Events Pre-1600 904 – The warlord Zhu Quanzhong kills Emperor Zhaozong, the penultimate emperor of the Tang dynasty, after seizing control of the imperial government. 1236 – The Samogitians defeat the Livonian Brothers of the Sword in the Battle of Saule. 1359 – An Aragonese cavalry force defeats a superior Castilian cavalry force in the Battle of Araviana during the War of the Two Peters. 1499 – The Treaty of Basel concludes the Swabian War. 1586 – Eighty Years' War: A Spanish force led by the Marquis del Vasto successfully fights its way past a joint English/Dutch ambush in the Battle of Zutphen.
1601–1900 1692 – Martha Corey, Mary Eastey, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmot Redd, Margaret Scott, and Samuel Wardwell are hanged, the last of those to be executed in the Salem witch trials. 1711 – The first attacks of the Tuscarora War begin in present-day North Carolina. 1726 – Bach leads the first performance of his cantata Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich, BWV 17, in Leipzig. 1761 – George III and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz are crowned King and Queen, respectively, of the Kingdom of Great Britain. 1776 – Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during the American Revolution. 1789 – The office of United States Postmaster General is established. 1789 – Battle of Rymnik: Alexander Suvorov's Russian and allied army defeats superior Ottoman Empire forces. 1792 – Primidi Vendémiaire of year one of the French Republican Calendar as the French First Republic comes into being. 1823 – Joseph Smith claims to have found the golden plates after being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried. 1857 – The Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks during a storm in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 826 aboard. 1862 – A preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released by Abraham Lincoln. 1866 – The Battle of Curupayty is Paraguay's only significant victory in the Paraguayan War. 1885 – Lord Randolph Churchill makes a speech in Ulster in opposition to the Irish Home Rule movement. 1891 – The first hydropower plant of Finland is commissioned along the Tammerkoski rapids in Tampere, Pirkanmaa. 1892 – A locomotive shunting falls into a hole in the ground, leading to the burial of the locomotive. 1896 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather King George III as the longest reigning monarch in British history (later surpassed by her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II on 9 September 2015).
1901–present 1910 – The Duke of York's Picture House opens in Brighton, now the oldest continually operating cinema in Britain. 1914 – A German submarine sinks three British cruisers over a seventy-minute period, killing almost 1,500 sailors. 1919 – The steel strike of 1919, led by the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, begins in Pennsylvania before spreading across the United States. 1934 – The Gresford disaster in Wales kills 266 miners and rescuers. 1939 – World War II: A joint German–Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk is held to celebrate the successful invasion of Poland. 1941 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: On the Jewish New Year Day, the German SS murders 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. Those are the survivors of the previous killings that took place a few days earlier in which about 24,000 Jews were executed. 1948 – Gail Halvorsen officially starts parachuting candy to children as part of the Berlin Airlift. 1948 – Israeli-Palestine conflict: The All-Palestine Government is established by the Arab League. 1953 – The Four Level Interchange, first stack interchange in the world opened in Los Angeles. 1957 – In Haiti, François Duvalier is elected president. 1960 – The Sudanese Republic is renamed Mali after the withdrawal of Senegal from the Mali Federation. 1965 – The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 between India and Pakistan over Kashmir ends after the United Nations calls for a ceasefire and after a last engagement near Dograi. 1966 – Twenty-four people are killed when Ansett-ANA Flight 149 crashes in Winton, Queensland, Australia. 1975 – Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate U.S. President Gerald Ford, but is foiled by the Secret Service. 1976 – Red Dye No. 4 is banned by the US Food and Drug Administration after it is discovered that it causes tumors in the bladders of dogs. 1979 – A bright flash, resembling the detonation of a nuclear weapon, is observed near the Prince Edward Islands. Its cause is never determined. 1980 – Iraq invades Iran, sparking the nearly eight year Iran–Iraq War. 1981 – During a military exercise, a Turkish Air Force Northrop F-5 crashes in Babaeski as a result of pilot error, killing one crew member and also 65 soldiers on the ground. 1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time. 1993 – A barge strikes a railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama, causing the deadliest train wreck in Amtrak history. Forty-seven passengers are killed. 1993 – A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-154 is shot down by a missile in Sukhumi, Georgia. 1995 – An E-3B AWACS crashes outside Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska after multiple bird strikes to two of the four engines soon after takeoff; all 24 on board are killed. 1995 – The Nagerkovil school bombing is carried out by the Sri Lanka Air Force in which at least 34 die, most of them ethnic Tamil schoolchildren. 2006 – Twenty-three people were killed in a maglev train collision in Lathen, Germany. 2013 – At least 75 people are killed in a suicide bombing at a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan. 2024 – Anura Kumara Dissanayake is elected as the 9th President Of Sri Lanka.
