THIS DATE IN HISTORY

Today is Sept. 1. On this date in:

1715: Following a reign of 72 years, King Louis XIV of France died four days before his 77th birthday.

1897: The first section of Boston’s new subway system was opened.

1939: Nazi Germany invaded Poland, an event regarded as start of World War II. 1969: A coup in Libya brought Moammar Gadhafi to power.

1972: American Bobby Fischer won the international chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, as Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union resigned before the resumption of Game 21.

1983: 269 people were killed when a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter after the airliner entered Soviet airspace.

1985: A U.S.-French expedition located the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 400 miles off Newfoundland.

2005: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued a “desperate SOS” as his city descended into anarchy amid the flooding left by Hurricane Katrina. 2009: Vermont’s law allowing samesex marriage went into effect.

2015: Invoking “God’s authority,” Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis denied marriage licenses to gay couples again in direct defiance of the federal courts, and vowed not to resign, even under the pressure of steep fines or jail.

2018: At a nearly three-hour memorial service for the late Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in Washington, McCain’s daughter and two former presidents led a public rebuke of President Donald Trump’s divisive politics and called for a return to civility among the nation’s leaders.