History for August 31

History for August 31 - On-This-Day.com
Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) 0012, Arthur Godfrey 1903, Alan Jay Lerner 1918 


Richard Basehart 1919, Frank Robinson 1935, Itzhak Perlman 1945 


Van Morrison (Them) 1945, Richard Gere 1949, Debbie Gibson 1970 


1920 - The first news program to be broadcast on radio was aired. The station was 8MK in Detroit, MI. 


1920 - John Lloyd Wright was issued a patent for "Toy-Cabin Construction," which are known as Lincoln Logs. (U.S. patent 1,351,086) 


1964 - California officially became the most populated state in America. 


1965 - The Department of Housing and Urban Development was created by the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate. 



1990 - U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar met with the Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to try and negotiate a solution to the crisis in the Persian Gulf. 

1991 - In a "Solidarity Day" protest hundreds of thousands of union members marched in Washington, DC. 


1994 - A cease-fire was declared by the Irish Republican Army after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland. 


1998 - A ballistic missile was fired over Japan by North Korea. The missile landed in stages in the waters around Japan. There was no known target.