Births Pre-1600 1013 – Richeza of Poland, Queen of Hungary (died 1075) 1211 – Ibn Khallikan, Iraqi scholar and judge (died 1282) 1373 – Thomas le Despenser, 1st Earl of Gloucester (died 1400) 1480 – Tenali Rama, poet in the court of Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara Empire (died 1528) 1515 – Anne of Cleves, Queen consort of England (died 1557) 1547 – Philipp Nicodemus Frischlin, German philologist, mathematician, astronomer, and poet (died 1590) 1593 – Matthäus Merian, Swiss-German engraver and cartographer (died 1650)
1601–1900 1601 – Anne of Austria, Queen and regent of France (died 1666) 1606 – Li Zicheng, Chinese emperor (died 1645) 1680 – Barthold Heinrich Brockes, German poet (died 1747) 1694 – Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, English politician, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (died 1773) 1715 – Jean-Étienne Guettard, French mineralogist and botanist (died 1786) 1741 – Peter Simon Pallas, German zoologist and botanist (died 1811) 1743 – Quintin Craufurd, Scottish author (died 1819) 1762 – Elizabeth Simcoe, English-Canadian painter and author (died 1850) 1765 – Paolo Ruffini, Italian mathematician and philosopher (died 1822) 1788 – Theodore Hook, English composer and educator (died 1841) 1791 – Michael Faraday, English physicist and chemist (died 1867) 1806 – Bernardino António Gomes, Portuguese physician and naturalist (died 1877) 1819 – Wilhelm Wattenbach, German historian and academic (died 1897) 1829 – Tự Đức, Vietnamese emperor (died 1883) 1833 – John Quincy Adams II, American politician and grandson of President John Quincy Adams (died 1894) 1833 – Stephen D. Lee, American general and academic (died 1908) 1835 – Alexander Potebnja, Ukrainian linguist and philosopher (died 1891) 1841 – Andrejs Pumpurs, Latvian soldier and poet (died 1902) 1862 – Anastasios Charalambis, Greek lieutenant and politician, Prime Minister of Greece (died 1949) 1868 – Louise McKinney, Canadian educator and politician (died 1931) 1870 – Charlotte Cooper, English-Scottish tennis player (died 1966) 1870 – Arthur Pryor, American trombonist, composer, and bandleader (died 1942) 1875 – Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, Lithuanian painter and composer (died 1911) 1876 – André Tardieu, French journalist and politician, 67th Prime Minister of France (died 1945) 1878 – Shigeru Yoshida, Japanese politician and diplomat, 51st Prime Minister of Japan (died 1967) 1880 – Christabel Pankhurst, English activist, co-founded the Women's Social and Political Union (died 1958) 1882 – Wilhelm Keitel, German field marshal, head of the German armed forces (OKW), and convicted Nuremberg war criminal (died 1946) 1883 – Ferenc Oslay, Hungarian-Slovene historian and author (died 1932) 1883 – Frank George Woollard, English engineer (died 1957) 1885 – Gunnar Asplund, Swedish architect and academic, designed the Stockholm Public Library (died 1940) 1885 – Ben Chifley, Australian engineer and politician, 16th Prime Minister of Australia (died 1951) 1885 – Erich von Stroheim, Austrian-American actor, director, and screenwriter (died 1957) 1887 – Bhaurao Patil, Indian educator and activist (died 1959) 1889 – Hooks Dauss, American baseball player (died 1963) 1891 – Alma Thomas, American painter and educator (died 1978) 1892 – Billy West, American actor, director, and producer (died 1975) 1894 – Elisabeth Rethberg, German soprano (died 1976) 1895 – Paul Muni, Ukrainian-born American actor (died 1967) 1896 – Uri Zvi Greenberg, Ukrainian-Israeli poet and journalist (died 1981) 1896 – Henry Segrave, American-English race car driver (died 1930) 1897 – Frank O'Connor, American actor, rancher, and painter (died 1979) 1899 – Elsie Allen, Native American Pomo basket weaver (died 1990) 1900 – Paul Hugh Emmett, American chemist and engineer (died 1985) 1900 – William Spratling, American-Mexican silversmith and educator (died 1967)
1901–present 1901 – Nadezhda Alliluyeva, second wife of Joseph Stalin (died 1932) 1901 – Charles Brenton Huggins, Canadian-American physician and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1997) 1902 – John Houseman, Romanian-American actor and producer (died 1988) 1905 – Haakon Lie, Norwegian lawyer and politician (died 2009) 1905 – Eugen Sänger, Czech-Austrian engineer (died 1964) 1906 – Ilse Koch, German war criminal (died 1967) 1907 – Maurice Blanchot, French philosopher and author (died 2003) 1907 – Philip Fotheringham-Parker, English race car driver (died 1981) 1907 – Hermann Schlichting, German engineer and academic (died 1982) 1908 – Esphyr Slobodkina, Russian-American author and illustrator (died 2002) 1909 – John Engstead, American photographer and journalist (died 1983) 1909 – Allan Lane, American actor (died 1973) 1910 – György Faludy, Hungarian poet and author (died 2006) 1912 – Herbert Mataré, German physicist and academic (died 2011) 1912 – Martha Scott, American actress (died 2003) 1913 – Lillian Chestney, American painter and illustrator (died 2000) 1915 – Grigory Frid, Russian pianist and composer (died 2012) 1918 – Hans Scholl, German activist and co-founder of the anti-Nazi resistance group White Rose (died 1943) 1918 – Henryk Szeryng, Mexican violinist and educator (died 1988) 1920 – Eric Baker, English activist, co-founded Amnesty International (died 1976) 1920 – Anders Lassen, Danish-English soldier, Victoria Cross recipient (died 1945) 1920 – Bob Lemon, American baseball player and manager (died 2000) 1920 – William H. Riker, American political scientist and academic (died 1993) 1921 – Will Elder, American illustrator (died 2008) 1922 – David Sive, American environmentalist and lawyer (died 2014) 1923 – Dannie Abse, Welsh physician, poet, and author (died 2014) 1924 – Bernard Gauthier, French cyclist (died 2018) 1924 – Charles Keeping, English author and illustrator (died 1988) 1924 – Rosamunde Pilcher, English author (died 2019) 1924 – Charles Waterhouse, American painter, sculptor, and illustrator (died 2013) 1924 – J. William Middendorf, American soldier and politician, 14th United States Secretary of the Navy (died 2025) 1924 – Ray Wetzel, American trumpet player and composer (died 1951) 1925 – Virginia Capers, American actress and singer (died 2004) 1925 – Leila Hadley, American author (died 2009) 1926 – Bill Smith, American clarinet player and composer (died 2020) 1927 – Gordon Astall, English footballer and coach (died 2020)