Category: History on This Day

More than one million people gather at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for the funeral of Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the People’s Republic of China since 1949. Mao, who died on...

Early in the morning on September 17, 1868, a large band of Cheyenne and Sioux stage a surprise attack on Major George A. Forsyth and a volunteer force of 50 frontiersmen in Colorado. Retreating to a small sandbar in the...

Phineas Wilcox is stabbed to death by fellow Mormons in Nauvoo, Illinois, because he is believed to be a Christian spy. The murder of Wilcox reflected the serious and often violent conflict between the Church of Jesus Christ of...

A 14-year-old Muslim boy is arrested at his high school in Irving, Texas after a digital clock he had reassembled at home using a pencil case was mistaken by his teacher to be a bomb. Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman at the time, was...

On September 12, 1993, the rebuilt Lacey V. Murrow Bridge over Lake Washington opens in Seattle. The new bridge, which was actually the eastbound lanes of Interstate 90 (the westbound lanes cross the lake on a separate bridge),...

In Christiana, Pennsylvania, a group of African Americans and white abolitionists skirmish with a Maryland posse intent on capturing four fugitive slaves hidden in the town. The violence came one year after the second fugitive...

On September 10, 2008, scientists successfully flip the switch for the first time on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) lab in Geneva, kicking off what many called history’s...

The King of Rock and Roll teams up with TV’s reigning variety program, as Elvis Presley appears on “The Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time on September 9, 1956. After earning big ratings for “The Steve Allen Show,” the Dorsey...

One of the world’s most beloved works art, “David,” the 17-foot-tall, 12,000-pound marble masterpiece by Michelangelo Buonarroti, is unveiled to the public in Florence, Italy’s Piazza della Signoria. Carved from a single block...

On this day in 1977, President Jimmy Carter signs a treaty that will give Panama control over the Panama Canal beginning in the year 2000. The treaty ended an agreement signed in 1904 between then-President Theodore Roosevelt...

One of Ferdinand Magellan’s five ships—the Victoria—arrives at Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, thus completing the first circumnavigation of the world. The Victoria was commanded by Basque navigator Juan Sebastian de Elcano, who...

Oglala Sioux chief Crazy Horse is fatally bayoneted by a U.S. soldier after resisting confinement in a guardhouse at Fort Robinson, Nebraska. A year earlier, Crazy Horse was among the Sioux leaders who defeated George Armstrong...