290 – [Christian] Sergius, roman soldier/martyred saint, decapitated
1691 – The English royal charter for the Province of Massachusetts Bay is issued.
1763 – King George III of the United Kingdom issues the Royal Proclamation of 1763, closing aboriginal lands in North America north and west of Alleghenies to white settlements.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: The Americans defeat the British in the Second Battle of Saratoga, also known as the Battle of Bemis Heights.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Kings Mountain: American Patriot militia defeat Loyalist irregulars led by British major Patrick Ferguson in South Carolina.
1786 – Louis-Joseph Papineau, Canadian lawyer and politician (d. 1871)
1792 – George Mason, American statesman, advocated for “The Bill of Rights” (b. 1725)
1849 – Edgar Allan Poe, American author and poet (b. 1809) died.
1864 – American Civil War: Bahia incident: USS Wachusett illegally captures the CSS Florida Confederate raider while in port in Bahia, Brazil in violation of Brazilian neutrality.
1921 – State officials in Texas are considering a ban on parades by the Ku Klux Klan because of the clans incitement of violence against any non Americans including Jews and Negroes.
1931 – Desmond Tutu, South African archbishop and activist, Nobel Prize laureate was born.
1940 – Dino Valenti, rock guitarist/vocalist (Quicksilver Messenger Service)Born
1940 – World War II: the McCollum memo proposes bringing the United States into the war in Europe by provoking the Japanese to attack the United States.
1942 – Children in every school in the country have been bringing in 10lbs of metal scrap or more this week and hundreds of thousands of scrap metal are now on their way to helping make the the tools our fighting men need to finish the job.
1943 – Oliver North, American colonel, journalist, and author was birthed
1944 – World War II: During an uprising at Birkenau concentration camp, Jewish prisoners burn down the crematoria.
1945 – Kevin Godley, English singer-songwriter and director (10cc, Hotlegs, Godley & Creme, Doctor Father, and The Magic Lanterns) was born.
1949 – The communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) is formed.
1949 – Dave Hope, American bass player and priest (Kansas and AD) was born.
1951 – John Mellencamp, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor was born.
1952 – Vladimir Putin, Russian colonel and politician, 4th President of Russia was birthed
1955 – American poet Allen Ginsberg performs his poem Howl for the first time at the Six Gallery in San Francisco.
1955 – Yo-Yo Ma, Paris, France, world famous cellist (2001 National Medal of Arts, 2011 Presidential Medal of Freedom) Born
1958 – President of Pakistan Iskander Mirza, with the support of General Ayub Khan and the army, suspends the 1956 constitution, imposes martial law, and cancels the elections scheduled for January 1959.
1958 – The U.S. manned space-flight project is renamed Project Mercury.
1959 – U.S.S.R. probe Luna 3 transmits the first ever photographs of the far side of the Moon.
1959 – Simon Cowell, English businessman and producer, created The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent was birthed
1959 – Mario Lanza, opera singer, dies at 38 of a heart attack
1963 – John F. Kennedy signs the ratification of the Partial Test Ban Treaty.
1968 – Thom Yorke, English singer-songwriter and guitarist (Radiohead and Atoms for Peace) was born.
1987 – Sikh nationalists declares the independence of Khalistan from India; it is not internationally recognized.
1988 – An Inupiaq hunter discovers three gray whales trapped under the ice in Barrow, Alaska, US; the situation becomes a multinational effort to free the whales.
1992 – Allan Bloom, author (Closing of the American Mind), dies at 62
1993 – The flood of ’93 ends at St. Louis, Missouri, 103 days after it began, as the Mississippi River falls below flood stage.
1996 – The Fox News Channel begins broadcasting.
1998 – Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, is found tied to a fence after being savagely beaten by two young adults in Laramie, Wyoming.
2001 – The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan begins with an air assault and covert operations on the ground.
2003 – A historic recall election takes place in the U.S. State of California in which the sitting Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, is overwhelmingly voted out of office. Actor, bodybuilder and Republican candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected to be the 38th Governor of California over fellow Republican Tom McClintock and Democrat Cruz Bustamante who at the time was the sitting Lt. Governor of California. This is the first recall election in the history of the State of California in which a sitting Governor has been successfully recalled from office.
2006 – Respected Russian journalist and human rights activist, Anna Politkovskaya, was found dead after being shot in an elevator in her apartment complex in Moscow. The journalist was known for exposing human rights abuses by the Russian military in Chechnya.
2011 – The Occupy Wall Street Protests which begun in New York on September 17th at New York City’s Zuccotti Park in the Wall Street financial district spreads to other US Cities and other cities around the World including London, England.