World/nation trivia: The week of Aug. 25-31

Aug. 25:

1916, Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act, establishing the National Park Service as an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior to maintain the country’s natural and historic wonders and “leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”

1944, Paris was liberated by Allied forces after four years of Nazi occupation during World War II.

2017, Hurricane Harvey, the fiercest hurricane to hit the U.S. in more than a decade, made landfall near Corpus Christi, Texas, with 130 mph sustained winds; the storm would deliver five days of rain totaling close to 52 inches, the heaviest tropical downpour that had ever been recorded in the continental U.S.

Aug. 26:

1939, the first televised major league baseball games were shown on experimental station W2XBS: a double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field. The Reds won the first game, 5-2, the Dodgers the second, 6-1.

1968, the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago; the four-day event that resulted in the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey for president was marked by a bloody police crackdown on antiwar protesters in the streets.

1978, Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice was elected pope following the death of Paul VI. The new pontiff, who took the name Pope John Paul I, died just over a month later.

2009, kidnapping victim Jaycee Dugard was discovered alive in California after being missing for more than 18 years.

Aug. 27:

1883, the island volcano Krakatoa erupted with a series of cataclysmic explosions. The explosions (which could be heard 3,000 miles away) and resulting tsunamis in Indonesia’s Sunda Strait claimed some 36,000 lives in Java and Sumatra.

1979, British war hero Lord Louis Mountbatten and three other people, including his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas, were killed off the coast of Ireland in a boat explosion claimed by the Irish Republican Army.

1982, Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A’s stole his 119th base of the season, breaking Lou Brock’s single-season stolen base record. (Henderson would finish the season with a still-unmatched 130 stolen bases.)

2005, coastal residents jammed freeways and gas stations as they rushed to avoid Hurricane Katrina, which was headed toward New Orleans.

Aug. 28:

1862, the Second Battle of Bull Run began in Prince William County, Virginia, during the Civil War; the Union army retreated two days later after suffering 14,000 casualties.

1955, Emmett Till, a Black teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, by two white men after he had allegedly whistled at a white woman four days prior; he was found brutally slain three days later.

1963, during the March on Washington, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech before an estimated 250,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation as Hurricane Katrina approached the city.

Aug. 29:

1814, during the War of 1812, Alexandria, Virginia, formally surrendered to British military forces, which occupied the city until September 3.

1944, 15,000 American troops of the 28th Infantry Division marched down the Champs Elysees in Paris as the French capital continued to celebrate its liberation from the Nazis.

2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast near Buras-Triumph, Louisiana, breaching levees and spurring floods that devastated New Orleans. The costliest storm in U.S. history, Katrina caused nearly 1,400 deaths and an estimated $200 billion in damage.

2021, Hurricane Ida blasted ashore in Louisiana as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S., knocking out power to all of New Orleans, blowing roofs off buildings and reversing the flow of the Mississippi River.

Aug. 30:

1916, on his fourth attempt, explorer Ernest Shackelton successfully returned to Elephant Island in Antarctica to rescue 22 of his stranded crew members, who had survived on the barren island for four and a half months after the sinking of their ship, the Endurance.

2005, a day after Hurricane Katrina hit, floods covered 80 percent of New Orleans, looting continued to spread and rescuers in helicopters and boats picked up hundreds of stranded people.

2021, the United States completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan, ending America’s longest war with the Taliban back in power, as Air Force transport planes carried a remaining contingent of troops from Kabul airport. After watching the last U.S. planes disappear into the sky over Afghanistan, Taliban fighters fired their guns into the air, celebrating victory after a 20-year insurgency.

Aug. 31:

1881, the first U.S. tennis championships (for men only) began in Newport, Rhode Island.

1992, white separatist Randy Weaver surrendered to authorities in Naples, Idaho, ending an 11-day siege by federal agents that had claimed the lives of Weaver’s wife, son and a deputy U.S. marshal.

1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed as the car she was riding in crashed on the Pont de l’Alma bridge in Paris; her partner Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul (who was found to have been intoxicated at the time of the accident) also died.

2019, a gunman carried out a shooting rampage that stretched ten miles between the Texas communities of Midland and Odessa, leaving seven people dead before police killed the gunman outside a movie theater in Odessa.

— Associated Press