On this date
In 1807,
former Vice President Aaron Burr was found not guilty of treason. (Burr was then tried on a misdemeanor charge, but was again acquitted.)
In 1923,
the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama were devastated by an earthquake that claimed some 140,000 lives.
In 1942,
U.S. District Court Judge Martin I. Welsh, ruling from Sacramento, Calif., on a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Fred Korematsu, upheld the wartime detention of Japanese-Americans as well as Japanese nationals.
In 1945,
Americans received word of Japan’s formal surrender that ended World War II. (Because of the time difference, it was Sept. 2 in Tokyo Bay, where the ceremony took place.)
In 1969,
a coup in Libya brought Moammar Gadhafi to power.
In 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.
In 1985,
a U.S.-French expedition located the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 400 miles off Newfoundland.
Ten years ago:
Hurricane Gustav slammed into the heart of Louisiana’s fishing and oil industry with 110-mph winds, delivering only a glancing blow to New Orleans.
Five years ago:
Former South African President Nelson Mandela left a hospital after nearly three months of treatment.
One year ago:
A line of cars stretched more than a mile at a water distribution center set up on a high school football field in Beaumont, Texas, which had been left without drinking water by flooding from Hurricane Harvey.