Today in History

1676		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.
1773		Phillis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, publishes a collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London.
1807		Aaron Burr is arrested in Mississippi for complicity in a plot to establish a Southern empire in Louisiana and Mexico.
1821		William Becknell leads a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.
1836		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.
1864		Confederate forces under General John Bell Hood evacuate Atlanta in anticipation of the arrival of Union General William T. Sherman's troops.
1870		The Prussian army crushes the French at Sedan, the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.
1876		The Ottomans inflict a decisive defeat on the Serbs at Aleksinac.
1882		The first Labor Day is observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.
1894		By an act of Congress, Labor Day is declared a national holiday.
1902		The Austro-Hungarian army is called into the city of Agram to restore the peace as Serbs and Croats clash.
1904		Helen Keller graduates with honors from Radcliffe College.
1905		Alberta and Saskatchewan become Canadian provinces.
1916		Bulgaria declares war on Rumania as the First World War expands.
1923		An earthquake levels the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, killing 300,000.
1939		Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II in Europe.
1942		A federal judge in Sacramento, Cal., upholds the government's detention of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals as a war measure.
1951		Australia, New Zealand and the United States sign the ANZUS Treaty, a mutual defense pact.
1969		Colonel Muammar Gadhafi seizes power in Libya following a coup.
1970		Dr. Hugh Scott of Washington, D.C. becomes the first African-American superintendent of schools in a major U.S. city.
1972		America's Bobby Fischer beats Russia's Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, to become world chess champion.
1979		US spacecraft Pioneer 11 makes the first-ever flyby of Saturn.
1985		The wreck of the Titanic found by Dr. Robert Ballard and Jean Louis Michel in a joint U.S. and French expedition.
1998		On National Day, Vietnam releases 5,000 prisoners, including political dissidents.
2004		Armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in the Besian school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia.