Today in History: Sarp Border Gate Opened Between Turkey and Georgia

August 31 is the 243th (244th in leap years) day of the year according to the Gregorian calendar. The number of days left until the end of the year is 122.

Railways

• 31 August 1932 Kunduz-Kahn railway is in operation.
• 31 August 1892 Alpu-Sariköy Line was completed.

Events

• 1876 ​​– Ottoman Sultan Murad V is deposed; instead of his brother II. Abdulhamid became the sultan.
• 1886 – earthquake in Charleston, South Carolina; 100 people died.
• 1890 - The slave trade was banned by the Brussels General Act.
• 1910 – MKE Ankaragücü Youth and Sports Club, which was then based in Istanbul, was founded by the employees of Manufacturing-ı Harbiye in Zeytinburnu.
• 1913 – Western Thrace Turkish Republic was established.
• 1918 – Vahdettin became the sultan. On that day, the last sword-wielding ceremony in Ottoman history was held.
• 1928 – by Bertolt Brecht The Threepenny Opera The first screening of his play was held in Berlin.
• 1939 – Batıray submarine built in Germany was launched.
• 1957 – Malaysia gained its independence from the United Kingdom.
• 1962 - Trinidad and Tobago declared independence from the United Kingdom.
• 1966 – The Iraqi Army captured the city of Erbil, which was held by the Iraqi Kurdistan Patriotic Union.
• 1970 – “Halkapinar Sports Facilities”, where the Mediterranean Games will be held in Izmir, burned down during construction.
• 1980 – In Poland, the Solidarity Union is founded.
• 1986 – A Mexican airliner and a small aircraft collided in mid-air over Cerritos, California. All 67 people on the planes and 15 on the ground were killed.
• 1986 – A Soviet cruise ship collided with a tanker and sank in the Black Sea: 423 people died.
• 1988 – Sarp Border Gate was opened between Turkey and Georgia.
• 1991 – Kyrgyzstan declared its independence from the USSR.
• 1995 - Westwood Studios released "Command & Conquer", the first game in the Command & Conquer series.
• 1997 - Princess Diana and her friend Dodi Al Fayed died in a car accident in Paris.
• 1998 - North Korea launched its first satellite.
• 1999 – A Boeing 737-200 passenger plane crashes while taking off from Buenos Aires; 67 people died.
• 2005 - About 1000 people died in a stampede on a bridge in Baghdad.
• 2010 – The Iraq War officially ends with the speech of US President Barack Obama.

