September 15

Events
Up to 1900
668 Eastern Roman Emperor Constans II is murdered in his bath.
1440 Gilles de Rais, one of the earliest-known serial killers, is taken into custody upon an accusation brought against him by the Bishop of Nantes.
1616 The first non-aristocratic free public school in Europe is opened in Frascati, Italy.
1762 Seven Years' War: Battle of Signal Hill.
1776 American Revolutionary War: British forces land at Kip's Bay, during the New York Campaign.
1789 The United States Department of State is founded, as the Department of Foreign Affairs.
1812 The French army under Napoleon Bonaparte enters Moscow.
1812 War of 1812: A second supply train sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack of the Narrows.
1820 Constitutionalist Revolution in Lisbon
1821 Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica jointly declare independence from Spain.
1830 The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opens. On the same day, William Huskisson becomes the first railway fatality after being hit by a locomotive.
1835 The HMS Beagle arrives in the Galapagos Islands with a young Charles Darwin on board.
1851 Saint Joseph's University is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1862 American Civil War: Confederate forces capture Harper's Ferry, then in Virginia, now in West Virginia.
1873 Franco-Prussian War: The last German troops leave France.
1875 Indianola, Texas, is destroyed by a Hurricane, killing between 150 and 300 people.
1894 First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeats China in the Battle of Pyongyang.
1901 2000
1916 World War I: Tanks are used in battle for the first time, in the Somme, northern France.
1935 With the Nuremberg Laws, the Nazis strip Jews of German citizenship.
1935 The Nazis adopt the Swastika flag as the flag of Germany.
1940 World War II: Climax of the Battle of Britain.
1942 World War II: United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp is torpedoed at Guadalcanal, present-day Solomon Islands.
1944 World War II: The Battle of Peleliu (in Palau), between US and Japanese forces, begins.
1944 World War II: Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt meet in Quebec as part of the Octagon conference to discuss strategy.
1945 A hurricane in South Florida and the Bahamas destroys 366 planes and 25 blimps at NAS Richmond
1947 Typhoon Kathleen kills 1,077 people in the Kanto region of Japan.
1948 The F-86 Sabre sets the world aircraft speed record, at 671 miles per hour (1,080 kilometres per hour).
1949 Konrad Adenauer becomes the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
1950 Korean War: US forces land at Inchon.
1952 The UN gives Eritrea to Ethiopia.
1958 A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train runs through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 58 people.
1959 Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the US.
1961 Hurricane Carla hits Texas.
1962 Soviet ship Poltava heads towards Cuba, one of the events that lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
1963 "Birmingham Sunday" when a bomb killed 4 black girls in a church in Birmingham, Alabama.
1966 US President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to United States Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.
1968 The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship is launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter Earth's atmosphere.
1969 US ice breaker tanker SS Manhattan passes through the Northwest Passage, after four weeks.
1972 Scandinavian Airlines System domestic flight from Gothenburg to Stockholm, Sweden, is hijacked and flown to Malmo Bulltofta Airport.
1973 Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden becomes King.
1975 The French department of Corse, on the island of Corsica, is divided in two, into Haute-Corse and Corse-du-Sud.
1981 Vanuatu joins the UN.
1981 The Senate Judiciary Committee approves Sandra Day O'Connor to become a Justice on the United States Supreme Court, being the first female in such a role.
1983 Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin resigns.
1990 France announces it will send 4,000 troops to the Persian Gulf.
1991 Bangladesh becomes a parliamentary democracy.
1993 Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein disbands his country's parliament.
1994 For the first time, a planet outside the Solar System is discovered.
1997 New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage opens.
2000 The 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney begin.
From 2001
2007 Former world Rally champion Colin McRae dies in a helicopter crash in Lanarkshire, Scotland, along with his son and two family friends.
2008 Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
2011 A parliamentary election is held in Denmark, resulting in Helle Thorning-Schmidt becoming Prime Minister on October 3.
2015 Malcolm Turnbull replaces Tony Abbott as Prime Minister of Australia.
2015 Aksel V. Johannesen becomes Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands.
2017 2017 Parsons Green bombing: An explosive device is detonated on a tube train near London's Parsons Green station, injuring 30 people.
