- 681 – Pope Honorius I is posthumously excommunicated by the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
- 1400 – Owain Glyndŵr is declared Prince of Wales by his followers.
- 1620 – Pilgrims set sail from England on the Mayflower.
- 1701 – James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the “Old Pretender”, becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland.
- 1732 – In Campo Maior, Portugal, a storm hits the Armory and a violent explosion ensues, killing two thirds of its inhabitants.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Harlem Heights is fought.
- 1779 – American Revolutionary War: The Franco-American Siege of Savannah begins.
- 1810 – With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain.
- 1863 – Robert College, in Istanbul, the first American educational institution outside the United States, is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.
- 1880 – The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York. The Sun is the United States’ oldest, continuously-independent college daily.
- 1893 – Settlers make a land run for prime land in the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma.
- 1908 – The General Motors Corporation is founded.
- 1914 – World War I: The Siege of Przemyśl (present-day Poland) begins.
- 1920 – The Wall Street bombing: A bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J. P. Morgan building in New York City killing 38 and injuring 400.
- 1940 – World War II: Italian troops conquer Sidi Barrani.
- 1943 – World War II: The German Tenth Army reports that it can no longer contain the Allied bridgehead around Salerno.
- 1945 – World War II: The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong comes to an end.
- 1955 – The military coup to unseat President Juan Perón of Argentina is launched at midnight.
- 1955 – A Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.
- 1956 – TCN-9 Sydney is the first Australian television station to commence regular broadcasts.
- 1959 – The first successful photocopier, the Xerox 914, is introduced in a demonstration on live television from New York City.
- 1961 – The United States National Hurricane Research Project drops eight cylinders of silver iodide into the eyewall of Hurricane Esther. Wind speed reduces by 10%, giving rise to Project Stormfury.
- 1961 – Typhoon Nancy, with possibly the strongest winds ever measured in a tropical cyclone, makes landfall in Osaka, Japan, killing 173 people.
- 1961 – Pakistan establishes its Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission with Abdus Salam as its head.
- 1963 – Malaysia is formed from the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak. However, Singapore soon leaves this new country.
- 1966 – The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber’s opera Antony and Cleopatra.
- 1970 – King Hussein of Jordan declares war against the Palestine Liberation Organization, the conflict which became to be known as Black September.
- 1975 – Papua New Guinea gains independence from Australia.
- 1975 – Cape Verde, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe join the United Nations.
- 1975 – The first prototype of the Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.
- 1976 – Armenian champion swimmer Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into a Yerevan reservoir.
- 1978 – The 7.4 Mw Tabas earthquake affects the city of Tabas, Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 15,000 people were killed.
- 1979 – Eight people escaped from East Germany to the west in a homemade hot air balloon.
- 1982 – Lebanon War: The Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon takes place.
- 1987 – The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.
- 1990 – The railroad between the People’s Republic of China and Kazakhstan is completed at Dostyk, adding a sizable link to the concept of the Eurasian Land Bridge.
- 1992 – The trial of the deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega ends in the United States with a 40-year sentence for drug trafficking and money laundering.
- 1992 – Black Wednesday: The British pound is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the German mark.
- 1994 – The British government lifts the broadcasting ban imposed against members of Sinn Féin and Irish paramilitary groups in 1988.
- 2004 – Hurricane Ivan makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane.
- 2005 – The Camorra organized crime boss Paolo Di Lauro is arrested in Naples, Italy.
- 2007 – One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew and passengers crashes in Thailand killing 89 people.
- 2007 – Security guards working for Blackwater Worldwide shoot and kill 17 Iraqis in Nisour Square, Baghdad.
- 2013 – A gunman kills twelve people at the Washington Navy Yard.
- 2014 – The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant launches its Kobani offensive against Syrian–Kurdish forces.
- 2019 – Five months before the COVID-19 stock market crash, an overnight spike in lending rates in the United States prompts the Federal Reserve to conduct operations in the repo market.
-Source: wikipedia
