September 1
1939:
German invasion of Poland.
The lethal combination of German blitzkrieg tactics, French inactivity, and Russian perfidy doomed Poland to swift defeat this day in 1939, when Adolf Hitler invaded the country and sparked World War II.
1985:
The wreck of the Titanic was found on the ocean floor at a depth of about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres).
1969:
A group of young army officers led by Muammar al-Qaddafi deposed the king and made Libya a republic.
1951:
Australia, New Zealand, and the United States signed the ANZUS Pact.
1930:
The Young Plan, the second renegotiation of Germany's World War I reparation payments, went into effect.
1923:
A great earthquake struck the Tokyo-Yokohama metropolitan area; the death toll from the shock was estimated at 142,800.
1914:
The last known passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati (Ohio) Zoo.
1870:
The French army suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Sedan in the Franco-German War.
1864:
The Charlottetown Conference, the first of a series of meetings that ultimately led to the formation of the Dominion of Canada, convened at Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
1838:
American frontiersman William Clark, who shared with Meriwether Lewis the leadership of the epic Lewis and Clark Expedition, died.
September 2
1666:
Great Fire of London .
On this day in 1666 the Great Fire of London began accidentally in the house of the king's baker; it burned for four days and destroyed a large part of the city, including Old St. Paul's Cathedral and about 13,000 houses.
1945:
World War II came to an end as Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru and General Umezu Yoshijiro signed Japan's formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri.
1945:
Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent from France.
1928:
American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Horace Silver was born.
1898:
Anglo-Egyptian forces under Major General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener (later Lord Kitchener) defeated the Sudanese forces of the Mahdist leader ʿAbd Allāh in the Battle of Omdurman.
1792:
The September Massacres—mass killings of prisoners in Paris—began. The massacres were instigated by beliefs that political prisoners during the French Revolution were going to rise up in their jails to join a counterrevolutionary plot.
31:
Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) won a decisive victory over Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium.
September 3
1976:
Viking 2's Mars landing.
After a nearly yearlong journey, NASA's robotic spacecraft Viking 2 landed on Mars this day in 1976 and began relaying information about the planet's atmosphere and soil as well as colour photographs of the rocky surface.
1894:
Labor Day was celebrated as a legal holiday in the United States for the first time.
1783:
The Treaty of Paris (part of the Peace of Paris) was signed between Britain and the United States.
1658:
English soldier and statesman Oliver Cromwell died in London.
1609:
English navigator Henry Hudson, in a quest for a passage to India on behalf of the Dutch East India Company, sailed into the harbour of present-day New York City and up the river that now bears his name.
September 4
1781:
Los Angeles founded.
On this day in 1781, Spanish settlers laid claim to what became Los Angeles, now the second most populous U.S. city and the home to Hollywood, whose name is synonymous with the American motion-picture industry.
1989:
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. Air Force launched the last Titan III rocket.
1972:
American swimmer Mark Spitz won his seventh gold medal during the Munich Olympic Games, the first person ever to do so in a single Olympics.
1957:
The Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel automobile.
1908: Novelist and short-story writer Richard Wright, among the first African American writers to protest white treatment of blacks, was born.
1870:
Napoleon III, who ruled France first as president (1850–52) and then as emperor (1852–70), was deposed and the Third Republic proclaimed.
1864:
John Hunt Morgan, the Confederate guerrilla leader of “Morgan's Raiders,” was killed by Federal troops.
925:
King Athelstan of West Saxony became the first king to rule all of England.
September 5
2001:
Evidence provided for black hole theory.
At a scientific conference in Washington, D.C., this day in 2001, scientists described an observation of energy flares that provided strong evidence of the theorized black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy.
1975:
Lynette (“Squeaky”) Fromme attempted to assassinate U.S. President Gerald R. Ford.
1972:
Palestinian terrorists attacked the Olympic Village in Munich, West Germany, during the Summer Olympic Games, taking hostage and eventually killing 11 members of the Israeli team.
1882:
The first Labor Day parade was held in New York City in honour of the American worker.
1836:
Sam Houston was elected president of the Republic of Texas.
1774:
Caspar David Friedrich, a pioneering early 19th-century German Romantic painter, was born.
1725:
Marie Leszczyńska of Poland was married to King Louis XV of France.
September 6
1901:
U.S. President William McKinley assassinated.
Republican William McKinley, the 25th president of the United States (1897–1901), was shot this day in 1901 by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, and died eight days later.
2000:
Tuvalu, a group of nine coral islands in the west-central Pacific with a population of about 10,000, became the 189th member of the United Nations.
1991:
The Soviet Union recognized the independence of the Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
1944:
Germany fired the first long-range V-2 missile at an Allied target during World War II.
1914:
French and British forces launched an offensive against advancing Germans in the First Battle of the Marne during World War I.