2017 The Cassini space probe's mission is ended, as it is plunged into Saturn's atmosphere.
Births
Up to 1800
1254 Marco Polo, Italian explorer (d. 1324)
1533 Catherine of Austria, Queen Consort of Poland and Lithuania (d. 1572)
1580 Charles Annibal Fabrot, French lawyer (d. 1659)
1603 Tokugawa Yorifusa, Japanese daimyo (d. 1661)
1613 Francois de la Rochefoucauld, French author (d. 1680)
1649 Titus Oates, English priest (d. 1705)
1666 Sophia Dorothea of Celle, German princess (d. 1726)
1675 Vakhtang VI of Kartli, Georgian King (d. 1737)
1676 Stanislaw Poniatowski, Polish politician (d. 1762)
1690 Ignazio Prota, Italian composer and music educator (d. 1748)
1715 Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval, French general and engineer (d. 1789)
1736 Jean-Silvain Bailly, French politician and astronomer (d. 1793)
1756 Carl Philipp Moritz, German writer (d. 1793)
1760 Bogislav Friedrich Emanuel von Tauentzien, Prussian general (d. 1824)
1761 Cornelio Saavedra, Argentine politician (d. 1829)
1765 Bocage, Portuguese poet (d. 1805)
1787 Guillaume-Henri Dufour, Swiss humanist, general, politician, mapmaker and engineer (d. 1875)
1789 James Fenimore Cooper, American writer (d. 1851)
1800 Paul-Frederick, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (d. 1842)
1801 1900
1808 John Hutton Balfour, Scottish botanist (d. 1884)
1811 Charles de Mornay, French politician (d. 1865)
1814 Ferdinand von Arnim, German architect (d. 1866)
1815 Halfdan Kjerulf, Norwegian composer (d. 1868)
1825 Iwakura Tomomi, Japanese statesman (d. 1883)
1828 Alexander Butlerov, Russian chemist (d. 1886)
1830 Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico (d. 1915)
1834 Heinrich von Treitschke, German historian and publicist (d. 1896)
1852 Edward Bouchet, American physicist (d. 1918)
1857 William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States (d. 1930)
1858 Charles de Foucauld, French monk (d. 1916)
1860 Visvesvaraya, Indian engineer, scholar and politician (d. 1962)
1863 Horatio Parker, American composer (d. 1919)
1875 Henry D. Hatfield, American politician, 14th Governor of West Virginia (d. 1962)
1876 Bruno Walter, German conductor (d. 1962)
1876 Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Bengali writer (d. 1938)
1877 Jakob Ehrlich, Austrian politician and Zionist (d. 1938)
1877 Yente Serdatzky, Lithuanian-American author and playwright (d. 1962)
1879 Joseph Lyons, 10th Prime Minister of Australia (d. 1939)
1881 Ettore Bugatti, Italian automobile engineer and designer (d. 1947)
1883 Esteban Teradas i Illa, Spanish mathematician and engineer (d. 1950)
1886 Paul Levy, French mathematician (d. 1971)
1887 Carlos Davila, President of Chile (d. 1955)
1888 Antonio Ascari, Italian racing driver (d. 1925)
1889 Robert Benchley, American writer (d. 1945)
1890 Agatha Christie, English writer (d. 1976)
1894 Jean Renoir, French movie director (d. 1979)
1895 Magda Lupescu, consort of King Carol II of Romania (d. 1977)
1901 1925
1903 Roy Acuff, American Country musician (d. 1992)
1903 Yisrael Kristal, Polish-born Israeli supercentenarian and Holocaust survivor (d. 2017)
1904 King Umberto II of Italy (d. 1983)
1905 Pat O'Callaghan, Irish hammer thrower (d. 1991)
1907 Alfred Delp, German Jesuit and Resistance activist (d. 1945)
1907 Fay Wray, Canadian-American actress (d. 2004)
1908 Misko Kranjec, Slovenian writer (d. 1983)
1909 C. N. Annadurai, Indian politician, 7th Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu (d. 1969)
1911 Karsten Solheim, Norwegian-American golf entrepreneur (d. 2000)
1911 Luther Terry, 9th Surgeon General of the United States (d. 1985)
