TODAY IN HISTORY

WEDNESDAY SEP 1, 2021

1939

World War II began as Nazi Germany invaded Poland.

1159

Pope Adrian IV, the only English pope, died.

1807

Former Vice President Aaron Burr was found not guilty of treason.

1923

The Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama were devastated by an earthquake that claimed some 140,000 lives.

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.

1945

Americans received word of Japan’s formal surrender that ended 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. An arson fire at the Blue Bird Cafe in Montreal, Canada, claimed 37lives.

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 same-sex 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.