490 BC – Battle of Marathon: The conventionally accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian invasion force of Greece.
372 – Sixteen Kingdoms: Jin Xiaowudi, age 10, succeeds his father Jin Jianwendi as Emperor of the Eastern Jin dynasty.
1185 – Emperor Andronikos I Komnenos brutally put to death in Constantinople.
1213 – Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon at the Battle of Muret.
1229 – Battle of Portopí: The Aragonese army under the command of James I of Aragon disembarks at Santa Ponça, Majorca, with the purpose of conquering the island.
1309 – The First Siege of Gibraltar takes place in the context of the Spanish Reconquista pitting the forces of the Kingdom of Castile against the Emirate of Granada resulting in a Castilian victory.
1609 – Henry Hudson begins his exploration of the Hudson River while aboard the Halve Maen.
1683 – Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna – several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
1814 – Battle of North Point: an American detachment halts the British land advance to Baltimore in the War of 1812.
1847 – Mexican–American War: the Battle of Chapultepec begins.
1848 – Switzerland becomes a Federal state.
1857 – The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying 13–15 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush.
1890 – Salisbury, Rhodesia, is founded.
1897 – Tirah Campaign: Battle of Saragarhi.
1919 – Adolf Hitler joins the German Workers’ Party (later the Nazi Party).
1923 – Southern Rhodesia, today called Zimbabwe, is annexed by the United Kingdom.
1938 – Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
1942 – World War II: RMS Laconia, carrying civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs is torpedoed off the coast of West Africa and sinks with a heavy loss of life.
1942 – World War II: First day of the Battle of Edson’s Ridge during the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines protecting Henderson Field on Guadalcanal are attacked by Imperial Japanese Army forces.
1943 – World War II: Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, is rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi, by German commando forces led by Otto Skorzeny.
1944 – World War II: The liberation of Serbia from Nazi Germany continues. Bajina Bašta in western Serbia is among the liberated cities.
1959 – The Soviet Union launches a large rocket, Lunik II, at the moon.
1962 – President John F. Kennedy, at a speech at Rice University, reaffirms that the U.S. will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade..
1966 – Gemini 11, the penultimate mission of NASA’s Gemini program, and the current human altitude record holder (except for the Apollo lunar missions)
1970 – Dawson’s Field hijackings: Palestinian terrorists blow up three hijacked airliners in Jordan, continuing to hold the passengers hostage in various undisclosed locations in Amman.
1974 – Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, ‘Messiah’ of the Rastafari movement, is deposed following a military coup by the Derg, ending a reign of 58 years.
1980 – Military coup in Turkey.
1983 – The USSR vetoes a United Nations Security Council Resolution deploring the Soviet destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.
1990 – The two German states and the Four Powers sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German reunification.
1992 – NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission. On board are Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space.
1992 – Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path, is captured by Peruvian special forces; shortly thereafter the rest of Shining Path’s leadership fell as well.
1994 – Frank Eugene Corder crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House’s south lawn, striking the West wing. The incident claimed Corder’s life.
1999 – Indonesia announces it will allow international peace-keepers into East Timor.
2001 – Ansett Australia, Australia’s first commercial interstate airline, collapses due to increased strain on the international airline industry, leaving 10,000 people unemployed.
2003 – The United Nations lifts sanctions against Libya after that country agreed to accept responsibility and recompense the families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
2003 – Iraq War: In Fallujah, U.S. forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers.
2007 – Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada is convicted of the crime of plunder.