EVENTS
- 1752 – The Liberty Bell arrives in Philadelphia.
- 1897 – The first underground metro or subway in North America opens in Boston.
- 1914 – Passenger Pigeons become extinct. Martha, the last Passenger Pigeon known to man, died at the Cincinnati Zoo, Cincinnati, Ohio effectively making Passenger Pigeons extinct.
Passenger Pigeon - 1939 – Poland is invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
- 1952 – Life magazine publishes parts of the Old Man And The Sea. One of American author Ernest Hemingway’s best-known works, the novel tells the story of an old man and his fishing misadventures. Within a few days of the publication of the excerpt, 5 million copies of the magazine had been sold.
- 1969 – Military officers overthrew the Libyan government. The Libyan Arab Republic was then proclaimed under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
- 1972 – Bobby Fischer becomes the world chess champion by beating Russian Boris Spassky.
- 1979 – Pioneer 11 makes its closest approach to Saturn. The NASA-built space probe was the first probe to encounter Saturn – it flew by the planet at a distance of 13,000 miles (21,000 km). After its flyby, the probe went on a trajectory to go outside the Solar System. All contacts with it were lost a few weeks later.
- 1983 – Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down by a Russian fighter jet while on route from New York to Seoul, killing all 269 persons on board. The Boeing 747 reportedly strayed 100 miles off course over secret Soviet Russian military installations on the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island. It crashed in the Sea of Japan.
- 1985 – The wreck of the sunk ship Titanic is found in the North Atlantic Ocean. A French-American expedition group found the wreck, which sunk on 14 April 1912 on her first voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York City, U.S.
- 2004 – 350 people and children are killed in a massacre in Beslan, North Ossetia. Armed Chechen rebels took over 1000 people including school children at a school. The rebels demanded international recognition of an independent Chechnya. The hostage crisis lasted for 3 days and ended after Russian troops stormed the school.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1875 – Edgar Rice Burroughs (Author wrote Tarzan books)
- 1923 – Rocky Marciano (Boxer)
- 1939 – Lily Tomlin (Actress)
- 1946 – Roh Moo-hyun (South Korean politician, 16th President of South Korea)
- 1946 – Barry Gibb (Sinnger with the Bee Gees)
- 1950 – Dr. Phil (TV host)
- 1957 – Gloria Estefan (Singer)
Gloria Estefan - 1964 – Nabeel Rajab (Bahraini activist)
- 1966 – Tim Hardaway (Basketball Player)
- 1968 – Mohamed Atta (Egyptian terrorist, hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11)
- 1970 – Padma Lakshmi (Indian actress)
- 1975 – Natalie Bassingthwaighte (Australian singer-songwriter, actress)
- 1996 – Zendaya (Actress)
DEATHS
- 1715 – Louis XIV of France
Louis XIV of France - 1947 – Frederick Russell Burnham (American soldier, adventurer)
- 1981 – Albert Speer (German architect)
- 1983 – Larry McDonald (American politician)
- 2013 – Tommy Morrison (American boxer)
