Events Pre-1600 AD 81 – Domitian became Emperor of the Roman Empire upon the death of his brother Titus. 775 – Leo IV the Khazar becomes Byzantine Emperor following the death of his father Constantine V. 786 – "Night of the three Caliphs": Harun al-Rashid becomes the Abbasid caliph upon the death of his brother al-Hadi. Birth of Harun's son al-Ma'mun. 919 – Battle of Islandbridge: High King Niall Glúndub is killed while leading an Irish coalition against the Vikings of Uí Ímair, led by King Sitric Cáech. 987 – Bardas Phokas the Younger rebels against Byzantine emperor Basil II and declares himself emperor. 1115 – Roger of Salerno's Crusader army defeats a numerically superior Seljuk army in the battle of Sarmin 1141 – An army of queen Matilda defeats and disperses an army of empress Matilda which was besieging Winchester. Robert of Gloucester is captured and exchanged for king Stephen, husband of queen Matilda. 1146 – Seljuk atabeg Imad al-Din Zengi of Mosul is assassinated by a slave and succeeded by his quarrelling sons. 1180 – Genpei War: In the Battle of Ishibashiyama in Japan, the new military commander of the Minamoto clan, Minamoto no Yoritomo, is routed by Ōba Kagechika of the Taira clan. 1210 – Maria of Montferrat, Queen of Jerusalem, marries French baron John of Brienne, who is later crowned king on 30 October in Tyre. 1226 – The first recorded instance of the Catholic practice of perpetual Eucharistic adoration formally begins in Avignon, France. 1402 – Battle of Homildon Hill: An invading Scottish army under Murdoch Stewart, Duke of Albany and Archibald, Earl Douglas is decimated by a contingent of 500 English archers under the command of George, Earl of March and Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland.
1601–1900 1682 – Bishop Gore School, one of the oldest schools in Wales, is founded. 1685 – Morean War: the Battle of Kalamata ends in a Venetian victory over the forces of the Ottoman Empire under the Kapudan Pasha. 1723 – Grand Master António Manoel de Vilhena lays down the first stone of Fort Manoel in Malta. 1741 – George Frideric Handel completes his oratorio Messiah. 1752 – The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2). 1763 – Seneca warriors defeat British forces at the Battle of Devil's Hole during Pontiac's War. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Review of the French troops under General Rochambeau by General George Washington at Verplanck's Point, New York. 1791 – The Papal States lose Avignon to Revolutionary France. 1808 – Finnish War: Russians defeat the Swedes at the Battle of Oravais. 1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The French Grande Armée enters Moscow. The Fire of Moscow begins as soon as Russian troops leave the city. 1814 – Battle of Baltimore: The poem Defence of Fort McHenry is written by Francis Scott Key. The poem is later used as the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner. 1829 – The Ottoman Empire signs the Treaty of Adrianople with Russia, thus ending the Russo-Turkish War. 1846 – Jang Bahadur and his brothers massacre about 40 members of the Nepalese palace court. 1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of South Mountain, part of the Maryland Campaign, is fought.
1901–present 1901 – U.S. president William McKinley dies after being mortally wounded on September 6 by anarchist Leon Czolgosz and is succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt. 1911 – Russian Premier Pyotr Stolypin is shot by Dmitry Bogrov while attending a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Tale of Tsar Saltan at the Kiev Opera House, in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II. 1914 – , the Royal Australian Navy's first submarine, is lost at sea with all hands near East New Britain, Papua New Guinea. 1917 – The Russian Empire is formally replaced by the Russian Republic. 1936 – Raoul Villain, who assassinated the French Socialist Jean Jaurès, is himself killed by Spanish Republicans in Ibiza. 1939 – World War II: The Estonian military boards the Polish submarine in Tallinn, sparking a diplomatic incident that the Soviet Union will later use to justify the annexation of Estonia. 1940 – Ip massacre: The Hungarian Army, supported by local Hungarians, kill 158 Romanian civilians in Ip, Sălaj, a village in Northern Transylvania, an act of ethnic cleansing. 1943 – World War II: The Wehrmacht starts a three-day retaliatory operation targeting several Greek villages in the region of Viannos, whose death toll would eventually exceed 500 persons. 1944 – World War II: Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces. 1948 – The Indian Army captures the city of Aurangabad as part of Operation Polo. 1954 – In a top secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber drops a 40 kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village. 1958 – The first two German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reach the upper atmosphere. 1960 – The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded. 1960 – Congo Crisis: Mobutu Sese Seko seizes power in a military coup, suspending parliament and the constitution. 1975 – The first American saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, is canonized by Pope Paul VI. 1979 – Afghan leader Nur Muhammad Taraki is assassinated upon the order of Hafizullah Amin, who becomes the new General Secretary of the People's Democratic Party. 1982 – President-elect of Lebanon Bachir Gemayel is assassinated. 1984 – Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to fly a gas balloon alone across the Atlantic Ocean. 1985 – Penang Bridge, the longest bridge in Malaysia, connecting the island of Penang to the mainland, opens to traffic. 1989 – The Standard Gravure shooting where Joseph T. Wesbecker, a 47-year-old pressman, killed eight people and injured 12 people at his former workplace, Standard Gravure, before committing suicide. 1992 – The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina declares the breakaway Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia to be illegal. 1993 – Lufthansa Flight 2904, an Airbus A320, crashes into an embankment after overshooting the runway at Okęcie International Airport (now Warsaw Chopin Airport), killing two people. 1994 – The rest of the Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike. 1997 – Eighty-one killed as five bogies of the Ahmedabad–Howrah Express plunge into a river in Bilaspur district of Madhya Pradesh, India. 1998 – Telecommunications companies MCI Communications and WorldCom complete their $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom. 1999 – Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations. 2000 – Microsoft releases Windows Me. 2001 – Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital. 2002 – Total Linhas Aéreas Flight 5561 crashes near Paranapanema, Brazil, killing both pilots on board. 2003 – In a referendum, Estonia approves joining the European Union. 2003 – Bissau-Guinean President Kumba Ialá is ousted from power in a bloodless military coup led by General Veríssimo Correia Seabra. 2007 – Prelude to the 2008 financial crisis: Northern Rock bank experiences the first bank run in the United Kingdom in 150 years. 2008 – Aeroflot Flight 821, a Boeing 737-500, crashes into a section of the Trans-Siberian Railway while on approach to Perm International Airport, in Perm, Russia, killing all 88 people on board. 2015 – The first observation of gravitational waves is made, announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016. 2019 – Yemen's Houthi rebels claim responsibility for an attack on Saudi Arabian oil facilities. 2022 – Death of Queen Elizabeth II: The Queen's coffin is taken from Buckingham Palace, placed on a gun carriage of The King's Troop Royal Horse Artillery and moved in a procession to Westminster Hall for her lying in state over the next four days with the queue of mourners stretching for miles along the River Thames.
