1928 – Alexander Fleming notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what later became known as penicillin.

1941 – Ted Williams achieves a .406 batting average for the season, and becomes the last major league baseball player to bat .400 or better.

1903 – "Wreck of the Old 97": an American rail disaster, in which 11 people are killed; it later becomes the subject of a popular ballad.

1956 – USAF Captain Milburn G. Apt becomes the first person to exceed Mach 3. Shortly thereafter, the Bell X-2 goes out of control and Captain Apt is killed.

1962 – Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring is published, inspiring an environmental movement and the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

1998 – The Google internet search engine retroactively claims this date as its birthday.

2019 – Over two million people participated in worldwide strikes to protest climate change across 2,400 locations worldwide.

1789 – George Washington appoints Thomas Jefferson the first United States Secretary of State.

1905 – Albert Einstein publishes the third of his Annus Mirabilis papers, introducing the special theory of relativity.

1942 – Holocaust: Senior SS official August Frank issues a memorandum detailing how Jews should be "evacuated".

1960 – In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.

1983 – Soviet Air Force officer Stanislav Petrov identifies a report of an incoming nuclear missile as a computer error and not an American first strike, thus preventing nuclear war.

1906 – Leonardo Torres Quevedo demonstrates the Telekino in the Bilbao Abra (Spain), guiding an electric boat from the shore with people on board, which was controlled at a distance over 2 km (1.2 mi), in what is considered to be the origin of modern wireless remote-control operation principles.

1789 – The United States Congress passes the Judiciary Act, creating the office of the Attorney General and federal judiciary system and ordering the composition of the Supreme Court.

1869 – Black Friday (1869): Gold prices plummet after United States President Ulysses S. Grant orders the Treasury to sell large quantities of gold after Jay Gould and James Fisk plot to control the market.

1906 – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt proclaims Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation's first National Monument.

1929 – Jimmy Doolittle performs the first flight without a window, proving that full instrument flying from take off to landing is possible.

1946 – The top-secret Clifford-Elsey Report on the Soviet Union is delivered to President Truman.

1996 – Representatives of 71 nations sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty at the United Nations.

2014 – The Mars Orbiter Mission makes India the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit, and the first nation in the world to do so in its first attempt.

2023 – NASA's OSIRIS-REx capsule containing samples from the asteroid 101955 Bennu successfully lands back on Earth.

1846 – Astronomers Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle collaborate on the discovery of Neptune.

1955 – An all-white jury in Mississippi finds Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam not guilty in the torture-murder of 14-year-old African American boy Emmett Till.

1957 – Little Rock schools integration crisis: President Dwight D. Eisenhower sends the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federalizes the Arkansas National Guard, ordering both to support the integration of Little Rock Central High School.

2020 – A grand jury in Kentucky declines to indict three police officers for the shooting death of Breonna Taylor in a drug raid gone wrong, leading to nationwide protests in the U.S.

2022 – Voting begins in the five-day sham annexation referendums in Russian-occupied Ukraine, leading to Russian annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

1979 – A bright flash, resembling the detonation of a nuclear weapon, is observed near the Prince Edward Islands. Its cause is never determined.

1937 – J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published for the first time. (September 22 is celebrated by some fans as Hobbit Day, however.)

1996 – The Defense of Marriage Act is passed by the United States Congress.

1973 – Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome.

1973 – Singer Jim Croce, songwriter and musician Maury Muehleisen and four others die when their light aircraft crashes shortly after takeoff from Natchitoches Regional Airport in Louisiana.

1988 – Margaret Thatcher delivers the Bruges speech, in which she articulates her opposition to further European integration.

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".

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.

2019 – Roughly four million people, mostly students, demonstrate across the world to address climate change. Sixteen-year-old Greta Thunberg from Sweden leads the demonstration in New York City.

1778 – The Continental Congress passes the first United States federal budget.

1796 – George Washington's Farewell Address is printed across America as an open letter to the public.

1970 – Michael Eavis hosts the first Glastonbury Festival.

1982 – Scott Fahlman posts the first documented emoticons :-) and :-( on the Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board system.

1985 – Tipper Gore and other political wives form the Parents Music Resource Center as Frank Zappa, John Denver, and other musicians testify at U.S. Congressional hearings on obscenity in rock music.

1991 – Ötzi the Iceman is discovered in the Alps on the border between Italy and Austria.

2010 – The leaking oil well in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is sealed.

"America did not exile Chaplin for committing a crime. It exiled him for thinking outside the approved ideology."

1850 – The U.S. Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

1958 – The Bank of America introduces its first credit card, the BankAmericard (later renamed the VISA Card), in a test market in Fresno County, California.

1964 – The first television adaptation of Charles Addams's "The Addams Family" premieres on ABC Television.

1965 – Mel Brooks and Buck Henry's spy-comedy series Get Smart premieres on NBC Television.

1977 – Voyager I takes the first distant photograph of the Earth and the Moon together.

1997 – United States media magnate Ted Turner donates US$1 billion to the United Nations.

1787 – The United States Constitution is signed at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, bringing the Constitutional Convention to an end.

1849 – American abolitionist Harriet Tubman makes her first attempt to escape from slavery.

1991 – The first version of the Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet.

2011 – Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City.

1955 – A Soviet Zulu-class submarine becomes the first to launch a ballistic missile.

1966 – The Metropolitan Opera House opens at Lincoln Center in New York City with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra.

1987 – The Montreal Protocol is signed to protect the ozone layer from depletion.

Today we commemorate the martyrdom of Víctor Jara, who was brutally murdered by Pinochet's fascist thugs on September 16th, 1973. A communist musician who fought for and sung for the oppressed and everyone's right to live in peace - tortured and then executed for his contributions to the socialist movement in Chile. The stadium where he was killed now bears his name. Jara's revolutionary songs are still sung all over the world over half a century later. Music has always and will always be political.

1835 – HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galápagos Islands. The ship lands at Chatham or San Cristobal, the easternmost of the archipelago.

1954 – Marilyn Monroe's iconic skirt scene is shot during filming for The Seven Year Itch.

2008 – Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

1741 – George Frideric Handel completes his oratorio Messiah.

1960 – The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.

1994 – The rest of the Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike.

2000 – Microsoft releases Windows Me.

2015 – The first observation of gravitational waves is made, announced by the LIGO and Virgo collaborations on 11 February 2016.

1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage.

 Red_Dragon wrote:

I stand corrected.

1933 – Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury, conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.

1938 – Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

1958 – Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments.

1959 – Bonanza, the first regularly scheduled TV program presented in color, is launched in the United States.

1962 – US President John F. Kennedy delivers his "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University.

1977 – South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko dies in police custody.

2013 – NASA confirms that its Voyager 1 probe has become the first manmade object to enter interstellar space.