August 31st 1997

This has no place on a technically-oriented blog, and perhaps I am just an unenlightened, uncultured grump – but despite what the media would lead people to believe other things happened in 1997 aside from a member of an irrelevant, though “royal” family passing away. A sampling from wikipedia of events happening around the same time.

• August 15 – India celebrates 50 years of independence from British rule.
• August 20 – Souhane massacre in Algeria; over 60 people killed, 15 kidnapped.
• August 25 – Egon Krenz, the former East German leader, is convicted of a shoot-to-kill Berlin Wall policy.
• August 26 – Beni-Ali massacre in Algeria; 60-100 people killed.
• August 26 – The Independent International Commission on Decommissioning is set up in Northern Ireland, as part of the peace process.
• August 29 – Rais massacre in Algeria; over 98 (and possibly up to 400) people killed.
• August 29 – Christopher Maier of Lexington, Kentucky is bludgeoned to death by serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz. Angel also rapes and beats Christopher’s girlfriend, who survives. This is the first of a string of murders that Angel commits.
• September 3 – Arizona Governor Fife Symington is convicted for various crimes tied to his real estate business, effectively forcing him out of office.
• September 4 – In Lorain, Ohio, the last Ford Thunderbird for three years rolls off the assembly line.
• September 5 – Beni-Messous massacre in Algeria; over 87 killed.
• September 5 – The IOC picks Athens, Greece to be the host city for the 2004 Summer Olympics.
• September 5 – Mother Theresa of Calcutta dies of heart failure in Kolkata, India.
• September 6 – A Jean Michel Jarre Oxygene in Moscow concert, celebrating the city’s 850th anniversary, draws 3.5 million people.
• September 7 – First test flight of the F-22 Raptor.

My policy over the past week, and apparently today as well, is to remove any news source that runs more than 1 story about this event from RSS and/or iGoogle (which is a pretty lame name by the way).