September 20 is the 263rd day of the year (264th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 102 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Christian feast day:
- Agapitus (Western Christianity)
- Eustace (Western Christianity)
- Jean-Charles Cornay (one of Vietnamese Martyrs)
- José Maria de Yermo y Parres
- Korean Martyrs, including Andrew Kim Taegon and Laurent-Marie-Joseph Imbert
- September 20 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
- John Coleridge Patteson (commemoration, Anglicanism)
- Independence Day of South Ossetia (not fully recognized)
- Constitution Day (Nepal)
- National Youth Day (Thailand)
- Oil Workers’ Day (Azerbaijan)
- Universal Children’s Day (Germany)
History
In 480 BC, Greeks defeat Persians in the Battle of Salamis
In 1058, Agnes de Poitou and Andrew I of Hungary meet to negotiate about the border-zone in present-day Burgenland.
In 1066, Battle of Fulford, Viking Harold Hardrada defeats earls Morcar and Edwin (both died in the battle)
In 1187, Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem.
In 1260, the Great Prussian Uprising among the old Prussians begins against the Teutonic Knights.
In 1378, Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the Butcher of Cesena, is elected as Avignon Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism.
In 1498, The 1498 Meiō Nankaidō 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.
In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
In 1586, A number of conspirators in the Babington Plot are hanged, drawn and quartered. The Babington Plot was a plan in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, her Catholic cousin, on the English throne. It led to Mary’s execution, a result of a letter sent by Mary (who had been imprisoned for 19 years since 1568 in England at the behest of Elizabeth) in which she consented to the assassination of Elizabeth.
In 1596, Diego de Montemayor founds the city of Monterrey in New Spain.
In 1697, The Treaty of Rijswijk is signed by France, England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic ending the Nine Years’ War (1688–97).
In 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.
In 1792, French troops stop allied invasion of France, during the War of the First Coalition at Valmy.
In 1793, Fletcher Christian, English lieutenant (b. 1764) was shot and killed while working by a pond next to the home of his pregnant wife. Along with Christian, four other mutineers and all six of the Tahitian men who had come to the island were killed in the conflict. He was master’s mate on board HMS Bounty during Lieutenant William Bligh‘s voyage to Tahiti for breadfruit plants. In the mutiny on the Bounty, Christian seized command of the ship from Bligh on 28 April 1789.
In 1835, Ragamuffin rebels capture Porto Alegre, then capital of the Brazilian imperial province of Rio Grande do Sul, triggering the start of ten-year-long Farroupilha Revolution.
In 1848, The American Association for the Advancement of Science is created.
In 1854, Battle of Alma: British and French troops defeat Russians in the Crimea.
In 1857, The Indian Rebellion of 1857 ends with the recapture of Delhi by troops loyal to the East India Company.
In 1860, The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of the United Kingdom) visits the United States.
In 1863, American Civil War: The Battle of Chickamauga ends.
In 1870, Bersaglieri corps enter Rome through the Porta Pia and complete the unification of Italy.
In 1871, Bishop John Coleridge Patteson is martyred on the island of Nukapu, a Polynesian outlier island now in the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. He is the first bishop of Melanesia.
In 1881, Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as the 21st President of the United States following the assassination of James Garfield.
In 1893, Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
In 1909, The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the South Africa Act 1909, creating the Union of South Africa from the British Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal Colony.
In 1906, Cunard Line‘s RMS Mauretania is launched at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
In 1910, The ocean liner SS France, later known as the “Versailles of the Atlantic”, is launched.
In 1911, White Star Line‘s RMS Olympic collides with British warship HMS Hawke.
In 1920, Foundation of the Spanish Legion.
In 1930, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church is formed by Archbishop Mar Ivanios.
In 1942, Holocaust in Letychiv, Ukraine. In the course of two days the German SS murders at least 3,000 Jews.
In 1946, The first Cannes Film Festival is held, having been delayed seven years due to World War II.
In 1961, Greek general Konstantinos Dovas becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
In 1962, James Meredith, an African-American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.
In 1967, RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at John Brown & Company, Clydebank, Scotland. It is operated by the Cunard Line.
In 1970, Syrian tanks roll into Jordan in response to continued fighting between Jordan and the fedayeen.
In 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.
In 1973, Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in The Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
In 1973, Jim Croce, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1943) dies when his chartered Beechcraft E18S crashes into a tree, while taking off from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Natchitoches, Louisiana. He was an American folk and popular rock singer of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Between 1966 and 1973, Croce released five studio albums and 11 singles. His singles “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “Time in a Bottle” both reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. Croce was 30 years old. While on his tours, he grew increasingly homesick, and decided to take a break from music and settle with his wife and infant son when his Life and Times tour ended. In a letter to his wife which arrived after his death, Croce told her he had decided to quit music and stick to writing short stories and movie scripts as a career, and withdraw from public life.
In 1977, The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is admitted to the United Nations.
In 1979, A coup d’état in the Central African Empire overthrows Emperor Bokasa I.
In 1982, The National Football League players begin a 57-day strike.
In 1984, A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people.
In 1985, Capital gains tax is introduced in Australia, one of a number of tax reforms by the Hawke/Keating government.
In 1990, South Ossetia declares its independence from Georgia.
In 2000, The British MI6 Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by unapprehended forces using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank missile.
In 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“.
In 2002, The Kolka-Karmadon rock/ice slide. The Kolka-Karmadon rock-ice slide occurred on the northern slope of the Kazbek massif in North Ossetia, Russia on the 20th of September 2002 following a partial collapse of the Kolka Glacier. It started on the north-northeast wall of Dzhimarai-Khokh, 4,780 m (15,680 ft) above sea level, and seriously affected the valley of Genaldon and Karmadon. The resulting avalanche and mudflow killed 125 people (including a film crew of 27 people and Russian actor Sergei Bodrov Jr.).
In 2003, Maldives civil unrest: the death of prisoner Hassan Evan Naseem sparks a day of rioting in Malé.
In 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.
In 2008, A dump truck full of explosives detonates in front of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 54 people and injuring 266 others.
In 2011, The United States ends its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing gay men and women to serve for the first time. In 2017, that policy was being reviewed.
In 2016, All Eyes on Bob Corker as Wells Fargo scandal tour comes to Capitol Hill.
In 2016, Motorists from 65 Florida cities and counties want their money back after paying red light camera tickets that a state appeals court deemed illegal two years ago.
In 2017, Hurricane Maria makes landfall in Puerto Rico as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, resulting in 2,975 deaths, US$90 billion in damage, and a major humanitarian crisis.
In 2018, At least 161 people die after a ferry capsized close to the pier on Ukara Island in Lake Victoria and part of Tanzania