Daily List

Today in History, August 31st

On August 31, 1997, Princess Diana died after a car crash in Paris. Plus Poland's Gdańsk Agreement and the 1886 Charleston earthquake.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published August 31, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

August 31 is best known for 1997, when Diana, Princess of Wales, died after a car crash in a Paris tunnel. The date also marks the 1980 Gdańsk Agreement that gave rise to Poland’s Solidarity union and the 1886 earthquake that shook Charleston, South Carolina.

The big story: Princess Diana dies in Paris (1997)

Diana’s divorce from Prince Charles had become final the year before, but the cameras never stopped following her. Shortly after midnight on August 31, she and her companion Dodi Fayed left the Ritz Paris hotel in a car chased by photographers on motorcycles. About three minutes later, the car hit a pillar at the entrance to the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. Fayed and the driver, Henri Paul, died at the scene. A bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, was badly hurt but survived. Diana was taken to Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was 36. The photographers were blamed at first, but a formal investigation found they did not cause the crash, and that the driver had been under the influence of alcohol and prescription drugs. Her funeral in London on September 6 drew a worldwide audience of more than 2 billion people.

More events on August 31

Year	What happened
1751	Robert Clive of the British East India Company seized Arcot, India (Old Style), then held it through a 53-day siege.
1886	An earthquake estimated at about magnitude 7.6 struck near Charleston, South Carolina, killing more than 100 people and toppling thousands of chimneys.
1897	Thomas Edison received a patent for the Kinetograph, his motion picture camera.
1928	Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera premiered in Berlin. Its opening ballad later became the pop standard “Mack the Knife.”
1935	President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Neutrality Act, which barred U.S. arms sales to nations at war.
1955	William G. Cobb of General Motors showed off the Sunmobile, a 15-inch solar-powered model car, at an auto show in Chicago.
1980	Strike leader Lech Wałęsa and Poland’s communist government signed the Gdańsk Agreement, meeting many of the shipyard workers’ demands. The independent union Solidarity grew out of it.
1991	Kyrgyzstan declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
2015	German Chancellor Angela Merkel said “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do this”) as Germany committed to taking in large numbers of refugees.

Born on August 31

12: Caligula, Roman emperor from 37 to 41 CE, born in Antium.
1908: William Saroyan, writer of The Time of Your Life, who turned down the Pulitzer Prize for it, born in Fresno, California.
1945: Van Morrison, Northern Irish singer-songwriter, born in Belfast.