September 23 - Events

Events

• 1122 – Pope Calixtus II and Holy Roman Emperor Henry V agree to the Concordat of Worms to put an end to the Investiture Controversy.
• 1338 – The Battle of Arnemuiden was the first naval battle of the Hundred Years' War and the first naval battle using artillery, as the English ship Christofer had three cannon and one hand gun.
• 1409 – Battle of Kherlen, the second significant victory over Ming China by the Mongols since 1368.
• 1459 – Battle of Blore Heath, the first major battle of the English Wars of the Roses, is fought at Blore Heath in Staffordshire.
• 1568 – Spanish naval forces rout an English fleet, under the command of John Hawkins, at the Battle of San Juan de Ulúa near Veracruz.
• 1641 – The Merchant Royal, carrying a treasure worth over a billion US dollars, is lost at sea off Land's End.
• 1642 – First commencement exercises occur at Harvard College.
• 1779 – American Revolution: John Paul Jones on board the USS Bonhomme Richard wins the Battle of Flamborough Head.
• 1780 – American Revolution: British Major John André is arrested as a spy by American soldiers exposing Benedict Arnold's change of sides.
• 1803 – Second Anglo-Maratha War: Battle of Assaye between the British East India Company and the Maratha Empire in India.
• 1806 – Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis after exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
• 1821 – Tripolitsa, Greece, falls and 30,000 Turks are massacred during the Greek War of Independence.
• 1845 – The Knickerbockers Baseball Club, the first baseball team to play under the modern rules, is founded in New York.
• 1846 – Astronomers Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle collaborate on the discovery of Neptune.
• 1868 – Grito de Lares ("Lares Revolt") occurs in Puerto Rico against Spanish rule.
• 1889 – Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda.
• 1899 – American Asiatic Squadron destroys a Filipino battery at the Battle of Olongapo.
• 1905 – Norway and Sweden sign the "Karlstad treaty", peacefully dissolving the Union between the two countries.
• 1908 – University of Alberta in Alberta, Canada, is founded.
• 1909 – The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra), a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, is first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois.
• 1913 – Roland Garros of France becomes the first to fly in an airplane across the Mediterranean from St. Raphael France to Bizerte, Tunisia in 7 hours 54 minutes. His Morane-Saulnier Type H carried fuel for no more than 8 hours of flight. Garros's trip is the largest body of water crossed prior to WW1 and prior to the post-war 1919 crossing of the Atlantic.
• 1932 – The Kingdom of Hejaz and Nejd is renamed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
• 1936 – First ascent of Siniolchu by a German team.
• 1938 – Mobilization of the Czechoslovak army in response to the Munich Crisis.
• 1941 – World War II: The first gas chamber experiments are conducted at Auschwitz.
• 1942 – World War II: The Matanikau action on Guadalcanal begins U.S. Marines attack Japanese units along the Matanikau River.
• 1943 – World War II: The Nazi puppet state the Italian Social Republic is founded.
• 1952 – Richard Nixon makes his "Checkers speech".
• 1959 – Iowa farmer and corn breeder Roswell Garst hosts Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.
• 1959 – The MS Princess of Tasmania, Australia’s first passenger roll-on/roll-off diesel ferry, makes her maiden voyage across Bass Strait.
• 1962 – The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts opens in New York City.
• 1969 – The Chicago Eight trial opens in Chicago.
• 1972 – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos announces over television and radio the implementation of martial law.
• 1973 – Juan Perón returns to power in Argentina.
• 1983 – Saint Kitts and Nevis joins the United Nations.
• 1983 – Gerrie Coetzee of South Africa becomes the first African boxing world heavyweight champion.
• 1983 – Gulf Air Flight 771 is bombed, killing all 117 people on board.
• 1986 – Jim Deshaies of the Houston Astros sets the major-league record by striking out the first eight batters of the game against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
• 1988 – José Canseco of the Oakland Athletics becomes the first member of the 40-40 club.
• 1992 – A large Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb destroys forensic laboratories in Belfast.
• 1999 – Celebrate Bisexuality Day was first observed in the United States.
• 1999 – NASA announces that it has lost contact with the Mars Climate Orbiter.
• 2002 – The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox ("Phoenix 0.1") is released.
• 2004 – Hurricane Jeanne: At least 1,070 in Haiti are reported to have been killed by floods.
• 2008 – Kauhajoki school shooting: Matti Saari kills 10 people before committing suicide.