Australian skiing instructor, is found alive after surviving the landslide which buried him and 19 others at the resort of Thredbo, in the Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. Diver spent 65 hours trapped under 10.5 metres of rubble in sub-zero temperatures after the landslide on July 30. His good physical fitness helped him survive.|
03|Ash, super-heated gas, and molten rock from Montserrat's Soufriere Hills Volcano flows into Plymouth, destroying wooden houses in the historic centre of the capital of the Caribbean island. The June 25 eruption of the volcano, which sprang to life in 1995 after being inactive for more than 400 years, killed at least 10 people who had remained in the area that had been ordered to be evacuated. Montserrat is a United Kingdom (UK) dependency. The UK has pledged 41 million pounds sterling in aid.|
03|United States athlete Maurice Greene wins the 100-metres final during the World Track and Field Championships in Athens, Greece. The 22-year-old, known as the 'Kansas Cannonball', ran the race in 9.86 seconds, 0.05 seconds ahead of the defending world champion, Donovan Bailey.|
04|Jeanne Calment, believed to be the oldest person in the world, dies in Arles in the south of France, at the age of 122 years, five months, and two weeks. She was born on February 21, 1875, and outlived her husband by 55 years, her only daughter by 63 years, and her grandson by 34 years. Calment's death leaves Christian Mortensen, a Danish-born American, as the world's oldest person. Mortensen will be 115 on August 16.|
04|Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations (UN), approves an Iraqi plan to exchange oil exports for imports of food and medicine. Iraq was barred from exporting oil under UN sanctions imposed in 1990 after Iraq invaded Kuwait.|
05|A Korean Air Lines jumbo jet en route to Guam from Seoul, South Korea, crashes in the jungle on the U.S. held Pacific island, killing all but 29 of the 254 passengers and crew members aboard the 747-300.|
05|In the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, Dato Ting Chew Peh, the housing and local government minister, announces that anyone convicted of littering will be made to sweep the streets while wearing a T-shirt bearing the words: 'I am a litterbug.' It is hoped that such public shaming will deter other offenders.|
06|The Sri Lankan cricket team sets a new world record for the highest score in a Test-match innings. At the Premadasa stadium in the capital, Colombo, Sri Lanka scores 952 for 6 against India. The previous record was England's 903 for 7 against Australia at The Oval, London, in 1938.|
06|Three people die in mountain accidents in Switzerland and Italy. French rescue teams give up hope for three other climbers who went missing on Mont Blanc on August 3. It is estimated that at least 43 people were killed in Alpine accidents in the past month.|
07|A Soyuz spaceship, launched on August 5, arrives at the damaged Russian space station Mir carrying a relief crew of two. Because radio transmission between the space station and the craft failed, the Soyuz craft was manoeuvred into docking position manually by three Mir astronauts. During 1997, the space station has experienced a number of system malfunctions, including an earlier docking failure that resulted in a crash that punched a hole in Mir.|
08|Carol Bellamy, executive director of Unicef, the United Nations Children's Fund, warns that about 80,000 North Korean children are suffering from malnutrition. North Korea, with a population 24 million people, is currently facing a number of crises, including famine and drought.|
08|Russians are drinking themselves to death at a faster rate than any other nation. Evidence published in 'The Lancet', a British medical journal, shows that life expectancy for Russian men has fallen by 6.2 years and for women by 3.4 years between 1990 and 1994. The major reason is widespread drinking of alcohol.|
09|After the Apprentice Boys' march through the city, rioters clash with police in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The police are attacked when they try to separate loyalists and nationalists. The annual march celebrates the anniversary of the Protestant relief of Londonderry, besieged by the Catholic ex-king James II, in 1689.|
09|Seven activists belonging to Greenpeace, the environmental group, chain themselves to the 'Stena Dee', an oil rig hired by BP, in an attempt to stop production at a new oil field. The action happens in the Atlantic Ocean, about 112 kilometres west of the Shetland Islands, Scotland. The 'Stena Dee', which has been halted, was heading for the Foinaven oil field.|
10|Australia wins the Ashes cricket trophy for a record-breaking fifth time in succession. The Australian team beat England by 264 runs at Trent Bridge, Nottinghamshire, England. There are five matches in the series, and Australia has won three of the four matches played.|
10|A Dutch biologist working in the Brazilian rainforest claims to have discovered a new species of monkey. Marc Van Roosmalen of the National Institute for Amazon Research in Manaus, Brazil, says that the very small monkey was found in the upper reaches of the Madeira River and is related to the marmoset family. He has named it the black-capped dwarf marmoset.|
