1492 – Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.
1620 – The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England on the Mayflower to settle in North America. (Old Style date; September 16 per New Style date.)
1642 – England’s Parliament bans public stage-plays.
1803 – British scientist John Dalton begins using symbols to represent the atoms of different elements.
1847 – Henry David Thoreau leaves Walden Pond and moves in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts.
1870 – Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.
1901 – Leon Czolgosz, an unemployed anarchist, shoots and fatally wounds President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo.
1916 – The first self-service grocery store Piggly Wiggly was opened in Memphis, Tennessee by Clarence Saunders.
1972 – Munich massacre: Nine Israeli athletes die (along with a German policeman) at the hands of the Palestinian “Black September” terrorist group after being taken hostage at the Munich Olympic Games. Two other Israeli athletes were slain in the initial attack the previous day.
1983 – The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, stating that its operatives did not know that it was a civilian aircraft when it reportedly violated Soviet airspace.
1991 – The Soviet Union recognizes the independence of the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
1991 – The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia’s second largest city, which had been known as Leningrad since 1924.
1997 – The Funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales takes place in London. Well over a million people lined the streets and 2.5 billion watched around the world on television.
Births
1666 – Ivan V of Russia, Russian tsar (d. 1696)
1888 – Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., American businessman and diplomat, 44th United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom (d. 1969)
1930 – Charles Foley, American game designer, co-created Twister (d. 2013)
1954 – Carly Fiorina, American businesswoman and activist
Deaths
952 – Suzaku, emperor of Japan (b. 923)
1635 – Metius, Dutch mathematician and astronomer (b. 1571)
1972 – Perpetrator and victims of the Munich massacre
Luttif Afif, Palestinian terrorist (b. 1945)
David Mark Berger, American-Israeli weightlifter (b. 1944)
Ze’ev Friedman, Polish-Israeli weightlifter (b. 1944)
Yossef Gutfreund, Israeli wrestling judge (b. 1931)
Eliezer Halfin, Russian-Israeli wrestler (b. 1948)
Amitzur Shapira, Russian-Israeli runner and coach (b. 1932)
Kehat Shorr, Romanian shooting coach (b. 1919)
Mark Slavin, Israeli wrestler (b. 1954)
Andre Spitzer, Romanian-Israeli fencer and coach (b. 1945)
Yakov Springer, Polish-Israeli wrestler and coach (b. 1921)
1998 – Akira Kurosawa, Japanese director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1910)