TODAY in HISTORY: AUGUST 26

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on August 26  

 

Reuters

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.