11|In Pretoria, South Africa, the two men who in 1993 murdered Chris Hani, leader of the South African Communist Party, ask the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty. Janusz Walus, aged 42, and Clive Derby-Lewis, aged 61, claim they acted alone, but lawyers for the Hani family believe they were part of a larger conspiracy. Amnesty is only given in cases where full disclosure is made. Hani's murder happened at a crucial moment in South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy and almost sabotaged peace talks.|
11|Crops are badly damaged by an overnight hailstorm in central Greece. The Government announces that an estimated 25,000 acres of tobacco, cotton, and tomato crops were destroyed in the Larissa region. Some reports claim the hailstones were as large as lemons.|
12|As many as 600 are killed and thousands more are forced from their homes in northwestern Burundi during renewed clashes between Hutu rebels and the Tutsi-dominated Burundian army. Since 1993, when the latest round of fighting between Hutu guerrillas and army soldiers began, more than 150,000 Burundians have died. The current conflict is the latest in a series of rebellions by the Hutu, a majority in Burundi, against the Tutsi, who have long dominated the nation's government and army.|
12|A wealthy film producer and music magnate is shot dead in Bombay, India. Police claim that Gulshan Kumar, who produced several Hindi films, was killed by organized crime groups, who often try to extort money from successful people in the entertainment industry.|
13|Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses an appeal from King Hussein of Jordan to lift sanctions against the Palestinian territories. The sanctions were imposed after bombs killed 15 people in Jerusalem on July 30. Netanyahu's refusal to end sanctions, which cost the Palestinian economy about 9.6 million U.S. dollars every day, is seen as a set back for the United States envoy, Dennis Ross, who is visiting the region to restart the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.|
13|More than 300 British tourists are moved from a hotel in the Dominican Republic after three women who stayed there in July were confirmed as having typhoid. The tour operator, Thomson Holidays, is moving the holiday-makers from the Hotel Coral Costa Caribe in Juan Dolio as a precaution after the Communicable Diseases Surveillance Centre in London confirmed that three women who stayed at the hotel from July 7 to 14 had typhoid.|
14|Palaeoanthropologist Lee Berger announces at a news conference at the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C., U.S.A., that he and colleagues at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have found the earliest fossilized footprints of an anatomically modern human being. Discovered on the edge of Langebaan Lagoon north of Cape Town, the prints are believed to have been made approximately 117,000 years ago. Older footprints, such as 3.7 million-year-old Laetoli prints discovered by Mary Leakey, were made by hominid ancestors of the modern human.|
15|At midnight of 14/15 August, India celebrates 50 years of independence. After veterans of the struggle for independence from the United Kingdom, which culminated in the creation of modern India and Pakistan in 1947, attend an evening parade in India's capital, New Delhi, a recording of Jawaharlal Nehru's speech announcing independence is played in parliament. In Pakistan, celebrations started 24 hours earlier with a late-night session of parliament in Islamabad and an afternoon ceremony at the tomb of Muhammad Ali Jinnah in Karachi.|
15|Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze makes a vow of peace with separatist leader Vladislav Ardzinba in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. The two leaders are meeting to resolve the conflict, which began on August 14 1992, following the declaration of independence of Abkhazia. The conflict between Georgia and Abkhazia has cost about 10,000 lives.|
15|At least four people die when a pleasure boat capsizes after being battered by high winds in Manila Bay, in the Philippines. The 'King George', carrying 44 Hong Kong tourists, was 11 kilometres from port when strong winds and high waves caused panic among the holiday-makers. The captain claims they all rushed to one side of the boat, causing it to capsize.|
16|Germany's supreme court upholds a ban on demonstrations to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Rudolf Hess, who died in Spandau prison in Berlin on August 17, 1987. Police detain about 400 right-wingers to prevent them demonstrating their neo-Nazi views. Hess was Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's deputy until he was captured in 1941 after parachuting into Scotland on a failed secret mission to secure a truce between Germany and the United Kingdom during World War II.|
16|Stanley Ho, the tycoon who runs the casinos in the Portuguese territory of Macao, in China, claims that gang warfare in the Macao gambling industry will soon be over. Gambling, the biggest source of revenue in Macao, attracts many players from Hong Kong, where most forms of betting are illegal. At least 16 people were murdered recently in gang violence.|
17|Arsonists burn down dozens of houses and about 100 kiosks in Mombasa, Kenya. It is the latest disturbance in five days of violence in the area. No political group has admitted responsibility for the incidents. President Daniel arap Moi and opposition groups have blamed each other for fomenting civil unrest.|
