On this day, September 21st, the 264th date in the Gregorian calendar …
454 – Roman Emperor Valentinian III assassinates Aëtius in his own thrown room.
1217 – An Estonian tribal leader Lembitu of Lehola was killed in a battle against the Teutonic Knights.
1745 – Battle of Prestonpans: A Hanoverian army under the command of Sir John Cope is defeated within ten minutes by the Jacobite forces of Prince Charles Edward Stuart.
1765 – Antoine de Beauterne announces he had killed the Beast of Gévaudan, but was later proved wrong by more attacks.
1780 – American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold gives the British the plans to West Point.
1792 – The French National Convention votes to abolish the monarchy.
1827 – According to Joseph Smith, Jr., the angel Moroni gave him a record of gold plates, one-third of which Joseph translated into The Book of Mormon.
1860 – In the Second Opium War, an Anglo-French force defeats Chinese troops at the Battle of Baliqiao.
1896 – British force under Horatio Kitchener takes Dongola in the Sudan.
1897 – The “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” letter is published in the New York Sun.
1937 – J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is published.
1938 – The Great Hurricane of 1938 makes landfall on Long Island in New York and kills 500-700 people.
1939 – Romanian Prime Minister Armand Calinescu is assassinated by pro-Nazi members of the Iron Guard.
1942 – World War II: On the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, Nazi sent over 1,000 Jews of Pidhaytsi (west Ukraine) to Belzec extermination camp; at the end of Yom Kippur, the Germans ordered Konstantynow Jews (Poland) to permanently evacuate Konstantynow and move to the Ghetto – established in Biala Podlaska, meant to assemble Jews from seven nearby towns; In Dunaivtsi, Ukraine, Nazi murdered 2,588 Jews; the B-29 Superfortress makes its maiden flight.
1950 – George Marshall is sworn in as the 3rd Secretary of Defense of the United States.
1964 – Malta becomes independent from the United Kingdom; the North American XB-70 Valkyrie, the world’s first Mach 3 bomber, made its maiden flight from Palmdale, California.
1965 – Singapore is admitted to the United Nations.
1970 – New York Times starts the first modern Op-Ed page.
1981 – Belize is granted full independence from the United Kingdom; Sandra Day O’Connor is unanimously approved by the US Senate as the first female Supreme Court Justice.
1989 – Hurricane Hugo makes landfall in the state of South Carolina.
1991 – Armenia is granted independence from Soviet Union.
1993 – Russian President Boris Yeltsin suspends parliament and scraps the then-functioning constitution, and triggers the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993.
1995 – The Hindu milk miracle occurs, in which statues of the Hindu God Ganesh began drinking milk when spoonfuls were placed near their mouths.
2001 – Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 km of Comet Borrelly.
2003 – Galileo mission is terminated by sending the probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere where it is crushed by the pressure at the lower altitudes.
2004 – The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre of India merge to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
