• 1400 - Owain Glyndŵr declared Prince of Wales by his followers.
• 1701 - James Francis Edward Stuart,sometimes called the "Old Pretender", becomes the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland.
• 1776 - American Revolutionary War: the Battle of Harlem Heights is fought.
• 1795 - United Kingdom conquers Cape Town, South Africa.
• 1811 - With the Grito de Dolores, Father Miguel Hidalgo begins Mexico's fight for independence from Spain
• 1812 - Russians set fire to Moscow shortly after midnight - the city is burned completely down days later.
• 1863 - Robert College of Istanbul-Turkey, the first American educational institution outside the United States is founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist.
• 1887 - The first game of softball was played in Chicago, Illinois
• 1893 - Settlers race in Oklahoma for prime land in the Cherokee Strip.
• 1901 - Alturas, California, incorporated as the only city in Modoc County.
• 1908 - General Motors is founded.
• 1919 - The American Legion is incorporated.
• 1920 - The Wall Street bombing: a bomb in a horse wagon explodes in front of the J.P.Morgan building in New York City - 38 are killed with 400 injured.
• 1940 - Sam Rayburn elected Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, widely regarded as the most effective Speaker of the House in American history.
• 1941 - Concerned that Reza Pahlavi the Shah of Persia was about to align his petroleum-rich country with Germany during World War II, the United Kingdom and the USSR occupy Iran and forced him to resign in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
• 1955 - Juan Perón is deposed in Argentina.
• 1963 - Malaysia is formed from Malaya, Singapore, British North Borneo (Sabah) and Sarawak.
• 1966 - The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City to the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera, Antony and Cleopatra.
• 1970 - King Hussein of Jordan declares military rule due to the hijacking of four civilian airliners by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). This results in the formation of the Black September Palestinian paramilitary unit.
• 1975 - Papua New Guinea gains its independence from Australia.
• 1975 - The first prototype of the MiG-31 interceptor makes its maiden flight.
• 1976 - Shavarsh Karapetyan saves 20 people from the trolleybus that had fallen into Erevan reservoir
• 1978 - An earthquake hits the city of Tabas, Iran measuring 7.5-7.9 on the Richter scale killing about 25,000 people.
• 1982 - Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon.
• 1987 - The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.
• 1991 - The trial of Panamanian "strongman" Manuel Noriega begins in the United States.
• 1992 - Black Wednesday: the Pound Sterling is forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and is forced to devalue against the Deutschmark.
• 2004 - Hurricane Ivan touches land near Pensacola, Florida, becoming the third (now fourth) costliest hurricane to strike the United States.
• 2007 - One-Two-GO Airlines Flight 269 carrying 128 crew and passengers crashes in Thailand killing 89 people.

Births