September 1 is the 244th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 121 days remaining until the end of the year.
1355 – King Tvrtko I of Bosnia writes In castro nostro Vizoka vocatum from the Old town of Visoki.
1449 – Tumu Crisis: Mongols capture the Emperor of China.
1529 – The Spanish fort of Sancti Spiritu, the first one built in modern Argentina, is destroyed by natives.
1532 – Lady Anne Boleyn is made Marquess of Pembroke by her fiancé, King Henry VIII of England.
1644 – Battle of Tippermuir: James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose defeats the Earl of Wemyss's Covenanters, reviving the Royalist cause.
1715 – King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years, which is the longest of any major European monarch.
1763 – Catherine II of Russia endorses Ivan Betskoy's plans for a Foundling Home in Moscow
1774 – Massachusetts Bay colonists rise up in the bloodless Powder Alarm.
1804 – Juno, one of the largest asteroids in the Main Belt, is discovered by the German astronomer Karl Ludwig Harding.
1831 – The high honor of Order of St. Gregory the Great is established by Pope Gregory XVI of the Vatican State to recognize high support for the Vatican or for the Pope, by a man or a woman, and not necessarily a Roman Catholic.
1836 – Narcissa Whitman, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.
1838 – Saint Andrew's Scots School, the oldest school of British origin in South America, is established
1862 – American Civil War: Battle of Chantilly: Confederate Army troops defeat a group of retreating Union Army troops in Chantilly, Virginia.
1864 – American Civil War: The Confederate Army General John Bell Hood orders the evacuation of Atlanta, ending a four-month siege by General William Tecumseh Sherman.
1870 – Franco-Prussian War: The Battle of Sedan is fought, resulting in a decisive Prussian victory.
1878 – Emma Nutt becomes the world's first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.
1880 – The army of Mohammad Ayub Khan is routed by the British at the Battle of Kandahar, ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War
1894 – Over 400 people die in the Great Hinckley Fire, a forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota.
1897 – The Tremont Street Subway in Boston opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.
1905 – Alberta and Saskatchewan join the Canadian confederation.
1906 – The International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys is established.
1911 – The armored cruiser Georgios Averof is commissioned into the Greek Navy. It now serves as a museum ship.
1914 – St. Petersburg, Russia, changes its name to Petrograd.
1914 – The last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.
1920 – The Fountain of Time opens as a tribute to the 100 years of peace between the United States and Great Britain following the Treaty of Ghent.
1934 – The first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated cartoon, The Discontented Canary, is released to movie theatres.
1939 – World War II: Nazi Germany and Slovakia invade Poland, beginning the European phase of World War II.
1939 – General George C. Marshall becomes Chief of Staff of the United States Army.
1939 – The Wound Badge for Wehrmacht, SS, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe soldiers is instituted. The final version of the Iron Cross is also instituted on this date.
1939 – Switzerland mobilizes its forces and the Swiss Parliament elects Henri Guisan to head the Swiss
1939 – Adolf Hitler signs an order to begin the systematic euthanasia of mentally ill and disabled people.
1951 – The United States, Australia and New Zealand sign a mutual defense pact, called the ANZUS Treaty.
1952 – The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway, is first published.
1958 – Iceland expands its fishing zone, putting it into conflict with the United Kingdom, beginning the Cod Wars.
1969 – A coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power.
1970 – Attempted assassination of King Hussein of Jordan by Palestinian guerrillas, who attack his motorcade.
1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.
1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435.587 miles per hour (2,310.353 km/h).
1979 – The American space probe Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 21,000 kilometres (13,000 mi).
1982 – The United States Air Force Space Command is founded.
1983 – Cold War: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace, killing all 269 on board, including Congressman Lawrence McDonald.
1985 – A joint American–French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.
1991 – Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union.
2004 – The Crisis in Beslan commences when armed terrorists take schoolchildren and school staff hostage in North Ossetia (Russia); by the end of the siege three days later more than 385 people are dead (including hostages, other civilians, security personnel and terrorists).
