1763- In Campo Maior, Portugal, at 3 am, a storm hits the Armory, located on the Castle’s main tower, which contains 6000 arrobas (a Portuguese and Spanish unit of mass) of gunpowder and 5000 pieces of ammunition. An explosion ensues, followed by fire, killing two-thirds of its inhabitants.
1810 – With the Grito de Dolores, a cry from the Mexican town of Dolores, calling for Mexican Independence from Spain, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico’s fight for independence from Spain.
1880 – The Cornell Daily Sun prints its first issue in Ithaca, New York. The Sun is the nation’s oldest, continuously-independent college daily.
1976 – Armenian champion swimmer Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from a trolleybus that had fallen into a Yerevan Lake. The trolley laid at the bottom of the reservoir some 25 metres (80 ft) offshore at a depth of 10 metres (33 feet). Karapetyan, knowing that he only had so little time to save around 95 people, broke the back window with his legs and rescued 20 people.
2004 – Hurricane Ivan, the tenth most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, makes landfall in Gulf Shores, Alabama as a Category 3 hurricane. Ivan caused an estimated $18 billion in damages making it the fifth costliest hurricane ever to strike the US.
Births
1875 – James Cash Penney, American business person, and philanthropist, founded J. C. Penney (d. 1971)
1898 – H. A. Rey, an American author, and illustrator co-created Curious George (d. 1977)
1901 – Josef Schächter, Austrian rabbi, and philosopher from the Vienna Circle (d. 1994). The Vienna Circle of Logical Empiricism was an ensemble of philosophers and scientists drawn from the natural and social sciences, logical and mathematics.
1942 – Susan L. Graham, American computer scientist and academic
Deaths
1736 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, a Polish-Dutch physicist, and engineer, invented the thermometer that bears his name (b. 1686)
1980 – Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist, and philosopher (b. 1896)
2005 – Gordon Gould, American physicist and academic, invented the laser
2012 – Roman Kroitor, Canadian director, and producer, co-founded IMAX
