1226 – The Roman Catholic practice of public adoration of the Blessed Sacrament outside of Mass spreads from monasteries to parishes.
1541 – Santiago, Chile, is destroyed by indigenous warriors, led by Michimalonco.
1609 – Henry Hudson discovers Manhattan Island and the indigenous people living there.
1776 – British-American peace conference on Staten Island fails to stop nascent American Revolutionary War.
1789 – Alexander Hamilton is appointed the first United States Secretary of the Treasury.
1826 – Captain William Morgan, an ex-freemason is arrested in Batavia, New York for debt after declaring that he would publish The Mysteries of Free Masonry, a book against Freemasonry. This sets into motion the events that lead to his mysterious disappearance.
1905 – The Ninth Avenue derailment occurs in New York City, killing 13.
1919 – United States Marine Corps invades Honduras.
1941 – Charles Lindbergh’s Des Moines Speech accusing the British, Jews and FDR’s administration of pressing for war with Germany.
Is there a statue of him somewhere?
1954 – Hurricane Edna hits New England as a Category 2 hurricane, causing significant damage and 29 deaths.
1961 – Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state.
1973 – A coup in Chile headed by General Augusto Pinochet topples the democratically elected president Salvador Allende. Pinochet exercises dictatorial power until ousted in a referendum in 1988, staying in power until 1990.
1976 – A bomb planted by a Croatian terrorist is found at New York’s Grand Central Terminal; one NYPD officer is killed trying to defuse it.
1997 – NASA’s Mars Global Surveyor reaches Mars.
2001 – Two hijacked aircraft crash into the World Trade Center, while a third smashes into the Pentagon and a fourth into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, in a series of coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of al-Qaeda. A total of 2,996 people are killed.
2007 – Russia tests the largest conventional weapon ever, the Father of All Bombs.
2008 – A major Channel Tunnel fire broke out on a freight train, resulting in the closure of part of the tunnel for 6 months.
2012 – The U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya is attacked, resulting in four deaths.
Births
600 – Yuknoom Ch’een II, Mayan ruler
1771 – Mungo Park, Scottish surgeon and explorer (d. 1806)
1816 – Carl Zeiss, German lens maker (d. 1888)
1862 – O. Henry, American short story writer (d. 1910)
1885 – D. H. Lawrence,English novelist, poet, playwright (d. 1930)
1917 – Ferdinand Marcos, Filipino dictator of the Philippines (d. 1989)
1940 – Brian De Palma, American director, producer, and screenwriter
1943 – Mickey Hart, Grateful Dead drummer, percussionist
1945 – Leo Kottke, American singer-songwriter and 12 string guitarist
Deaths
1911 – Louis Henri Boussenard, French explorer and author (b. 1847)
1957 – Mary Proctor, American astronomer (b. 1862)
1965 – Ralph C. Smedley, founded Toastmasters International (b. 1878)
1971 – Nikita Khrushchev, Russian general and politician (b. 1894)
2001 – Victims of the September 11 attacks. May they rest in peace.