2010 - Satoshi Kon, Japanese anime film director (born 1963)
Events
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.
1514 - Battle of Chaldiran ended with a decisive victory for the Sultan Selim I, Ottoman Empire, over the Shah Ismail I, Safavids founder.
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.
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.
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.
1896 - First Cry of the Philippine Revolution is made in Pugad Lawin (Quezon City), in the province of Manila.
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, the Baltic states, Finland, Romania, and Poland are divided between the two nations.
1942 - World War II: Beginning of the Battle of Stalingrad.
1942 - World War II: The last cavalry charge in history takes place at Izbushensky.
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.
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 they will unite on October 3.
1993 - Project Operation Resist Begins the finishing date is still unknown.
1996 - Osama bin Laden issues message entitled 'A declaration of war against the Americans occupying the land of the two holy places.'
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.
