Events on September 20 45
Year 1058
Agnes of Poitou and Andrew I of Hungary meet to negotiate about the border-zone in present-day Burgenland.
Year 1260
The Great Prussian Uprising among the old Prussians begins against the Teutonic Knights.
Year 1378
Cardinal Robert of Geneva, called by some the "Butcher of Cesena", is elected as Avignon Pope Clement VII, beginning the Papal schism.
Year 1498
The 1498 Nankai earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan; since then the Buddha has sat in the open air.
Year 1519
Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
Year 1697
The Treaty of Ryswick is signed by France, England, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic ending the Nine Years' War (1688-97).
Year 1737
The finish of the Walking Purchase which forces the cession of 1.2 million acres (4,860 km²) of Lenape-Delaware tribal land to the Pennsylvania Colony.
Year 1792
French troops stop allied invasion of France, during the War of the First Coalition at the Battle of Valmy.
Year 1835
Ragamuffin rebels capture Porto Alegre, then capital of the Brazilian imperial province of Rio Grande do Sul, triggering the start of ten-year-long Ragamuffin War.
Year 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 ends with the recapture of Delhi by troops loyal to the East India Company.
Year 1860
The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII of the United Kingdom) visits Canada and the United States.
Year 1863
American Civil War: The conclusion of the Battle of Chickamauga in northwestern Georgia, the bloodiest two-day battle of the conflict, and the only significant Confederate victory in the war's Western Theater.
Year 1870
Bersaglieri corps enter Rome through the Porta Pia and complete the unification of Italy, ending de facto the temporal power of popes.
Year 1871
Bishop John Coleridge Patteson is martyred on the island of Nukapu, a Polynesian outlier island now in the Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. He is the first bishop of Melanesia.
Year 1881
U.S. President Chester A. Arthur is sworn in, the morning after becoming President upon James A. Garfield's death.
Year 1893
Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
Year 1906
Cunard Line's RMS Mauretania is launched at the Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Year 1909
The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the South Africa Act 1909, creating the Union of South Africa from the British Colonies of the Cape of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River Colony, and the Transvaal Colony.
Year 1910
The ocean liner SS France, later known as the "Versailles of the Atlantic", is launched.
Year 1941
The Holocaust in Lithuania: Four hundred three Jews (128 men, 176 women and 99 children) were murdered by Einsatzkommando 3 and the local police in Nemenčinė.
Year 1942
The Holocaust in Ukraine: In the course of two days a German einsatzgruppen murders at least 3,000 Jews in Letychiv.
Year 1946
The first Cannes Film Festival is held, having been delayed seven years due to World War II.
Year 1962
James Meredith, an African American, is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.
Year 1971
Having weakened after making landfall in Nicaragua the previous day, Hurricane Irene regains enough strength to be renamed Hurricane Olivia, making it the first known hurricane to cross from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific.
Year 1973
Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome.
Year 1973
The death of Folk and Rock Singer Jim Croce along Musician and Songwriter Maury Muehleisen.
Year 1984
A suicide bomber in a car attacks the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing twenty-two people.
Year 2000
The United Kingdom's MI6 Secret Intelligence Service building is attacked by individuals using a Russian-built RPG-22 anti-tank missile. The perpetrators remain unidentified.
Year 2001
In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a "War on Terror".
Year 2007
Between 15,000 and 20,000 protesters marched on Jena, Louisiana, in support of six black youths who had been convicted of assaulting a white classmate.
Year 2008
A dump truck full of explosives detonates in front of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 54 people and injuring 266 others.
Year 2011
The United States military ends its "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly for the first time.