• 506 - The bishops of Visigothic Gaul meet in the Council of Agde.
• 1419 - John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy is assassinated by adherents of the Dauphin, the future Charles VII of France.
• 1608 - John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia.
• 1776 - American Revolutionary War: Nathan Hale volunteers to spy.
• 1798 - At the Battle of St. George's Caye, British Honduras defeats Spain.
• 1813 - The U.S. defeats the British Fleet at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.
• 1823 - Simón Bolívar is named President of Peru.
• 1846 - Elias Howe gets a patent for the sewing machine.
• 1858 - George Mary Searle discovers the asteroid 55 Pandora.
• 1897 - Lattimer Massacre - a sheriff's posse kills twenty unarmed immigrant miners in Pennsylvania, United States.
• 1898 - Empress Elizabeth of Austria is assassinated by Luigi Lucheni.
• 1919 - Austria and the Allies sign the Treaty of Saint-Germain recognizing the independence of Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.
• 1927 - France had its first Davis Cup win, though it had competed since 1905.
• 1932 - The New York City Subway's third competing subway system, the municipally-owned IND, is opened.
• 1939 - World War II: The submarine HMAS Oxley is mistakenly sunk by the submarine HMS Triton near Norway and becomes the Royal Navy's first loss.
• 1939 - Canada declares war on Nazi Germany, joining France, the UK, New Zealand and Australia in the Allies.
• 1942 - World War II: The British carry out an amphibious landing on Madagascar to re-launch Allied offensive operations in the Madagascar Campaign.
• 1943 - World War II: German forces begin their occupation of Rome.
• 1951 - United Kingdom began an economic boycott of Iran.
• 1961 - Italian Grand Prix, a crash causes the death of German driver Wolfgang von Trips and 13 spectators hit by his Ferrari.
• 1963 - 20 African-American students enter public schools in Alabama.
• 1967 - The people of Gibraltar vote to remain a British dependency rather than becoming part of Spain.
• 1972 - The United States loses its first international basketball game in a disputed match against the Soviet Union at Munich, Germany.
• 1974 - Guinea-Bissau gains independence from Portugal.
• 1976 - A British Airways Hawker Siddeley Trident and an Inex-Adria DC-9 collide near Zagreb, Yugoslavia, killing 176.
• 1977 - Last execution by Guillotine in France. Hamida Djandoubi, convicted for torture and murder.
• 1990 - The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire – the largest church in Africa is consecrated by Pope John Paul II.
• 2002 - Switzerland, noted as a neutral country, joins the United Nations.
• 2003 - Anna Lindh, the foreign minister of Sweden, is stabbed fatally while shopping, and dies of her wounds on September 11.
• 2007 - Former Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan after seven years in exile, following a military coup in October 1999.

Births