1988 Nepal earthquake
The 1988 Nepal earthquake occurred in Nepal near the Indian border and affected much of northern Bihar. The magnitude 6.9 earthquake shook the region on August 21, killing at least 709 persons and injuring thousands. The earthquake struck in two installments of 10 seconds and 15 seconds each and left cracks in 50,000 buildings, including Raj Bhavan and the old Secretariat Building in Patna, Bihar.
David B. Steinman died
David Barnard Steinman was an American civil engineer. He was the designer of the Mackinac Bridge and many other notable bridges, and a published author. He grew up in New York City's lower Manhattan, and lived with the ambition of making his mark on the Brooklyn Bridge that he lived under. David B. Steinman built bridges in the United States, Thailand, England, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Canada, Korea, Iraq and Pakistan.
1883 Rochester tornado
On August 21, 1883, a devastating tornado affected southeastern portions - the Driftless Area - of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The massive tornado, retrospectively estimated to have been an F5 on the modern Fujita scale, caused at least 37 deaths and over 200 injuries.
Claude-Louis Navier died
Claude-Louis Navier was a French mechanical engineer and physicist who specialized in continuum mechanics and often considered to be the founder of modern structural analysis. He directed the construction of bridges, formulated the general theory of elasticity and established the elastic modulus as a property of materials independent of the second moment of area. His major contribution, however, remains the Navier-Stokes equations (1822), central to fluid mechanics.
