CNN Interactive - Almanac - August 25, 1998

A pretrial conference is scheduled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for Stephen Fagan, the father charged with kidnapping his two daughters nearly 20 years ago.

On Wednesday, August 26, President Jacques Chirac is scheduled to make his annual policy speech.
On Thursday, August 27, the Smithsonian is set to unveil Minerva, an intelligent mobile robot that will give tours at the National Museum of American History in Washington.
On Friday, August 28, a hearing is scheduled in Chicago for two boys, ages 7 and 8, accused in the murder of an 11-year-old girl.
On Saturday, August 29, the 30-day cooling-off period imposed by U.S. National Mediation Board on pilots for Northwest Airlines expires at 12:01 a.m. EDT.
On Sunday, August 30, U.S. President Bill Clinton is scheduled to return from his vacation in Martha's Vineyard.

NEWSLINK:		NOTABLE:
Hurricane Bonnie is heading for the southeastern United States. To find out more about how to track these ferocious storms, click here.		Today is Independence Day in Uruguay. Actress Anne Archer ("The Falcon Crest") is 51. Actor Sean Connery (James Bond movies) is 68. Musician Elvis Costello is 44. Country singer Billy Ray Cyrus is 37. Former TV host Monty Hall ("Let's Make a Deal") is 75. Actor Anthony Heald ("The Silence of the Lambs") is 54. Talk show host Regis Philbin is 65. Actor John Savage ("The Deer Hunter") is 49. Model Claudia Schiffer is 28. Actor Tom Skerritt ("Picket Fences") is 65. Actor Blair Underwood ("LA Law") is 34.

In 325, the Council Of Nicaea ended with the adoption of the Nicene Creed, establishing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
In 1580, Spanish forces under the Duke of Alva defeated the Portuguese at the Battle of Alcantara, securing Portugal as a Spanish realm.
In 1718, the city of New Orleans was founded and named in honor of the Duke of Orleans of France.
In 1825, Uruguay declared its independence from Spain.
In 1830, a revolt broke out in the French-speaking provinces of the Netherlands, against union into Belgium.
In 1875, Capt. Matthew Webb became the first person to swim across the English Channel.
In 1883, under the terms of the Treaty of Hue, France assumed the protectorate over Annam and Tonkin in what is now Vietnam.
In 1921, the United States and Germany signed a peace treaty ending the state of war between them.
In 1936, after a five-day show trial, 16 opponents of Josef Stalin were executed in Russia.
In 1940, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were incorporated into the Soviet Union.
In 1940, the British Air Force dropped its first bombs on Berlin in an overnight raid.
In 1942, the Duke of Kent, youngest brother of King George VI, was killed in a plane crash during a war mission to Iceland.
In 1943, Lord Louis Mountbatten was appointed World War II Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia.
In 1961, Brazilian President Janio Quadros resigned after only six months, claiming "terrible forces came forward to fight me." He went into exile in Australia.
In 1964, Kenneth Kaunda became president-designate of Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia.
In 1967, a new constitution came into effect in Paraguay, now celebrated each year by a public holiday.
In 1967, the leader of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell, was shot dead.
In 1975, in Rhodesia, formerly Southern Rhodesia, talks between the white minority government and black leaders opened in railway carriages near Victoria Falls.
In 1978, the Turin shroud, once venerated as the burial cloth of Christ, went on public display for the first time in 45 years.
In 1988, direct talks between Iran and Iraq began in an attempt to stop their Gulf War.
In 1989, after a 12-year, 4-billion-mile space journey, Voyager 2 flew over the cloudtops of the giant planet Neptune and its moon Triton, sending back photographs of swampy areas, frozen lakes and craters.
In 1991, Byelorussia (Belarus) declared independence from the Soviet Union.
In 1997, Egon Krenz, East Germany's last hard-line Communist leader, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in jail for the deaths of citizens killed as they tried to flee to the West over the Berlin Wall.