Events on September 12 59
Year 372
Sixteen Kingdoms: Jin Xiaowudi, age 10, succeeds his father Jin Jianwendi as Emperor of the Eastern Jin dynasty.
Year 1213
Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon at the Battle of Muret.
Year 1229
Battle of Portopí: The Aragonese army under the command of James I of Aragon disembarks at Santa Ponça, Majorca, with the purpose of conquering the island.
Year 1309
The First Siege of Gibraltar takes place in the context of the Spanish Reconquista pitting the forces of the Kingdom of Castile against the Emirate of Granada resulting in a Castilian victory.
Year 1609
Henry Hudson begins his exploration of the Hudson River while aboard the Halve Maen.
Year 1634
A gunpowder factory explodes in Valletta, Malta, killing 22 people and damaging several buildings.
Year 1683
Austro-Ottoman War: Battle of Vienna: Several European armies join forces to defeat the Ottoman Empire.
Year 1814
Battle of North Point: an American detachment halts the British land advance to Baltimore in the War of 1812.
Year 1857
The SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, drowning a total of 426 passengers and crew, including Captain William Lewis Herndon. The ship was carrying 13-15 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush.
Year 1885
Arbroath 36-0 Bon Accord, a world record scoreline in professional Association football.
Year 1906
The Newport Transporter Bridge is opened in Newport, South Wales by Viscount Tredegar.
Year 1910
Premiere performance of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 in Munich (with a chorus of 852 singers and an orchestra of 171 players. Mahler's rehearsal assistant conductor was Bruno Walter)
Year 1915
French soldiers rescue over 4,000 Armenian Genocide survivors stranded on Musa Dagh.
Year 1933
Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.
Year 1938
Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
Year 1940
An explosion at the Hercules Powder Company plant in Kenvil, New Jersey kills 51 people and injures over 200.
Year 1942
World War II: RMS Laconia, carrying civilians, Allied soldiers and Italian POWs is torpedoed off the coast of West Africa and sinks with a heavy loss of life.
Year 1942
World War II: First day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge during the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines protecting Henderson Field on Guadalcanal are attacked by Imperial Japanese Army forces.
Year 1943
World War II: Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, is rescued from house arrest on the Gran Sasso in Abruzzi, by German commando forces led by Otto Skorzeny.
Year 1944
World War II: The liberation of Serbia from Nazi Germany continues. Bajina Bašta in western Serbia is among the liberated cities.
Year 1952
Strange occurrences, including a monster sighting, take place in Flatwoods, West Virginia.
Year 1953
U.S. Senator and future President John Fitzgerald Kennedy marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier at St. Mary's Church in Newport, Rhode Island.
Year 1958
Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments.
Year 1962
President John F. Kennedy, at a speech at Rice University, reaffirms that the U.S. will put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
Year 1966
Gemini 11, the penultimate mission of NASA's Gemini program, and the current human altitude record holder (except for the Apollo lunar missions)
Year 1970
Dawson's Field hijackings: Palestinian terrorists blow up three hijacked airliners in Jordan, continuing to hold the passengers hostage in various undisclosed locations in Amman.
Year 1974
Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, 'Messiah' of the Rastafari movement, is deposed following a military coup by the Derg, ending a reign of 58 years.
Year 1983
A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, is robbed of approximately US$7 million by Los Macheteros.
Year 1983
The USSR vetoes a United Nations Security Council Resolution deploring the Soviet destruction of Korean Air Lines Flight 007.
Year 1984
Dwight Gooden sets the baseball record for strikeouts in a season by a rookie with 246, previously set by Herb Score in 1954. Gooden's 276 strikeouts that season, pitched in 218 innings, set the current record.
Year 1988
Hurricane Gilbert devastates Jamaica; it turns towards Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula two days later, causing an estimated $5 billion in damage.
Year 1990
The two German states and the Four Powers sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, paving the way for German reunification.
Year 1992
NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47 which marked the 50th shuttle mission. On board are Mae Carol Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space.
Year 1992
Abimael Guzmán, leader of the Shining Path, is captured by Peruvian special forces; shortly thereafter the rest of Shining Path's leadership fell as well.
Year 1994
Frank Eugene Corder fatally crashes a single-engine Cessna 150 into the White House's south lawn, striking the West wing. There were no other casualties.
Year 2001
Ansett Australia, Australia's first commercial interstate airline, collapses due to increased strain on the international airline industry, leaving 10,000 people unemployed.
Year 2003
The United Nations lifts sanctions against Libya after that country agreed to accept responsibility and recompense the families of victims in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Year 2003
Iraq War: In Fallujah, U.S. forces mistakenly shoot and kill eight Iraqi police officers.
Year 2008
The 2008 Chatsworth train collision in Los Angeles between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train kills 25 people.
Year 2014
Three-year-old William Tyrrell disappears in Kendall, New South Wales, Australia
Year 2015
A series of explosions involving propane triggering nearby illegally stored mining detonators in the Indian town of Petlawad in the state of Madhya Pradesh(मध्य प्रदेश) kills at least 105 people with over 150 injured.
Year ?
Battle of Marathon: The conventionally accepted date for the Battle of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataean allies, defeat the first Persian invasion force of Greece.