1146 Zangi of the Near East is murdered. The Sultan Nur ad-Din, his son, pursues the conquest of Edessa.
1321 Dante Alighieri dies of malaria just hours after finishing writing Paradiso.
1544 Henry VIII’s forces take Boulogne, France.
1773 Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov successfully storm a Turkish fort at Hirsov, Turkey.
1791 Louis XVI swears his allegiance to the French constitution.
1812 Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Russia reaches its climax as his Grande Armee enters Moscow–only to find the enemy capital deserted and burning, set afire by the few Russians who remained.
1814 Francis Scott Key writes the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” as he waits aboard a British launch in the Chesapeake Bay for the outcome of the British assault on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
1847 U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott capture Mexico City, virtually bringing the two-year Mexican War to a close.
1853 The Allies land at Eupatoria on the west coast of Crimea.
1862 At the battles of South Mountain and Crampton’s Gap, Maryland Union troops smash into the Confederates as they close in on what will become the Antietam battleground.
1901 Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the 26th President of the United States upon the death of William McKinley, who was shot eight days earlier.
1911 Russian Premier Piotr Stolypin is mortally wounded in an assassination attempt at the Kiev opera house.
1943 German troops abandon the Salerno front in Italy..
1960 Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia form OPEC.
1966 Operation Attleboro, designed as a training exercise for American troops, becomes a month-long struggle against the Viet Cong.
1975 Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first native-born American saint in the Roman Catholic Church.
1979 Nur Muhammad Taraki, president and former prime minister of Afghanistan, is assassinated in a coup in which prime minister Hafizullah Amin seizes power.
1982 Bachir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, is killed along with 26 others in a bomb blast in Beirut.
1984 Joe Kittinger, a former USAF fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, becomes the first person to pilot a gas balloon solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1994 Major League Baseball players strike over a salary cap and other proposed changes, forcing the cancellation of the entire postseason and the World Series.
2007 Northern Rock Bank suffers the UK’s first bank run in 150 years.
Born on September 14
1769 Baron Freidrich von Humbolt, German naturalist and explorer who made the first isothermic and isobaric maps.
1849 Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist who studied dogs’ responsiveness.
1860 Hamlin Garland, author who wrote about the Midwest in novles such as A Son of the Middle Border and The Book of the American Indian.
1864 Lord Robert Cecil, one of the founders of the League of Nations and its president from 1923 to 1945.
1867 Charles Dana Gibson, illustrator, creator of the ‘Gibson Girl.’
1879 Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate and founder of Planned Parenthood.
1898 Hal B. Wallis, film producer (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca).
1921 Constance Baker Motley, first African-American woman to be appointed a federal judge.
1930 Allan Bloom, writer (The Closing of the American Mind).
1934 Kate Millet, feminist writer, author of s*xual Politics.
1936 Ferid Murad, Albanian-American physician and pharmacologist, is co-winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on nitroglycerin’s effects the cardiovascular system.
1948 Marc Reisner, author and environmentalist best known for his book Cadillac Desert, a history of water management in the Western portion of the US.
1955 Geraldine Brooks, Australian-American journalist and author; her novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2005).
1961 Wendy Thomas (Melinda “Wendy” Thomas Morse), namesake, mascot and spokesperson for the Wendy’s chain of fast-food restaurants.
1983 Amy Winehouse, singer-songwriter; her five Grammy wins (out of six nominations) for her Back to Black album (2006) tied the existing record for most wins by a female artist in a single night; won Brit Award for Best British Female Artist (2007).