1860:
American social reformer and pacifist Jane Addams, cowinner (with Nicholas Murray Butler) of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1931, was born.
1792:
French Revolutionary leader Georges Danton was elected deputy for Paris to the National Convention.
September 7
1191:
Battle of Arsūf.
On this day in 1191 the Muslim army of Saladin attacked the Crusaders of Richard I (the Lion-Heart) at the Battle of Arsūf, and, though Richard successfully counterattacked in the evening, his march to Jerusalem was delayed.
1885:
American poet and novelist Elinor Wylie was born in Somerville, New Jersey.
1876:
The Younger Brothers, a group of American outlaws, were captured following an unsuccessful bank robbery.
1860:
Giuseppe Garibaldi entered Naples, Italy, and proclaimed himself “Dictator of the Two Sicilies.”
1822:
Dom Pedro I declared the independence of Brazil.
1812:
Napoleon's French forces narrowly defeated the Russians under Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov at the Battle of Borodino.
September 8
1429:
Paris attacked by Joan of Arc.
On this day in 1429, French heroine Joan of Arc, a peasant girl who believed she was acting under divine guidance, attempted to oust the duke of Burgundy and take Paris for the newly crowned King Charles VII.
1998:
Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals broke Roger Maris's 1961 record for most home runs in a regular professional baseball season by hitting his 62nd of the season (he finished the season with 70 home runs).
1974:
Richard M. Nixon, who had resigned the U.S. presidency on August 8, 1974, was pardoned by his successor, Gerald R. Ford.
1945:
At the end of World War II, the first U.S. troops entered the Korean peninsula south of the 38th parallel to receive the Japanese surrender; north of the parallel, Japanese troops surrendered to Soviet forces.
1781:
American troops commanded by General Nathanael Greene defeated British forces under Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart in the Battle of Eutaw Springs during the American Revolution.
1664:
As part of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the duke of York (later James II) took the city of New Amsterdam, whose name was changed to New York.
September 9
1976:
Death of Mao Zedong.
Marxist revolutionary Mao Zedong, who died this day in 1976, emerged as the undisputed Chinese Communist Party leader following the Long March (1934–35) and dominated China in the period after the communist takeover in 1949.
1998:
Special Prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr sent to Congress the report on his investigation into the actions of U.S. President Bill Clinton in the Whitewater affair and subsequent matters, including Clinton's improper sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
1956:
Rock and roll star Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
1948:
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed, setting the stage for the Korean War.
1919:
The Boston Police Strike began after the city denied the police's right to unionize.
1861:
Sally Louisa Tompkins was commissioned a cavalry captain; she was the only woman to be commissioned in the Confederate army.
1774:
The Suffolk Resolves, protesting the Intolerable Acts, were passed at a meeting in Massachusetts.
1754:
William Bligh, the English admiral who commanded the HMS Bounty at the time of the famous mutiny, was born.
1087:
The English king William I (the Conqueror) died from an injury suffered while attempting to capture the town of Mantes and was later buried at St. Stephen's Church.
September 10
1608:
John Smith chosen president of Jamestown.
Having survived capture by Indians (reputedly through the efforts of Pocahontas, a chief's daughter), John Smith became president of Jamestown colony, the first permanent English settlement in North America, this day in 1608.
1988:
By winning the U.S. Open, Steffi Graf completed the grand slam of tennis; she was the first woman to accomplish the feat since Margaret Court in 1970.
1974:
Guinea-Bissau gained independence from Portugal.
1919:
Austria and the Allied powers signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain, concluding World War I.
1894:
The United Daughters of the Confederacy, an American women's patriotic society, was founded in Nashville, Tennessee.
1813:
U.S. naval forces under the command of Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the British in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.
1721:
The Second Northern War (1700–21) was concluded by the Peace of Nystad.
1651:
Japanese rebel Yui Shosetsu committed suicide after the failure of his plot against the Tokugawa shogunate.
1419:
John the Fearless, second duke of Burgundy, was killed during a meeting with the future king Charles VII at Montereau, France.
422:
Celestine I was elected to succeed Boniface I as pope.
September 11
2001:
World Trade Center and Pentagon attacked by terrorists.
On this day in 2001, 19 militants associated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four planes in the United States, crashing three into buildings (the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania) and killing some 3,000 people.
1973:
General Augusto Pinochet led a coup d'état, overthrowing the government of President Salvador Allende of Chile.
1944:
Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Canada at the second Quebec Conference.
1855:
The 11-month Siege of Sevastopol ended after British and French troops finally captured the main naval base of the Russian Black Sea fleet during the Crimean War.
1814:
U.S. naval forces under Thomas Macdonough defeated a larger British force at the Battle of Lake Champlain during the War of 1812.
