A bit of August 31st history...
1837 - Ralph Waldo Emerson gives his famous “The American Scholar” speech at Harvard College, MA, declaring American literary independence from Europe
1888 - The body of Jack the Ripper’s 1st victim, Mary Ann Nichols, is found in Whitechapel, London (pictured)
1897 - Thomas Edison patents the kinetoscope, a device that produces moving pictures
1925 - Anthropologist Margaret Mead first arrives in Samoa
1955 - 1st sun-powered automobile demonstrated - Chicago
1968 - 12,000 die and 60,000 buildings destroyed by 7.8 quake in NE Iran
1994 - A cease fire was declared by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland
1997 - Princess Diana dies in a car crash in a road tunnel in Paris
2015 - President Obama officially re-designates Alaska’s Mt McKinley as Denali, it’s native American name
