Doohan clips to fourth world title
1997 - Australian Michael Doohan joined motorcycling’s greats when victory in the British Grand Prix clinched his fourth successive 500cc world championship title. The 32-year-old becomes only the third man to win four straight titles after Briton Mike Hailwood (1962-65) and Italian great Giacomo Agostini, who won seven in a row from 1966. “When I started racing I could never have dreamt that I would win four championships,” said Doohan. He had won nine of the 10 previous races this season and such was his lead that he needed only a top seven finish to clinch the title with four races to spare. But he was in no mood to take things easy. “I really wanted to win and was not just riding for points,” he said.
August 17
1743 - Sweden cedes southern Finland to Russia in the Peace of Abo.
1859 - The first airmail in the US, sent by balloon, takes off from Lafayette, Indiana.
1879 - Ferdinand Lesseps of France forms the Panama Canal Company.
1920 - Romania joins Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in alliance.
1945 - Indonesia declares its independence from the Netherlands.
1976 - Tidal wave on the Philippine island of Mindanao leaves estimated 8,000 people dead or missing.
1980 - Diplomatic officials close the British Embassy in Iran because of hostile demonstrations.
1985 - A car packed with dynamite explodes outside a supermarket in Beirut killing more than 50 people and wounding 100.
1988 - Pakistan’s President Zia-ul-Haq and US Ambassador Arnold Raphel are killed when their Pakistani military plane explodes.
1991 - Italy repatriates the last of an estimated 18,000 Albanian refugees who arrived in southern Italy by boat earlier in the month.
1995 - A bomb explodes at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France.
1996 - Ruth Perry becomes Africa’s first female head of state when she is chosen by a meeting of West African leaders to chair Liberia’s ruling council.
1999 - An earthquake in northwest Turkey kills more than 2,000.
2000 - Iraq officially reopens its international airport, but there are no aircraft, passengers or cargo to handle.
2002 - Shaikh Hamad Bin Eisa Al Khalifa becomes the first Bahraini leader to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
2004 - Shaikh Ahmad Bin Hasher Al Maktoum wins an Olympic gold medal at the men’s double trap shooting in Athens.
2007 - A TAM Airlines Flight 3054 crashes in São Paulo, Brazil, after overrunning the runway in heavy rain, killing 199 people.
2008 - The Israel cabinet votes to release 200 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture.
2013 - Usain Bolt wins his third successive world 200-metre title at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow.
2016 - Google joins video chat with Duo launch.
