Today:
1752: The Liberty Bell arrives in Philadelphia.
1878: Emma Nutt becomes the first female telephone operator in the United States.
1897: The first subway in North America opens in Boston.
1914: The last known passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, dies at the Cincinnati Zoo, making the species extinct.
1923: The Great Kantō earthquake strikes Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan, resulting in catastrophic damage and a high death toll.
1939: Germany invades Poland, initiating the start of World War II in Europe.
1969: A military coup in Libya brings Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to power.
1972: American Bobby Fischer defeats Russian Boris Spassky in a chess match in Reykjavík, Iceland, to become the world chess champion.
1983: Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet fighter jet after it strayed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 people on board.
1985: A joint American-French expedition locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912.