Births

• 12 – Caligula, Roman Emperor (d. 41)
• 161 – Commodus, Roman Emperor (d. 192)
• 1569 – Cihangir, Mughal Emperor (d. 1627)
• 1663 Guillaume Amontons, French physicist (d. 1705)
• 1786 – Michel-Eugène Chevreul, French chemist (d. 1889)
• 1802 – Huseyin Kaptan Gradashcevic, II. Ayan system abolished in the Ottoman Empire. Bosnian commander who rebelled against Mahmud's innovations (b. 1834)
• 1821 – Hermann von Helmholtz, German physiologist (d. 1894)
• 1834 Amilcare Ponchielli, Italian composer (d. 1886)
• 1837 – Édouard Jean-Marie Stephan, French astronomer (d. 1923)
• 1843 – Georg von Hertling, German statesman and philosopher (d. 1919)
• 1868 – Musahipzade Celal, Turkish playwright (d. 1959)
• 1870 – Maria Montessori, Italian educator (d. 1952)
• 1871 – James E. Ferguson, Texas democratic politician (d. 1944)
• 1874 – Edward Thorndike, American psychologist (d. 1949)
• 1879 – Taisho, Emperor of Japan (d. 1926)
• 1880 – Wilhelmina, Queen of the Netherlands (d. 1962)
• 1884 – George Sarton, Belgian chemist (d. 1956)
• 1893 – Nestor Nijankivsk, Ukrainian composer, pianist and music critic
• 1897 – Fredric March, American actor (d. 1975)
• 1905 – Robert Fox Bacher, American nuclear physicist (d. 2004)
• 1908 – William Saroyan, American playwright and novelist (d. 1981)
• 1908 – Paul-Jacques Bonzon, French writer (d. 1978)
• 1913 – Bernard Lovell, English physicist and radio-astronomer (d. 2012)
• 1915 – Raif Aybar, Turkish politician (d. 2005)
• 1917 – Turgut Sunalp, Turkish soldier and politician (d. 1999)
• 1918 – Alan Jay Lerner, American songwriter (d. 1986)
• 1921 – Raymond Williams, Welsh author, scholar, novelist and critic (d. 1988)
• 1923 George Voorhis, American actor (d. 1989)
• 1924 – Buddy Hackett, American comedian, actor, and voice actor (d. 2003)
• 1925 – Maurice Pialat, French director, screenwriter, actor, and Palme d'Or winner (d. 2003)
• 1928 James Coburn, American actor (d. 2002)
• 1932 – Allan Fotheringham, Canadian journalist, reporter, columnist, and television host (d. 2020)
• 1935 – Frank Robinson, American baseball player (d. 2019)
• 1936 – Igor Zhukov, Russian pianist, conductor, and sound engineer (d. 2018)
• 1936 – John Mendelsohn, American physicist (d. 2019)
• 1937 – Warren Berlinger, American actor (d. 2020)
• 1945 – Itzhak Perlman, Israeli-American violinist and conductor
• 1945 – Van Morrison, Northern Irish musician
• 1948 – Holger Osieck, German coach
• 1948 – Rudolf Schenker, German guitarist (Scorpions)
• 1948 – Serkan Acar, Turkish football player (d. 2013)
• 1949 – H. David Politzer, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate in Physics
• 1949 – Richard Gere, American actor
• 1950 – Anne McLellan, Canadian liberal politician and academic
• 1953 – György Károly, Hungarian poet and writer (d. 2018)
• 1954 – Robert Kocharyan, 2nd President of Armenia
• 1955 – Edwin Moses, American athlete
• 1956 - Tsai Ing-wen, the first female president to be elected president of the Republic of China (Taiwan).
• 1960 - Hassan Nasrallah, general secretary of Hezbollah in Lebanon
• 1962 – Dee Bradley Baker, American voice artist
• 1966 – Lyuboslav Penev, Bulgarian national football player
• 1968 – Jolene Watanabe, American professional international tennis player and coach (d. 2019)
• 1969 – Muharrem Erkek, Turkish lawyer and politician
• 1970 – Nikola Gruevski, Prime Minister of Macedonia
• 1970 – Rania al Abdullah, Queen of Jordan
• 1971 – Pádraig Harrington, Irish golfer
• 1971 – Chris Tucker, American actor and comedian
• 1976 – Roque Junior, Brazilian football player
• 1977 – Arzu Yanardag, Turkish model and actress
• 1977 Jeff Hardy, American professional wrestler
• 1977 – Ian Harte, Irish national football player
• 1978 – Philippe Christanval, French former international football player
• 1979 – Ivan Cvetkov, Bulgarian-Dutch football player
• 1979 – Mickie James, American professional wrestler
• 1980 – Joe Budden, American rapper
• 1982 – Collins Mbesuma, Zambian national football player
• 1982 – José Manuel Reina, Spanish football player
• 1983 - Milan Bisevac, Serbian football player
• 1983 – Ebru Şancı, Turkish model, presenter and actress
• 1984 – Efraín Ruales, Ecuadorian actor, television presenter, model, and musician (d. 2021)
• 1984 - Charl Schwartzel, South African golfer
• 1985 – Mabel Matiz, Turkish singer
• 1985 – Rolando, Portuguese football player
• 1985 – Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and Minister of Defense
• 1986 – Ryan Kelley, American actor
• 1988 - Ember Moon, American professional wrestler
• 1988 – David Ospina, Colombian football player
• 1990 – Oliver Adams, American actor
• 1991 – Cédric Soares, Portuguese national football player
• 1994 – Takeru Okada, Japanese football player
• 1994 - Shintaro Kokubu, Japanese football player

