Today in History: August 31

 Reuters

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on Aug. 31:

1907 - The Anglo-Russian Convention was signed in St Petersburg, settling differences between Britain and Russia over Persia, Afghanistan and Tibet.

1969 - Rocky Marciano, the American former world heavyweight boxing champion, was killed in an air crash in Iowa.

1989 - Britain's Princess Anne and her husband, Captain Mark Phillips, separated after 16 years of marriage.

1990 - East and West Germany signed a treaty to harmonise their legal and political systems after merging on Oct. 3.

1997 - Britain's Princess Diana and her companion Dodi Al Fayed were killed in a car crash in Paris.

2002 - Lionel Hampton, one of America's jazz legends, died aged 94. He pioneered and popularised the vibraphone and teamed up with a long list of jazz greats over a musical career that spanned six decades.

2003 - World's longest television makes its debut at Hong Kong's Shatin race track.

2005 - About 1,000 Iraqi Shi'ites died in a stampede over a Tigris River bridge in Baghdad, panicked by rumours that a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up.

2005 - The Polish-born British scientist Joseph Rotblat, who worked on the atomic bomb but went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize as a leading campaigner against nuclear weapons, died aged 96.

2006 - Norwegian police recovered Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream", two years after the masterpiece was stolen by gunmen from a museum in Oslo.

2016 - Brazil's Senate removes President Dilma Rousseff from office.