September 20
622 –
Muhammad and
Abu Bakr arrived in Medina.
1187 –
Saladin begins the
Siege of Jerusalem.
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.
1519 –
Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from
Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
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.
1881 – U.S. President
Chester A. Arthur is sworn in, the morning after becoming President upon
James A. Garfield's death.
1893 –
Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
1906 – Cunard Line's
RMS Mauretania, the largest and fastest ship in the world at the time, is launched at the
Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
1911 – White Star Line's [url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic"]RMS
Olympic[/URL] collides with British warship
HMS Hawke.
1946 – The first
Cannes Film Festival is held, having been delayed seven years due to World War II.
1964 - At the end of their North American tour
The Beatles played a charity concert at the Paramount Theatre in New York City, the 3,682 audience each paid $100 a ticket ($765, each, in 2016 dollars).
1967 –
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at
John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland.
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.
On his way to perform his second concert of the day, US singer/songwriter
Jim Croce was killed with five others when his chartered aircraft clipped a pecan tree on take off in Louisiana. He was 30 years old.
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 (or twenty-four) people.
1985 –
Capital gains tax is introduced in Australia, one of a number of tax reforms by the Hawke/Keating government.
2000 – The United Kingdom's
MI6 Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by individuals using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank missile. The perpetrators remain unidentified.
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".
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.
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.
Births
1842 – James Dewar; 1878 – Upton Sinclair; 1892 – Roy Turk♪ ♫(wrote
Are You Lonesome Tonight); 1917 – Red Auerbach, Fernando Rey, Don Starr (
Dallas); 1920 – Jay Ward (designed Cap'n Crunch); 1929 – Anne Meara; 1934 – Sophia Loren

; 1934 – Jeff Morris (
The Blues Bros); 1942 - Popdigr; 1946 – Pete Coors (yeah,
that Coors); 1948 – George R. R. Martin; 1948 – Chuck Panozzo

(Styx); 1948 – John Panozzo

(Styx); 1955 – Peter Scolari (
Bosom Buddies, Honey, I Shrunk The Kids); 1956 – Gary Cole (
Office Space); 1960 – Deborah Roberts; 1964 – Randy Bradbury

(Pennywise); 1966 - Nuno Bettencourt♪ ♫

(Boston, Extreme); 1967 – Gunnar & Matthew Nelson♪ ♫(Nelson, twin sons of Ricky Nelson); 1975 – Asia Argento

, Juan Pablo Montoya

; 1990 – Phillip Phillips♪ ♫; 1991 – Spencer Locke
Deaths
1793 – Fletcher Christian (mutineer on the HMS
Bounty); 1945 – William Seabrook; 1957 – Jean Sibelius

; 1973 – Jim Croce

; 1984 – Steve Goodman

; 2005 – Simon Wiesenthal; 2010 – Leonard Skinner (namesake of Lynyrd Skynyrd,
no shit); 2014 – Polly Bergen; 2015 – Jack Larson ('Jimmy Olsen' on
Adventures of Superman)