• 79 - Mount Vesuvius begins stirring, on the feast day of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
• 1305 - William Wallace, Scottish patriot, is executed for high treason by Edward I of England.
• 1328 - Battle of Cassel: French troops stop an uprising of Flemish farmers.
• 1541 - French explorer Jacques Cartier lands near Quebec City in his third voyage to Canada.
• 1555 - Calvinists are granted rights in the Netherlands.
• 1595 - Michael the Brave confronts the Ottoman army in the Battle of Calugareni.
• 1708 - Meidingnu Pamheiba is crowned King of Manipur.
• 1775 - King George III declares that the American colonies exist in a state of open and avowed rebellion.
• 1784 - Western North Carolina (now eastern Tennessee) declares itself an independent state under the name of Franklin; it wasn’t accepted into the United States, and only lasted for four years.
• 1793 - French Revolution: a levée en masse was decreed by the National Convention.
• 1799 - Napoleon leaves Egypt for France en route to seize power.
• 1813 - At the Battle of Grossbeeren, the Prussians under Von Bülow repulse the French army.
• 1833 - Slavery abolished in the British colonies.
• 1839 - The United Kingdom captures Hong Kong as a base as it prepares to war with Qing China. The ensuing 3-year conflict will later be known as the First Opium War.
• 1864 - The Union Navy captures Fort Morgan, Alabama, thus breaking Confederate dominance of all ports on the Gulf of Mexico.
• 1866 - Austro-Prussian War ends with the Treaty of Prague.
• 1889 - First wireless message from a ship to the shore received.
• 1896 - First Cry of the Philippine Revolution is made in Pugad Lawin (Quezon City), in the province of Manila.
• 1904 - The automobile tire chain is patented.
• 1914 - World War I: Japan declares war on Germany and bombs Qingdao, China.
• 1914 - World War I: the Battle of Mons; the British Army begins withdrawal.
• 1923 - Capt. Lowell Smith and Lt. John P. Richter performed the first mid-air refueling on De Havilland DH-4B, setting an endurance flight record of 37 hours.
• 1929 - Hebron Massacre: Arab attack of the Jewish community in the British Mandate of Palestine resulted in 133 Jews killed, 67 in Hebron.
• 1939 - World War II: Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression treaty, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In a secret addition to the pact, Baltic states, Finland, Ukraine and Poland are divided between the two nations.
• 1940 - World War II: The Germans start bombing London.
• 1942 - World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.
• 1942 - World War II: The last cavalry charge in history takes place at Izbushensky.
• 1943 - World War II: Kharkov liberated.
• 1944 - World War II: Marseille liberated.
• 1944 - World War II King Michael of Romania dismisses the pro-Nazi government of General Antonescu, who is arrested. Romania switches sides from the Axis to the Allies.
• 1944 - Freckleton Air Disaster - A United States Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bomber crashes into a school in Freckleton, England killing 61 people.
• 1946 - Ordinance No. 46 of the British Military Government constitutes the German Land (state) of Schleswig-Holstein.
• 1948 - World Council of Churches is formed.
• 1952 - The Arab League is formed.
• 1954 - First flight of the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft.
• 1958 - Chinese Civil War: The Second Taiwan Strait crisis begins with the People's Liberation Army's bombardment of Quemoy.
• 1962 - First live television connection between the United States and Europe, via the Telstar satellite.
• 1966 - Lunar Orbiter 1 takes the first photograph of Earth from orbit around the Moon.
• 1973 - The Intelsat communication satellite is launched.
• 1975 - Successful Communist coup in Laos.
• 1977 - The Gossamer Condor wins the Kremer prize for human powered flight.
• 1979 - Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defects to the United States.
• 1982 - Bachir Gemayel is elected Lebanese President amidst the raging civil war.
• 1985 - Hans Tiedge, top counter-spy of West Germany, defects to East Germany.
• 1989 - Singing Revolution: two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stand on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands (Baltic Way).
• 1989 - All of Australia's 1,645 domestic airline pilots resign after the airlines threaten to fire them and sue them over a dispute.
• 1990 - Saddam Hussein appears on Iraqi state television with a number of Western "guests" (actually hostages) to try to prevent the Gulf War.
• 1990 - Armenia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1990 - West Germany and East Germany announce that that'll unite on October 3.
• 1996 - Osama bin Laden issues message entitled 'A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.'
• 1998 - The first episode of That '70s Show was aired.
• 2000 - A Gulf Air Airbus A320 crashes into the Persian Gulf near Manama, Bahrain, killing 143.
• 2000 - Nicaragua becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty. This essentially deprecated the Buenos Aires Convention treaty, because as of this date, all members of the BA Convention were also signatories to Berne.
• 2005 - TANS Peru Flight 204 crashes near Pucallpa, Peru, killing 41.
• 2006 - Natascha Kampusch, who was abducted at the age of 10, managed to escape from her captor Wolfgang Priklopil, after 8 years of captivity.

Births