August 29 in History

In August 1882, Australia defeated England at The Oval in London by seven runs, the first loss for an English side on home soil to Australia. The result shocked the English public and prompted a mock obituary in a newspaper that gave rise to the Ashes, now one of the oldest and most celebrated rivalries in international sport. The contest still takes its name from that notice.

Hurricane Katrina struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in late August 2005 and became one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in American history. Its worst effects came not from the wind alone but from the failure of flood-protection systems in New Orleans, which left most of the city underwater. The disaster exposed deep weaknesses in engineering, emergency planning, and the nation's treatment of its poorest residents, and it reshaped how the United States thinks about disaster response.