17|The Burmese government announces that three pro-democracy supporters, all related to opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, have each been sentenced to 10 years in prison. Suu Kyi's cousin, Cho Aung Than, his sister Nge Ma Ma Than, and her husband, Myint Swe, were found guilty of breaking national security laws and sentenced by a court in the capital Rangoon.|
17|A group of oil workers, kidnapped by Peruvian rebels on August 15, are released. The 29 workers, employed by the Compania General de Geofiscia in the jungle town of Satipo, Peru, are thought to have been kidnapped by guerrillas belonging to the Maoist Shining Path movement.|
18|The world's first Mind Sports Olympiad opens in London. Lasting seven days, the event comprises more than 30 games which test mental skill, including gin rummy, bridge, backgammon, chess, draughts, mah-jongg, Scrabble, crossword puzzles, jigsaws, and memory tests. The Olympiad is divided into card games, board games, and mental skill games. Players from more than 30 countries include the Mongolian draughts team, the Kenyan Scrabble team, and top bridge player Zia Mahmood.|
19|Government troops destroy a rebel warlord's army in Tajikistan. Colonel Makhmud Khudoyberdyev and his mutinous army unit are ousted from their stronghold near the Afghan border. The incident highlights the fragility of the peace between President Imomali Rakhmonov and the Islamic opposition in Tajikistan.|
19|A masterpiece of baroque art, the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome's Piazza Navona, is damaged when an Italian man goes swimming in the fountain. Sebastiano Intili breaks the statue, made by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, when he climbs onto the marble tail of one of its dolphins. He is arrested for vandalism.|
19|The French company Elf Aquitaine announces the discovery of one of the biggest oil fields in Africa. Experts believe that the Dalia well, off the coast of Angola, about 200 kilometres northwest of the capital Luanda, contains up to 3.5 billion barrels of oil.|
20|Hundreds of United Nations troops surround police stations in Banja Luka, in north Bosnia, to support the Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic's attempt to assert her authority over the ex-president and indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic. After the police stations are searched, about 2,500 illegal firearms are confiscated. This is seen as a blow to Karadzic's supporters in Bosnia.|
20|Defying the demands of Israel and United States to suppress terrorist tactics of Islamic extremists, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat meets openly and physically embraces leaders of Hamas and other militant Islamic groups. He warns Israel that Palestinians are on the brink of resuming open revolt against what they believe is Israeli occupation. The last Palestinian uprising, which ended in 1994, lasted seven years.|
21|The Pope visits Paris and is welcomed by about 500,000 young people at a world youth festival. A huge crowd at the Eiffel Tower cheers his speech, which called the festival a 'vast gathering of hope'. However, worries about the decline of Catholicism in France are exemplified by estimates that less than one third of the crowd is French.|
21|Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A., publish findings which suggest that people who smoke cigarettes for more than 25 years may have suffered lung cell damage that cannot be cured by stopping smoking. The study, published in the 'Journal of Respiratory Medicine', found that people who smoked at least 20 cigarettes a day for 25 years had significantly more of a protein called GRP, which spurs cells to divide and makes the lungs more susceptible to cancer.|
22|South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission serves a subpoena on Winnie Mandela, former wife of President Nelson Mandela, to testify about her alleged involvement in at least four murders, including that of the teenage anti-apartheid activist Stompie Seipei.|
22|Genetic tests confirm that the dwarf Truong Son muntjac deer, which lives in the remote Vu Quang forest of Vietnam, is a previously unknown species. Evidence of the muntjac, which weighs about 15 kilograms and lives at altitudes between 500 and 1,000 metres, was first collected in April by the World Wide Fund for Nature, Danang University, and the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.|
23|Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, the first moderate to hold office since the 1979 Islamic revolution, appoints a woman, Massumeh Ebtekar, to be vice president in charge of environmental protection, a cabinet position.|
23|Sir Eric Gairy, prime minister of Grenada from 1974 to 1979, dies aged 75. Born into a peasant family, Gairy founded the Grenada Manual and Metal Workers Union in 1950 and then set up the Grenada United Labour Party. After being elected premier in 1967, he became Grenada's first prime minister after independence from the United Kingdom. Ousted in a coup in 1979, Gairy returned to Grenada after the United States invaded the island in 1983, but never held power again.|
24|A military court in Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel, decides that an Israeli soldier was mentally disturbed when he fired 15 times at Palestinian shoppers in the West Bank city of Hebron on January 1, 1997. Noam Friedman, aged 22, wounded four people in the incident and is confined to a mental hospital.|
