622 – Muhammad and Abu Bakr arrive in Medina
1498 – The 1498 Nankai earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan; since then the Buddha has sat in the open air.
1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
1737 – The Walking Purchase (or Walking Treaty) was a 1737 agreement between the Penn family, the proprietors of Pennsylvania, and the Lenape (also known as the Delaware Indians). By it, the Penn family and proprietors claimed an area of 1,200,000 acres (4,860 km²) and forced the Lenape to vacate it.
1854 – Battle of Alma: British and French troops defeat Russians in Crimea.
1870 – Bersaglieri corps enter Rome through the Porta Pia and complete the unification of Italy, ending de facto the temporal power of popes.
Charles Duryea and his brother Frank, piloting a gas-powered “horseless carriage” of their own design, won the first motor-car race in the United States. Sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald the race was supposed to be 92 miles from Chicago to Waukegan, Illinois but a blizzard had the organizers shorten it to 50 miles, from Chicago to Evanston and back again.
Because of the blizzard, only six out of 89 contenders showed up and only two finished. The race took ten hours and the Duryea was the first to cross the finish line. One of the three Benz cars won second place.
1893 – Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
1906 – Cunard Line’s RMS Mauretania is launched at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
1910 – The ocean liner SS France, later known as the “Versailles of the Atlantic”, is launched.
1911 – White Star Line’s RMS Olympic collides with British warship HMS Hawke.
1962 – James Meredith, an African American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.
1967 – RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland.
1971 – Having weakened after making landfall in Nicaragua the previous day, Hurricane Irene regains enough strength to be renamed Hurricane Olivia, making it the first known hurricane to cross from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific.
2000 – The UK’s MI6 Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by individuals using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank missile. The perpetrators remain unidentified.
2001 – In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a “War on Terror”.
Births
1486 – Arthur, Prince of Wales (d. 1502)
1878 – Upton Sinclair, American novelist, critic, and essayist (d. 1968)
1913 – Sidney Dillon Ripley, American ornithologist and academic (d. 2001)
1934 – Sophia Loren, Italian actress
1941 – Dale Chihuly, American sculptor and educator
Deaths
1501 – Agostino Barbarigo, Doge of Venice
1947 – Fiorello H. La Guardia, American lawyer and politician, 99th Mayor of New York City (b. 1882)
2005 – Simon Wiesenthal, Austrian human rights activist, Holocaust survivor (b. 1908)
2010 – Leonard Skinner, American soldier and educator (b. 1933)
2015 – Jack Larson, American actor (b. 1928)
2016 – Curtis Hanson, American film director and screenwriter (b. 1945)