2001: Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital.
1969: The US Selective Service selects September 14 as the First Draft Lottery date.
1960: Congo Crisis: With CIA help, Mobutu Sese Seko seizes power in a military coup, suspending parliament and the constitution.
1960: The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.
1959: The Soviet probe Luna 2 crashes onto the Moon, becoming the first man-made object to reach it.
1958: The first two German post-war rockets, designed by the German engineer Ernst Mohr, reach the upper atmosphere.
1954: In a top secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber drops a 40 kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village.
1944: World War II: Maastricht becomes the first Dutch city to be liberated by allied forces.
1943: World War II: The Wehrmacht starts a three-day retaliatory operation targeting several Greek villages in the region of Viannos, whose death toll would eventually exceed 500 persons.
1939: World War II: The Estonian military boards the Polish submarine ORP Orzeł in Tallinn, sparking a diplomatic incident that the Soviet Union will later use to justify the annexation of Estonia.
1936: Raoul Villain, who assassinated the French Socialist Jean Jaures, is himself killed by Spanish Republicans in Ibiza