Today:
1871: The Great Chicago Fire began, allegedly when a cow kicked over a lantern in a barn. The fire burned for two days, destroying a large portion of the city.
1912: The First Balkan War commenced as Montenegro declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
1918: During World War I, U.S. Corporal Alvin C. York single-handedly killed over 20 German soldiers and captured 132 in the Argonne Forest of France.
1945: The first patent for a microwave oven was filed by Percy Spencer, an engineer at Raytheon.
1956: Don Larsen of the New York Yankees pitched the only perfect game in World Series history against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1967: Revolutionary leader Che Guevara was captured by the Bolivian army, and he was executed the following day.
1970: Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his works that exposed the brutalities of the Soviet labor camps.
1982: The Polish government banned the Solidarity trade union, which then went underground.
1998: The U.S. House of Representatives voted to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton.
2001: In response to the September 11th attacks, the Office of Homeland Security was established in the United States.