September
20
Events
September 20
1058
– Agnes de Poitou and Andrew I of Hungary
meet to negotiate about the border-zone in
present-day Burgenland.
1187 – Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem.
1260 – the Great Prussian Uprising among the
old Prussians begins against the Teutonic
Knights.
1378 – Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by
some the Butcher of Cesena, is elected as
Avignon Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal
schism.
1498 – The 1498 Meiō Nankaidō 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.
1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar
de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition
to circumnavigate the globe.
1596 – Diego de Montemayor founds the city
of Monterrey in New Spain.
1697 – The Treaty of Rijswijk is signed by
France, England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire
and the Dutch Republic ending the Nine Years'
War (1688–97).
1737 – The finish of the Walking Purchase
which forces the cession of 1.2 million acres
(4,860 km²) of Lenape-Delaware tribal land
to the Pennsylvania Colony.
1792 – French troops stop allied invasion
of France, during the War of the First Coalition
at Valmy.
1835 – Ragamuffin rebels capture Porto Alegre,
then capital of the Brazilian imperial province
of Rio Grande do Sul, triggering the start
of ten-year-long Farroupilha Revolution.
1848 – The American Association for the Advancement
of Science is created.
1854 – Battle of Alma: British and French
troops defeat Russians in the Crimea.
1857 – The Indian Rebellion of 1857 ends with
the recapture of Delhi by troops loyal to
the East India Company.
1860 – The Prince of Wales (later King Edward
VII of the United Kingdom) visits the United
States.
1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chickamauga
ends.
1870 – Bersaglieri corps enter Rome through
the Porta Pia and complete the unification
of Italy.
1871 – Bishop John Coleridge Patteson is martyred
on the island of Nukapu, a Polynesian outlier
island now in the Temotu Province of the Solomon
Islands. He is the first bishop of Melanesia.
1881 – Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as
the 21st President of the United States following
the assassination of James Garfield.
1893 – Charles Duryea and his brother road-test
the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
1906 – Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania is launched
at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson
shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
1909 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom
passes the South Africa Act 1909, creating
the Union of South Africa from the British
Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal,
Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal Colony.
1910 – The ocean liner SS France, later known
as the "Versailles of the Atlantic",
is launched.
1911 – White Star Line's RMS Olympic collides
with British warship HMS Hawke.
1920 – Foundation of the Spanish Legion.
1930 – Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is formed
by Archbishop Mar Ivanios.
1942 – Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In
the course of two days the German SS murders
at least 3,000 Jews.
1961 – Greek general Konstantinos Dovas becomes
Prime Minister of Greece.
1962 – James Meredith, an African-American,
is temporarily barred from entering the University
of Mississippi.
1967 – RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at
John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland.
It is operated by the Cunard Line.
1970 – Syrian tanks roll into Jordan in response
to continued fighting between Jordan and the
fedayeen.
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.
1973 – Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs
in The Battle of the Sexes tennis match at
the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
1977 – The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is
admitted to the United Nations.
1979 – A coup d'état in the Central African
Empire overthrows Emperor Bokasa I.
1982 – The National Football League players
begin a 57-day strike.
1984 – A suicide bomber in a car attacks the
U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two
people.
1990 – South Ossetia declares its independence
from Georgia.
2000 – The British MI6 Secret Intelligence
Service building is attacked by unapprehended
forces using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank
missile.
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".
2002 – The Kolka-Karmadon rock/ice slide.
2003 – Maldives civil unrest: the death of
prisoner Hassan Evan Naseem sparks a day of
rioting in Malé.
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.
2008 – A dump truck full of explosives detonates
in front of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad,
Pakistan, killing 54 people and injuring 266
others.
2011 – The United States ends its "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell" policy, allowing gay
men and women to serve openly for the first
time.
Holidays
and observances
Christian
Feast Day:
Agapitus (Western Christianity)
Eustace (Western Christianity)
John Coleridge Patteson (Anglican Communion)
Korean Martyrs, including Andrew Kim Taegon
and Laurent-Marie-Joseph Imbert
September 20 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Farroupilha Revolution (Brazilian state of
Rio Grande do Sul)
Independence Day of South Ossetia (not fully
recognized)
National Youth Day (Thailand)
The seventh day of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
when the secret rites in the Telesterion began.
(ancient Greece)
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