24|Indian and Pakistan troops fire at each other on the border between the two countries in Kashmir. At least five people are killed and 10 wounded. Both sides accuse the other of unprovoked firing and of trying to sabotage the third round of peace talks between the two countries, which are scheduled for September.|
25|A report published in Ireland by the tribunal of inquiry into payments by businessmen to politicians criticises Charles Haughey, the former prime minister, for 'unacceptable' behaviour. Haughey admits receiving gifts of more than one million Irish pounds from businessman Ben Dunne, head of Dunnes Stores.|
25|Egon Krenz, last leader of communist East Germany, is jailed for six and a half years for manslaughter. Krenz, aged 60, was a leading member of the East German government since 1983 and in charge of national security. He was responsible for the policy which encouraged border guards to shoot anyone trying to cross the Berlin Wall. His conviction ends the most important political trial in Germany since its reunification in 1990.|
26|Zionism celebrates its centenary. Israeli politicians and Jewish intellectuals attend a congress in Basle, Switzerland, the same city where, in 1897, 196 Jewish intellectuals, led by Theodor Herzl, started the movement for a Jewish state. The Zionist movement achieved success in 1948 when Israel was founded.|
26|The former South African president, F. W. de Klerk, aged 61, retires from politics. As head of the government in 1990, de Klerk was responsible for ending apartheid and bringing in Black majority rule. In 1993, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, the current South African president.|
27|The United Kingdom's foreign minister, Robin Cook, begins a six-month review of the country's Dependent Territories. The dependencies are Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn Islands, Saint Helena and Turks and Caicos Islands. Some commentators believe the review may lead to the offer of British citizenship to people living in the dependencies.|
27|North Korea cancels talks on missile proliferation with the U.S.A. because the Washington government has given political asylum to a high-ranking defector. Chang Sung-gil, the Korean ambassador to Egypt, defected to the U.S.A. on August 26. The talks were due to discuss curbs on North Korean missile sales abroad and its build-up of weapons at home.|
28|The Security Council of the United Nations votes unanimously to impose sanctions on Unita, Angola's rebel movement. The measures will come into effect in September if Unita, led by Jonas Savimbi, does not comply with the conditions of the 1994 Lusaka peace accord, which include the demobilisation of its army. The accord ended 30 years of civil war in Angola.|
28|An 84-year-old man becomes the oldest person to walk on the wing of a flying aeroplane. Leslie 'Dizzy' Seales spends 20 minutes standing on top of a training aeroplane at Shoreham, West Sussex, England, flying at the height of 250 metres. Seales is a former World War II Royal Air Force gunner.|
29|Hooded attackers massacre at least 300 villagers in Algeria in the worst atrocity since the Islamic insurgency began five years ago. The attack takes place at Rais, a farming village just south of the capital Algiers. About 60,000 people have died since 1992, when the military-backed government cancelled a parliamentary election because it seemed that Islamic militants would win it.|
30|The United Kingdom government wins a high court order preventing a former security service officer from making revelations about undercover operations in the national press. The court restrains David Shayler, a 31-year-old former intelligence officer with the security service MI5, from making any further disclosures. His claim on August 24 that MI5 tapped the telephones of Labour Party politicians in the 1970's and 1980's caused a political scandal because these politicians are now senior figures in the government.|
31|Diana, Princess of Wales, dies after a high-speed car crash in a tunnel near the Pont d'Alma next to the Seine River in Paris. It happens while Diana and her companion, Dodi Al Fayed, are returning from the Ritz Hotel to the house in western Paris where they were staying. The car was being followed by press photographers. Although she survives the immediate crash, Diana dies at La Pitie-Salpetriere hospital at about 4am. Al Fayed and the car's chauffeur, Henri Paul, also die in the crash; Diana's bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survives. Born in 1961, Diana married Prince Charles, heir to the United Kingdom throne, in 1981. The royal couple had two sons, William Arthur Philip Louis (born 1982) and Henry Charles Albert David (born 1984), but divorced in 1996. Diana was not only a fashionable royal celebrity, but also patron of charities which raised public awareness of AIDS, leprosy, homelessness, and the victims of landmines. In 1995, she received a Humanitarian of the Year award from Dr Henry Kissinger, the former U.S. secretary of state.|
31|An Egyptian state security court sentences an Israeli Arab to 15 years hard labour for spying on Egypt. Azam Azam, who belongs to the Druze sect, is convicted of economic espionage at the textiles business in which he worked. The case marks a new low in international relations between Egypt and Israel.|
