What Happened on September 20th in History
30 historical events on this date
Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
Charles Edgar Duryea was an American engineer. He was the engineer of the second working American gasoline-powered car and co-founder of Duryea Motor Wagon Company. He was born near Canton,...
The White Star Line's RMS Olympic collides with the British warship HMS Hawke.
RMS Olympic was a British ocean liner and the lead ship of the White Star Line's trio of Olympic-class liners. Olympic had a career spanning 24 years from 1911 to 1935, in contrast to her...
Irish War of Independence: British police known as "Black and Tans" burn the town of Balbriggan and kill two local men in revenge for an IRA assassination.
The Irish War of Independence, also known as the Anglo-Irish War, was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army and British forces: the British Army,...
The Holocaust in Lithuania: Lithuanian Nazis and local police begin a mass execution of 403 Jews in Nemenčinė.
The Holocaust resulted in the near total eradication of Lithuanian (Litvaks) and Polish Jews[a] in Generalbezirk Litauen of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Nazi-controlled Lithuania. Of...
The first Cannes Film Festival is held, having been delayed for seven years due to World War II.
The Cannes Film Festival is considered the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries. Founded in 1946, the...
Six days after a referendum, King Christian X of Denmark annuls the declaration of independence of the Faroe Islands.
An independence referendum was held in the Faroe Islands, an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, on 14 September 1946. Although a narrow majority of valid votes were cast in favour of...
The Moomin comics, created by Tove Jansson and Lars Jansson, is published internationally in the London newspaper The Evening News.
Moomin is a comic strip created by Swedish-speaking Finnish writer and artist Tove Jansson, and followed up by her younger brother Lars Jansson, featuring their Moomin family of characters. The...
The Treaty on Relations between the USSR and the GDR is signed.
The Treaty on Relations Between the USSR and GDR was a treaty between the Soviet Union and German Democratic Republic, commonly known as East Germany, signed on 20 September 1955. The treaty became...
Greek general Konstantinos Dovas becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
Konstantinos Dovas was a Greek general and interim Prime Minister.
James Meredith, an African American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.
James Howard Meredith is an American civil rights activist, writer, political adviser, and United States Air Force veteran who became, in 1962, the first African-American student admitted to the...
Following the Battle of Burki, the Indian Army captures Dograi in during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
The Battle of Burki was a battle between the Indian and Pakistan Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 at Burki, a village that lies 11 km south-east of Lahore, Pakistan near the border with...
The Cunard Liner Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched in Clydebank, Scotland.
Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) is a retired British ocean liner. Built by John Brown & Company on the River Clyde in Scotland for the Cunard Line, the ship was operated as a transatlantic liner and cruise...
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.
Hurricane Irene–Olivia was the first actively tracked tropical cyclone to move into the eastern Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic basin. It originated as a tropical depression on September 11, 1971,...
Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome.
In tennis, "Battle of the Sexes" describes various exhibition matches played between a man and a woman, or a doubles match between two men and two women in one case. The term is most famously used...
Singer Jim Croce, songwriter and musician Maury Muehleisen and four others die when their light aircraft crashes shortly after takeoff from Natchitoches Regional Airport in Louisiana.
James Joseph Croce was an American folk and rock singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, he released five studio albums and numerous singles. During this period, Croce took a series of odd jobs to...
Vietnam is admitted to the United Nations.
Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of Mainland Southeast Asia. With an area of about 331,000 square kilometres and a population of over...
A French-supported coup d'état in the Central African Empire overthrows Emperor Bokassa I.
Operation Caban, also known as the 1979 Central African coup d’état, was a bloodless military operation by the French intelligence service SDECE in September 1979 to depose Emperor Bokassa I,...
NFL season: American football players in the National Football League begin a 57-day strike.
The 1982 NFL season was the 63rd regular season of the National Football League. A 57-day-long players' strike reduced the 1982 season from a 16-game schedule per team to an abbreviated nine-game...
A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people.
On September 20, 1984, the Shi'a Islamic militant group Hezbollah, with support and direction from the Islamic Republic of Iran, carried out a suicide car bombing targeting the US embassy annex in...
USAir Flight 5050 crashes into Bowery Bay during a rejected takeoff from LaGuardia Airport, killing two people.
USAir Flight 5050 was a passenger flight that crashed on takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in Queens, New York. As the plane took off from LaGuardia's runway 31, the plane drifted to the left. After...
South Ossetia declares its independence from Georgia.
South Ossetia, formally known as the State of Alania since 2017, or originally the Republic of South Ossetia, is a partially recognised state in the South Caucasus. It has an officially stated...
The United Kingdom's MI6 Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by individuals using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank missile.
On Wednesday 20 September 2000, the Real Irish Republican Army (RIRA) carried out an attack on MI6's SIS Building headquarters in Vauxhall, Lambeth, London. A Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank rocket,...
In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a "war on terror".
The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global military campaign initiated by the United States in response to the September 11 attacks in 2001. A global conflict...
Civil unrest in the Maldives breaks out after a prisoner is killed by guards.
On Saturday September 20, 2003 civil unrest broke out in Malé, the capital city of the Maldives. This unrest was provoked by the death of Hassan Evan Naseem at Maafushi Prison – located on a...
Between 15,000 and 20,000 protesters march on Jena, Louisiana, United States, in support of six black youths who had been convicted of assaulting a white classmate.
The Jena Six were six black teenagers in Jena, Louisiana, United States, convicted in the 2006 beating of Justin Barker, a white student at the local Jena High School, which they also attended....
A dump truck full of explosives detonates in front of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 54 people and injuring 266 others.
The Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing occurred on the night of 20 September 2008, when a dumper truck filled with explosives was detonated in front of the Marriott Hotel in the Pakistani capital...
The United States military ends its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly for the first time.
"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of homosexual people for a period of over 17 years, starting in the mid-1990s. Instituted during the...
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.
Hurricane Maria was an extremely powerful and catastrophic tropical cyclone that affected the northeastern Caribbean in September 2017, particularly in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, which...
At least 161 people die after a ferry capsizes close to the pier on Ukara Island in Lake Victoria, Tanzania.
MV Nyerere was a Tanzanian ferry that capsized on 20 September 2018 while travelling between the islands of Ukerewe and Ukara on Lake Victoria. The Tanzanian government have declared that 228 people...
Roughly four million people, mostly students, demonstrate across the world to address climate change. Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden leads the demonstration in New York City.
The September 2019 climate strikes, also known as the Global Week for Future, were a series of international strikes and protests to demand action be taken to address climate change, which took...