On this day in 12 August

[Peter1469]

Cleopatra, the Egyptian ruler, killed herself on August 12, 30 BCE by inducing an asp to bite her.

It was today in 1883 that the quagga, a type of South African zebra, went extinct.

And on August 12, 1990, fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson discovered the largest-ever Tyrannosaurus skeleton-- a 65 million-year-old specimen which was nicknamed Sue in her honor.

[Standing Wolf]

Also on this date...

In 1944 - Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed, along with his co-pilot, when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.

In 1981 - IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.

In 1985 - the world's worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people, with four survivors. One of those killed was Kyu Hashimoto, the singer whose hit single 'Sukiyaki' topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 charts for three weeks in 1963.