1777:
British forces defeated the Americans at the Battle of the Brandywine during the American Revolution.
1709:
The duke of Marlborough led a British army of 100,000 men against a French army of 90,000 at the Battle of Malplaquet in the War of the Spanish Succession.
1697:
Austrian forces won a decisive victory over an Ottoman army at the Battle of Zenta.
September 12
1764:
Death of French composer Rameau.
French composer of the late Baroque period Jean-Philippe Rameau—known for his harpsichord music and famous as a composer of operas, including the masterpiece Pygmalion (1748)—died on this day in 1764.
1980:
The senior command of the Turkish army, led by General Kenan Evren, carried out a bloodless coup in their homeland.
1974:
Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia was deposed by the Derg, a committee of revolutionary soldiers.
1959:
The Soviet Union launched Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the Moon.
1943:
German commandos effected the escape of Benito Mussolini to Munich during World War II.
1934:
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania signed the Treaty of Understanding and Cooperation, providing for mutual defense mainly against Nazi Germany, which had replaced the Soviet Union as the most likely aggressor against the Baltic states.
1919:
Italian nationalist poet Gabriele D'Annunzio led an occupation of the Adriatic port city of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), bringing to the forefront the Fiume question.
1814:
The Genevan republic was admitted to the ranks of the Swiss cantons.
1733:
Stanisław I was elected king of Poland by the Sejm (Diet) of 12,000 delegates in Warsaw; the move led to the War of the Polish Succession.
1683:
The Siege of Vienna ended after a combined force led by John III Sobieski of Poland defeated the Turkish invaders.
September 13
1598:
Philip III crowned king of Spain and Portugal.
King Philip III of Spain and Portugal, crowned on this day in 1598, was virtuous in his private affairs but indifferent as a ruler and extravagant in his spending, exacerbating Spain's growing economic problems.
1943:
Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang Chung-cheng) became president of China.
1886:
African American educator, writer, and philosopher Alain Locke, remembered as the leader and chief interpreter of the Harlem Renaissance, was born.
1857:
Milton Snavely Hershey, founder of the Hershey Chocolate Company, was born in Pennsylvania.
1759:
British forces defeated the French in the Battle of Quebec.
1515:
Swiss mercenaries attacked the French position near Marignano; the next day they were defeated by French and Italian troops, giving rise to Switzerland's policy of neutrality.
September 14
1847:
Mexico City captured by U.S. forces.
U.S. General Winfield Scott's advance on Mexico City was marked by an unbroken series of victories that culminated this day in 1847, when he entered Mexico City and ended the military phase of the Mexican War.
1994:
Acting commissioner of baseball Bud Selig announced that the remainder of the 1994 major league baseball season, including the World Series, would be canceled. Players and owners had failed to reach a settlement of the players' strike begun in August.
1975:
Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint, was canonized by the Roman Catholic church.
1927:
Isadora Duncan, a pioneer of modern expressive dance, died in France in an automobile accident.
1901:
U.S. President William McKinley died eight days after being shot in Buffalo, New York.
1849:
Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, known chiefly for his development of the concept of the conditioned reflex, was born.
1829:
Russia and the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Edirne, concluding the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29.
1814:
Francis Scott Key was inspired to write "The Star-Spangled Banner" after Fort McHenry successfully withstood a British attack.
1752:
Great Britain adopted the Gregorian calendar; the date was moved ahead 11 days (the day after September 2 became September 14).
September 15
1821:
Central Americans granted independence.
On this day in 1821, Central American notables accepted a plan drafted by the Mexican caudillo Agustín de Iturbide that brought independence from Spain to Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
1978:
Muhammad Ali won the world heavyweight boxing championship for the third time.
1950:
United Nations troops landed at Inchʾŏn, South Korea, crippling a North Korean invasion during the Korean War.
1916:
The tank was used for the first time in combat, by the British during World War I.
1862:
During the American Civil War, Confederates under General Thomas Jonathan (“Stonewall”) Jackson captured Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia), and took more than 12,500 prisoners, the largest Union surrender in the war.
1812:
Napoleon's forces invaded Moscow and found the city abandoned, two-thirds of it destroyed by fire.
1590:
Giambattista Castagna was elected pope as Urban VII; he died of malaria 12 days later.
September 16
1620:
Mayflower's departure for America.
On this date in 1620, English colonists aboard the Mayflower set sail for America, where they founded Plymouth, Massachusetts, after 41 men, including William Bradford and Myles Standish, signed the Mayflower Compact.
1998:
The Basque separatist organization ETA announced an indefinite cease-fire after 30 years of terrorist guerrilla attacks in Spain that were blamed for 800 deaths; the peace lasted 14 months.
1978:
Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq was proclaimed president of Pakistan.
1977:
American operatic soprano Maria Callas died in Paris.
