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 Romania 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 Gaddafi 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
The US spacecraft Pioneer 11 makes the first-ever flyby of Saturn.
1985
The wreck of the Titanic is 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 Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia.