47 BC – Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declares her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion.
31 BC – Final War of the Roman Republic: Battle of Actium – off the western coast of Greece, forces of Octavian defeat troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra.
1192 – The Treaty of Jaffa was signed between Richard I of England and Saladin, leading to the end of the Third Crusade.
1666 – The Great Fire of London breaks out and burns for three days, destroying 10,000 buildings including St Paul’s Cathedral.
1752 – Great Britain adopts the Gregorian calendar, nearly two centuries later than most of Western Europe.
1789 – The United States Department of the Treasury is founded.
1792 – During what became known as the September Massacres of the French Revolution, rampaging mobs slaughter three Roman Catholic Church bishops, more than two hundred priests, and prisoners believed to be royalist sympathizers.
1859 – A solar super storm affects electrical telegraph service.
1862 – American Civil War: President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope’s disastrous defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run.
1864 – American Civil War: Union forces enter Atlanta, Georgia, a day after the Confederate defenders flee the city, ending the Atlanta Campaign.
1885 – Rock Springs massacre: in Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 White miners, who are struggling to unionize so they could strike for better wages and work conditions, attack their Chinese fellow workers killing 28, wounding 15 and forcing several hundred more out of town.
1901 – Vice President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt utters the famous phrase, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.
1939 – World War II: following the start of the invasion of Poland the previous day, the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) is annexed by Nazi Germany.
1945 – World War II: Combat ends in the Pacific Theater: the Instrument of Surrender of Japan is signed by Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and accepted aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
1946 – Dan White, American sergeant and politician (d. 1985) was born. In a controversial verdict that led to the coining of the legal slang “Twinkie defense,” White was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder in the deaths of Milk and Moscone. White served five years of a seven-year prison sentence. Less than two years after his release, he returned to San Francisco and committed suicide.
1960 – The first election of the Parliament of the Central Tibetan Administration, in history of Tibet. The Tibetan community observes this date as the Democracy Day.
1963 – CBS Evening News becomes U.S. network television’s first half-hour weeknight news broadcast, when the show is lengthened from 15 to 30 minutes.
1970 – NASA announces the cancellation of two Apollo missions to the Moon, Apollo 15 (the designation is re-used by a later mission), and Apollo 19.
1973 – John R R Tolkien, British story writer (Hobbit), dies of an ulcer at 81
1998 – Swissair Flight 111 crashes near Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia. All 229 people on board are killed.
1998 – The UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finds Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide.
2005 – Bob Denver, American actor (Gilligan’s Island), dies of complications from treatment for cancer at 70