Births Pre-1600 208 – Diadumenian, Roman emperor (died 218) 768 – Al-Ma'mun, Abbasid caliph, 7th (died 833) 938 – Sahib ibn Abbad, Persian scholar and statesman (died 995) 953 – Guo Zongxun, Chinese emperor (died 973) 1032 – Dao Zong, Chinese emperor (died 1101) 1246 – John Fitzalan III, English nobleman (died 1272) 1384 – Ephraim of Nea Makri, Greek martyr and saint (died 1426) 1388 – Claudius Clavus, Danish geographer and cartographer (died 1438) 1401 – Maria of Castile, Queen consort of Aragon and Naples (died 1458) 1485 – Anna of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Landgravine of Hesse (died 1525) 1486 – Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, German theologian, astrologer, and alchemist (died 1535) 1543 – Claudio Acquaviva, Italian priest, 5th Superior General of the Society of Jesus (died 1615) 1547 – Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, Dutch politician (died 1619) 1580 – Francisco de Quevedo, Spanish poet and politician (died 1645)
1601–1900 1618 – Peter Lely, Dutch-English painter (died 1680) 1643 – Jeremiah Dummer, American silversmith (died 1718) 1656 – Thomas Baker, English historian and author (died 1746) 1713 – Johann Kies, German astronomer and mathematician (died 1781) 1721 – Eliphalet Dyer, American colonel, lawyer, and politician (died 1807) 1736 – Robert Raikes, English philanthropist, founded Sunday school (died 1811) 1737 – Michael Haydn, Austrian singer and composer (died 1806) 1769 – Alexander von Humboldt, German geographer and explorer (died 1859) 1774 – Lord William Bentinck, English general and politician, 14th Governor-General of India (died 1839) 1791 – Franz Bopp, German linguist and academic (died 1867) 1804 – John Gould, English ornithologist and illustrator (died 1881) 1804 – Louis Désiré Maigret, French bishop (died 1882) 1816 – Mary Hall Barrett Adams, American book editor and letter writer (died 1860) 1837 – Nikolai Bugaev, Georgian-Russian mathematician and philosopher (died 1903) 1843 – Lola Rodríguez de Tió, Puerto Rican poet, abolitionist, and women's rights activist (died 1924) 1847 – Fanny Holland, English actress and singer (died 1931) 1850 – Anton Mahnič, Slovenian bishop, philosopher, and theologian (died 1920) 1853 – Ponnambalam Arunachalam, Ceylonese civil servant and politician (died 1924) 1857 – Julia Platt, American embryologist and politician (died 1935) 1860 – Hamlin Garland, American novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer (died 1940) 1864 – Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, English lawyer and politician, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1958) 1867 – Charles Dana Gibson, American illustrator (died 1944) 1868 – Théodore Botrel, French singer-songwriter, poet, and playwright (died 1925) 1869 – Kid Nichols, American baseball player and manager (died 1953) 1872 – John Olof Dahlgren, Swedish-American soldier, Medal of Honor recipient (died 1963) 1879 – Margaret Sanger, American nurse and activist (died 1966) 1880 – Benjamin, Russian bishop and missionary (died 1961) 1880 – Archie Hahn, American sprinter, football player, and coach (died 1955) 1883 – Richard Gerstl, Austrian painter and illustrator (died 1908) 1885 – Vittorio Gui, Italian conductor, composer, and critic (died 1975) 1886 – Jan Masaryk, Czech soldier and politician, Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs (died 1948) 1887 – Karl Taylor Compton, American physicist (died 1954) 1891 – Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov, Russian mathematician and academic (died 1983) 1892 – Laurence W. Allen, English lieutenant and pilot (died 1968) 1896 – José Mojica, Mexican tenor and actor (died 1974) 1898 – Lawrence Gellert, Hungarian-American musicologist and song collector (died 1979) 1898 – Ernest Nash, German-Italian photographer and scholar (died 1974)
1901–present 1902 – Giorgos Papasideris, Greek singer-songwriter (died 1977) 1902 – Alice Tully, American soprano and philanthropist (died 1993) 1903 – Mart Raud, Estonian poet and author (died 1980) 1904 – Frank Amyot, Canadian sprint canoeist (died 1962)