Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 26:
1920 – American women won the right to vote when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified.
1972 – The English adventurer Sir Francis Chichester, who in 1966-67 became the first person to sail solo around the world rounding the two great capes, died.
1974 – Charles Lindbergh, the American aviator who made the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight in 1927, died.
1993 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a friendship treaty with the Czech Republic after condemning the 1968 Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia.
1997 – South Africa’s last white president, F.W. de Klerk, announced he was quitting as leader of the opposition National Party.
1998 – World’s first bionic arm fitted and tested in Edinburgh.
2003 – Rwanda’s electoral commission announced that incumbent president Paul Kagame had won the first presidential election since 1994. The opposition disputed the result.
2004 – Cuba cut diplomatic ties with Panama after its outgoing president, Mireya Moscoso, pardoned four Cuban exiles who had plotted to kill President Fidel Castro in 2000.
2005 – Former Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza became Burundi’s president with a pledge to honour the peace accord that brought him to power and ended a 12-year civil war.
2005 – Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia breaks world record in men’s 10,000m race.
2014 – Ceasefire takes effect between Gaza and Israel after 50 days of combat.
(Reuters)
