1227 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, is excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX for his failure to participate in the Crusades.
1789 – The United States Department of War first establishes a regular army with a strength of several hundred men.
1864 – In the American Civil War, the Battle of Chaffin's Farm is fought.
1911 – Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
1954 – The convention establishing CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is signed.
1960 – Nikita Khrushchev, leader of Soviet Union, disrupts a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with a number of angry outbursts.
2004 – The asteroid 4179 Toutatis passes within four lunar distances of Earth.
2008 – Following the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, the Dow Jones Industrial Average falls 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in its history.
Births
106 BC – Pompey, Roman general and politician (d. 48 BC)
1547 – Miguel de Cervantes, author, poet, and playwright (d. 1616)
1901 – Enrico Fermi, physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1954)
1912 – Michelangelo Antonioni, director and screenwriter (d. 2007)
1923 – Stan Berenstain, author and illustrator (d. 2005)
1935 – Jerry Lee Lewis, singer-songwriter and pianist
1936 – Silvio Berlusconi, businessman and politician, 50th Prime Minister of Italy
1942 – Jean-Luc Ponty, French violinist and composer
1943 – Lech Wałęsa, electrician, second President of Poland, Nobel Prize laureate
1988 - Kevin Durant, basketball forward
Deaths
855 – Lothair I, Roman emperor (b. 795)
1833 – Ferdinand VII of Spain (b. 1784)
1902 – Émile Zola, French journalist, author, and playwright (b. 1840)
1910 – Winslow Homer, painter, illustrator, and engraver (b. 1836)
1913 – Rudolf Diesel, German engineer, invented the diesel engine (b. 1858)
1967 – Carson McCullers, novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet (b. 1917)
1975 – Casey Stengel, baseball player and manager (b. 1890)
1987 – Henry Ford II, businessman (b. 1917)
1997 – Roy Lichtenstein, painter and sculptor (b. 1923)
2010 – Tony Curtis, actor (b. 1925)
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