1975:
Papua New Guinea achieved full independence from Australia.
1970:
King Ḥussein of Jordan declared martial law following the hijacking of four international airliners by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
1919:
The U.S. Congress granted a national charter to the American Legion, an organization of U.S. war veterans.
1810:
A local revolt in Mexico was sparked by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a parish priest in Dolores, who uttered the Grito de Dolores (“Cry of Dolores”), calling for the end of rule by Spanish peninsulars, for equality of races, and for redistribution of land.
1380:
Charles V, who was king of France from 1364 and led the country in a miraculous recovery from the devastation of the first phase of the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453), died.
September 17
1978:
Camp David Accords concluded.
The Camp David Accords, negotiated by U.S. President Jimmy Carter, were completed this day in 1978, leading to a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel and a broader framework for pursuing peace in the Middle East.
1991:
North Korea and South Korea were admitted to the United Nations.
1948:
Folke, Greve (count) Bernadotte, was assassinated by Jewish extremists while serving the United Nations as mediator between the Arabs and the Israelis.
1939:
During World War II the Soviet army invaded Poland from the east, and the Polish government fled to Romania.
1901:
British adventurer Sir Francis Chichester, who sailed around the world alone in 1966–67 in the 55-foot (17-metre) yacht Gipsy Moth IV, was born.
1861:
The forces of Buenos Aires province, commanded by Governor Bartolomé Mitre, defeated those of the Argentine Confederation, led by Justo José de Urquiza, at the Battle of Pavón.
1631:
The Swedish-Saxon army under King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden destroyed the army of the Roman Catholic Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II and the Catholic League, under Johann Tserclaes, Graf (count) von Tilly, in the Battle of Breitenfeld.
1549:
Pope Paul III suspended the Council of Trent after Charles V forbade the Spanish and German prelates to go to Bologna.
1374:
The Polish nobility and their king, Louis I, signed the Pact of Koszyce.
September 18
1931:
Mukden seized by Japanese.
On this day in 1931, in the so-called Mukden Incident, the Japanese army in Manchuria used the pretext of an explosion along its railway to occupy Mukden and to increase its control, within three months, to all of Manchuria.
2001:
For the second straight day, Typhoon Nari pounded Taiwan with record rainfalls, causing massive flooding and killing 79 people.
1965:
Japanese astronomers Ikeya Kaoru and Seki Tsutomu discovered Comet Ikeya-Seki.
1948:
A local communist commander seized power in Madiun, Indonesia, as part of a rebellion effort against the Sukarno government in an incident known as the Madiun Affair.
1932:
By royal decree the dual kingdom of the Hejaz and Najd, along with its dependencies, was unified under the name of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
1898:
British forces under Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener confronted French forces commanded by Jean-Baptiste Marchand at the disputed fort of Fashoda in the Egyptian Sudan.
1895:
Booker T. Washington declared the Atlanta Compromise—a classic statement on race relations—in a speech at the Atlanta (Georgia) Exposition.
1885:
Bulgarian nationalists in Eastern Rumelia mounted a coup and declared the province's unification with Bulgaria, leading to the Serbo-Bulgarian War.
1819:
French physicist Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault, who introduced and helped develop a technique of measuring with extreme accuracy the absolute velocity of light and provided experimental proof that the Earth rotates on its axis, was born.
September 19
1796:
George Washington's Farewell Address published.
In his Farewell Address, printed in a Philadelphia newspaper on this day in 1796, George Washington, the first U.S. president, implored his country to maintain neutrality and avoid entangling alliances with Europe.
1955:
President Juan Perón of Argentina was overthrown and fled to Paraguay after an army-navy revolt led by democratically inspired officers.
1863:
The Battle of Chickamauga Creek, an important engagement of the American Civil War that was fought over control of the railroad centre at nearby Chattanooga, Tennessee, began.
1783:
The Montgolfier brothers sent aloft a balloon with a rooster, a duck, and a sheep aboard, rapidly advancing French aeronautics.
1657:
John II Casimir Vasa, king of Poland, signed the Treaty of Wehlau, renouncing the suzerainty of the Polish crown over ducal Prussia and making Frederick William the duchy's sovereign ruler.
September 20
1870:
Rome incorporated into Italy.
On this day in 1870, Italian troops occupied Rome, leading to the eventual incorporation of Rome into the Kingdom of Italy and the limiting of papal governing authority to the Vatican itself and a small district around it.
1854:
British and French forces defeated the Russians at the Battle of the Alma, a victory that left the Russian naval base of Sevastopol vulnerable and endangered the entire Russian position in the Crimean War.
1792:
The French Legislative Assembly was replaced by the National Convention, marking the formal beginning of the First Republic.
1761:
The Portuguese Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida was burned to death for his involvement in the Conspiracy of the Távoras.