Deaths

• 577 – John Scholasticos, 32nd Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul (dy 503)
• 869 – Bukhari, Islamic scholar (b. 810)
• 1056 – Theodora, Byzantine empress who reigned with her sister Zoi in 1042 and alone from 1055-1056 (b. 984)
• 1234 – Go-Horikawa, 86th emperor of Japan in traditional succession (b. 1212)
• 1324 – II. Henri, last crowned king of Jerusalem (b. 1270)
• 1422 – Henry V, King of England and Ireland (b. 1386)
• 1528 – Matthias Grünewald, German painter (b. 1470)
• 1795 – François-André Danican Philidor, French chess player and composer (b. 1726)
• 1811 – Louis Antoine de Bougainville, French admiral and explorer (discovered bougainvillea) (b. 1729)
• 1832 – Everard Home, English surgeon (b. 1756)
• 1867 – Charles Baudelaire, French poet (b. 1821)
• 1920 – Wilhelm Wundt, German psychologist (b. 1832)
• 1927 – Andranik Ozanyan, Ottoman Armenian guerrilla leader (b. 1865)
• 1855 – Eduard Meyer, German historian (b. 1855)
• 1921 – Karl von Bülow, German marshal (b. 1846)
• 1941 – Marina Tsvetayeva, Russian poet (b. 1892)
• 1942 – Georg von Bismarck, German soldier (b. 1891)
• 1945 – Stefan Banach, Polish mathematician (b. 1892)
• 1948 – Andrey Zhdanov, Soviet politician (b. 1896)
• 1951 – Mazhar Osman Usman, Turkish psychiatric specialist (b. 1884)
• 1962 – Alf Spouncer, English football player and manager (b. 1877)
• 1963 – Georges Braque, French cubist painter (b. 1882)
• 1967 – Ilya Ehrenburg, Soviet writer (b. 1891)
• 1967 – Samed Behrengi, Azeri-Iranian teacher and writer of children's stories and folk tales (b. 1939)
• 1969 – Rocky Marciano, American boxer (b. 1923)
• 1973 – John Ford, American film director (b. 1894)
• 1985 – Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Australian virologist (b. 1889)
• 1986 – Henry Moore, English sculptor (b. 1898)
• 1986 – Urho Kekkonen, Finnish politician (b. 1900)
• 1991 – Cliff Lumsdon, Canadian swimmer (b. 1931)
• 1997 – Diana Frances Spencer, Princess of Wales (b. 1961)
• 1997 – Dodi Al Fayed, British businessman of Egyptian descent (b. 1955)
• 2002 – George Porter, English chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1920)
• 2005 – Joseph Rotblat, English physicist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (b. 1908)
• 2006 – Mohammed Abdul Wahab, former Egyptian football player (b. 1983)
• 2007 – Gay Brewer, American golfer (b. 1932)
• 2010 – Laurent Fignon, French professional road cyclist (b. 1960)
• 2011 – Rosel Zech, German actress (b. 1940)
• 2012 – Sergey Sokolov, Soviet soldier and Marshal of the Soviet Union (b. 1911)
• 2013 – David Frost, English journalist, author and presenter (b. 1939)
• 2015 – Yalçın Güzelce, Turkish theater, cinema and TV series actor (b. 1951)
• 2016 – Antonino Fernández Rodríguez, Spanish businessman (b. 1917)
• 2017 – Richard Anderson, American actor (b. 1926)
• 2017 – Janne Carlsson, Swedish musician, film and television actress (b. 1937)
• 2017 – Mike Cockerill, Austrian sports journalist (b. 1960)
• 2017 – Egon Günther, German film director and screenwriter (b. 1927)
• 2018 – Susan Brown, American actress (b. 1932)
• 2018 – Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Italian geneticist (b. 1922)
• 2018 – Carole Shelley, English actress (b. 1939)
• 2018 – Aleksandr Zakharchenko, Ukrainian separatist leader and military leader (b. 1976)
• 2019 – Anna Amendola, Italian actor (b. 1927)
• 2019 – Anthoine Hubert, French speedway driver (b. 1996)
• 2019 – Immanuel Wallerstein, American sociologist (b. 1930)
• 2020 – Nina Bocharova, Soviet-Ukrainian gymnast (b. 1924)
• 2020 – Haldun Boysan, Turkish cinema and TV series actor and voice actor (b. 1958)
• 2020 – Pranab Mukherjee, Indian politician (b. 1935)
• 2020 – Tom Seaver, American professional baseball pitcher (b. 1944)
• 2021 – İnci Çayırlı, Turkish Classical Music interpreter and choir conductor (b. 1935)
• 2021 – Ferhan Şensoy, Turkish actor, writer, screenwriter and poet (b. 1951)

Holidays and special occasions

• Liberation of Sivaslı district of Uşak from Greek occupation (1922)
• Polish Solidarity Day
• Kyrgyzstan Independence Day
• Trinidad Tobago Independence Day