August 12
1658 The first police force in the US is established in New Amsterdam (now New York).
1687 Duke of Lorraine and Louis of Baden defeat Turks under Suleiman Pasha at Battle of Mohacs, ending Turkish occupation of Hungary.
1759 Russian and Austrian forces defeat Prussians at Kunersdorf, Germany, and Dresden falls into Austrian hands.
1851 Isaac Singer is granted a patent for his sewing machine.
1877 Asaph Hall discovers the Mars moon Deimos.
1898 An Armistice ends the Spanish-American War.
1938 Germany begins mobilisation of its armed forces.
1953 Soviet Union tests first hydrogen bomb in Kazakhstan.
1960 Echo I, the first communications satellite, is launched.
1964 South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games due to the country’s racist policies.
1971 Syria severs diplomatic relations with Jordan as border fighting breaks out.
1972 Last US ground combat unit in South Vietnam is deactivated.
1978 Japan and China sign a peace treaty, implemented in October.
1985 A Japanese Boeing 747 carrying 524 people crashes in the mountains near Tokyo.
1987 Italian Olympic champion Alessandro Andrei smashes the world shot put 22.91-metre record at the Viareggio athletics meet.
1988 Rebels seize a major Afghan town for the first time, taking the northern provincial capital of Kunduz as Soviet troops pull out.
1990 Iraqi President Saddam Hussain offers to withdraw from Kuwait if Israel withdraws from Occupied Territories.
1992 Franjo Tudjman is sworn in as the first president of independent Croatia.
2000 A Russian nuclear submarine, the Kursk, malfunctions in the Barents Sea and sinks after two explosions in its forward weapons bay, killing 118 crewmen aboard.
2005 Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar is assassinated in Colombo.
2008 Military junta that overthrew Mauritania’s government adopts a law transferring the presidency to the head of the junta.
2013 Dutch prince Friso, younger brother of King Willem-Alexander, dies 18 months after he was left brain-damaged by an avalanche.
2014 US and Australia sign a Force Posture Agreement in Sydney.
HIGHLIGHT
Actress Loretta Young dies at 87
2000 - Loretta Young, the elegant beauty whose acting career extended from silent films to television and included an Academy Award for best actress in The Farmer’s Daughter, dies of ovarian cancer. She was 87. Young died at the home of her sister Georgiana Montalban and the actor Ricardo Montalban early Saturday morning, said Norman Brokaw, her agent for 50 years and chairman of the William Morris Agency. “She was an incredible lady,” Brokaw said. “I learned from her that if you can handle yourself with class and dignity, you can work as long as you want in this business.” In 88 films dating from 1927 to 1953, she invariably played the strong-willed heroine with firm principles. From 1953 to 1963, she appeared on television in more than 300 episodes of The Loretta Young Show, opening the programme with her much-satirised trademark of sweeping through a doorway, always in a high-style gown.
