Today in History

Armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia.

On National Day, Vietnam releases 5,000 prisoners, including political dissidents.

The wreck of the Titanic found by Dr. Robert Ballard and Jean Louis Michel in a joint U.S. and French expedition.

US spacecraft Pioneer 11 makes the first-ever flyby of Saturn.

Yutaka Yamamoto, founder of Ordet animation studios (Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens).

America’s Bobby Fischer beats Russia’s Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become world chess champion.

Dr. Hugh Scott of Washington, D.C. becomes the first African-American superintendent of schools in a major U.S. city.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi seizes power in Libya following a coup.

Mohamed Atta, Egyptian terrorist; a ringleaders of the 9/11 attacks who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center’s North Tower.

Gloria Estefan, sincere, songwriter, actress; among top-selling 100 artists worldwide (“Words Get in the Way,” “Anything for You”).

Australia, New Zealand and the United States sign the ANZUS Treaty, a mutual defense pact.

Greg Errico, drummer and producer (Sly & the Family Stone).

C. J. Cherryh, fantasy and science fiction author (The Chanur series, Gene Wars, Heroes in Hell).

Lily Tomlin, multiple-award-winning actress, comedian, writer, producer (Laugh-In, Nashville, The Magic School Bus).

Rocky Marciano, world heavyweight boxing champion who retired undefeated.

Bulgaria declares war on Romania as the First World War expands.

Walter Reuther, labor leader who merged the American Federation of Labor with the Congress of International Organizations.

Alberta and Saskatchewan become Canadian provinces.

Helen Keller graduates with honors from Radcliffe College.

The Austro-Hungarian army is called into the city of Agram to restore the peace as Serbs and Croats clash.

By an act of Congress, Labor Day is declared a national holiday.

The first Labor Day is observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.

The Ottomans inflict a decisive defeat on the Serbs at Aleksinac.

Edgar Rice Burroughs, novelist who created Tarzan, the Ape Man.

The Prussian army crushes the French at Sedan, the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.

Confederate forces under General John Bell Hood evacuate Atlanta in anticipation of the arrival of Union General William T. Sherman‘s troops.

Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman leads a party to Oregon. His wife, Narcissa, is one of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail emigrants who chose to follow Stephen Meek thought his shortcut would save weeks of hard travel. Instead, it brought them even greater misery.

William Becknell leads a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.

Aaron Burr is arrested in Mississippi for complicity in a plot to establish a Southern empire in Louisiana and Mexico.

James Gordon Bennet, editor of the New York Sun, the first tabloid-sized daily newspaper.

Lady Marguerite Blessington, English socialite and author who wrote a biography of Lord Byron.

Phillis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, publishes a collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London.

Nathaniel Bacon leads an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon’s Rebellion came in response to the governor’s repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.