On August 31
On August 31, the Human Saga records one pivotal event: Kunar earthquake kills around 2,200 in Afghanistan (2025).
On this day
On 31 August 2025, a magnitude-6.0 earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan's Kunar province near the border with Pakistan, killing approximately 2,200 people and making it the deadliest quake to hit the country since 1998.
Also this week in history (Aug 28 – Sep 3)
On 2 September 31 BCE, the fleet of Octavian, commanded by Agrippa, defeated the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt in a naval battle off Actium on the western coast of Greece.
On 29 August 1831, working at the Royal Institution in London, Michael Faraday demonstrated electromagnetic induction by winding two insulated coils on opposite sides of an iron ring: switching current on or off in one coil induced a…
Receiving royal assent on 28 August 1833 and taking effect on 1 August 1834, the Slavery Abolition Act abolished slavery throughout most of the British Empire, freeing some 800,000 enslaved people, chiefly in the Caribbean, Mauritius and…
The First Opium War (1839–1842) pitted the Qing dynasty against the British Empire after China's suppression of the illegal opium trade at Canton.
On 1 September 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, north and south, employing fast-moving armoured and air forces in a campaign that became associated with the term Blitzkrieg.
On 3 September 1260, at Ain Jalut ('Spring of Goliath') in the Jezreel Valley of Palestine, the Mamluk army of Egypt under Sultan Qutuz and the general Baybars decisively defeated a Mongol force commanded by Hülegü's lieutenant Kitbuqa.
On 29 August 1526 Suleiman the Magnificent destroyed the army of King Louis II of Hungary at Mohács.
Signed in Paris on 3 September 1783, the Treaty of Paris formally ended the American Revolutionary War and secured Great Britain's recognition of the United States as a sovereign, independent nation.
Drawing on the principles agreed at Bandung in 1955, the Non-Aligned Movement was formally established at its first summit conference in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, from 1 to 6 September 1961.
On 28 August 1963 more than a quarter of a million people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, one of the largest political demonstrations in U.S. history to that point.