2011: The United States military ends its "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly for the first time.
2008: A dump truck full of explosives detonates in front of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 54 people and injuring 266 others.
2007: Between 15,000 and 20,000 protesters marched on Jena, Louisiana, in support of six black youths who had been convicted of assaulting a white classmate.
2003: Maldives civil unrest: The death of prisoner sparks a day of rioting in Malé.
2001: In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a "War on Terror".
2000: The United Kingdom's MI6Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by individuals using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank missile. The perpetrators remain unidentified.
1990: South Ossetia declares its independence from Georgia.
1984: A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people.
1971: Having weakened after making landfall in Nicaragua the previous day, Hurricane Irene regains enough strength to be renamed Hurricane Olivia, making it the first known hurricane to cross from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific.
1941: The Holocaust in Lithuania: Four hundred three Jews (128 men, 176 women and 99 children) were murdered by Einsatzkommando 3 and the local police in Nemenčinė.
1911: White Star Line's RMS Olympic collides with British warship HMS Hawke.
1910: The ocean liner SS France, later known as the "Versailles of the Atlantic", is launched.
1870: Bersaglieri corps enter Rome through the Porta Pia and complete the unification of Italy, ending de facto the temporal power of popes.
1863: American Civil War: The conclusion of the Battle of Chickamauga in northwestern Georgia, the bloodiest two-day battle of the conflict, and the only significant Confederate victory in the war's Western Theater.
1498: The 1498 Nankai earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan; since then the Buddha has sat in the open air.
1378: Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the "Butcher of Cesena", is elected as Avignon Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism.