Today in HistoryToday is Thursday, August 31, the 243rd day of 2006. There are 122 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>

In 1881, the first US tennis championships (for men) were played, in Newport, R.I.

In 1888, Mary Ann Nichols was found murdered in London’s East End in what is generally regarded as the first slaying committed by “Jack the Ripper.”

In 1935, US president Roosevelt signed an act prohibiting the export of US arms to belligerents.

In 1962, Trinidad and Tobago became independent and joined the British Commonwealth.

In 1980, Poland’s Solidarity labour movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17-day-old strike.

In 1986, 82 people were killed when an Aeromexico jetliner and a small private plane collided over Cerritos, California.

In 1986, the Soviet passenger ship Admiral Nakhimov<$> collided with a merchant vessel in the Black Sea, causing both vessels to sink; up to 448 people reportedly died.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“All history is only one long story to this effect: men have struggled for power over their fellow men in order that they might win the joys of earth at the expense of others, and might shift the burdens of life from their own shoulders upon those of others.” — William Graham Sumner, American sociologist and economist (1840-1910).