1913 John N. Mitchell, United States Attorney General (d. 1988)
1913 Johannes Steinhoff, German military officer (d. 1994)
1914 Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentine writer (d. 1999)
1914 Jens Otto Krag, Prime Minister of Denmark (d. 1978)
1915 Helmut Schon, German footballer and manager (d. 1996)
1916 Margaret Lockwood, English actress (d. 1990)
1918 Margot Loyola, Chilean musician and singer (d. 2015)
1919 Nelson Gidding, American screenwriter (d. 2004)
1919 Fausto Coppi, Italian cyclist (d. 1960)
1922 Jackie Cooper, American actor (d. 2011)
1922 Bob Anderson, British fencer and sword fight choreographer (d. 2012)
1922 Mary Soames, Baroness Soames, daughter of Winston Churchill (d. 2014)
1924 Gyorgy Lazar, 50th Prime Minister of Hungary (d. 2014)
1925 Carlo Rambaldi, Italian special effects artist (d. 2012)
1925 Helle Virkner, Danish actress (d. 2009)
1926 1950
1926 Jean-Pierre Serre, French mathematician
1926 Shohei Imamura, Japanese movie director (d. 2006)
1926 Ed Derwinski, American politician (d. 2012)
1927 Val Holten, Australian cricketer (d. 2015)
1927 Norm Crosby, American comedian and actor
1928 Cannonball Adderley, American jazz musician (d. 1975)
1929 Murray Gell-Mann, American physicist (d. 2019)
1929 Mumtaz Soysal, Turkish politician and lawyer (d. 2019)
1929 Eva Burrows, 13th General of the Salvation Army (d. 2015)
1930 Merab Mamardashvili, Georgian philosopher (d. 1990)
1933 Henry Darrow, American actor
1933 Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Spanish composer and conductor (d. 2014)
1935 Patriarch Dinkha IV of the Assyrian Church of the East (d. 2015)
1936 Ashley Cooper, Australian tennis player
1937 Robert Lucas, Jr., American economist
1937 Fernando de la Rua, former President of Argentina (d. 2019)
1938 Gaylord Perry, American baseball player
1940 Merlin Olsen, American football player and actor (d. 2010)
1941 Florian Albert, Hungarian footballer (d. 2011)
1941 Signe Toly Anderson, American singer (d. 2016)
1941 Yuriy Norshteyn, Russian animator, director and screenwriter
1941 Viktor Zubkov, former Prime Minister of Russia
1941 Miroslaw Hermaszewski, Polish cosmonaut
1942 Wen Jiabao, former Premier of the People's Republic of China
1942 Emmerson Mnangagwa, 3rd President of Zimbabwe
1942 Lee Dorman, American bass player (d. 2012)
1944 Graham Taylor, English footballer and manager (d. 2017)
1944 Mauro Piacenza, Italian cardinal
1945 Hans-Gert Pottering, German politician
1945 Carmen Maura, Spanish actress
1945 Jessye Norman, American singer (d. 2019)
1945 Ron Shelton, American screenwriter, director and movie producer
1945 Muqrin bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Saudi prince
1946 Ola Brunkert, Swedish musician (d. 2008)
1946 Tommy Lee Jones, American actor
1946 Oliver Stone, American movie director
1946 Mike Procter, South African cricketer, coach and referee
1947 Viggo Jensen, Danish footballer and manager
1949 Joe Barton, American politician
1950 Mirza Masroor Ahmad, Islamic spiritual leader
1951 1975
1951 Johan Neeskens, Dutch footballer
1952 Richard Brodeur, Canadian ice hockey player
1954 Hrant Dink, Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor (d. 2007)
1954 Nava Semel, Israeli author and playwright (d. 2017)
1955 Bruce Reitherman, American movie maker
1955 Abdul Qadir, Pakistani cricketer (d. 2019)
1955 Renzo Rosso, Italian fashion designer
1955 Brendan O'Carroll, Irish actor
1956 Maggie Reilly, Scottish singer
1958 Dr. Know, American guitarist
1959 Mark Kirk, American politician
1960 Katsuyoshi Shinto, Japanese footballer
1961 Dan Marino, American football player
1961 Colin McFarlane, English voice actor
1962 Rebecca Miller, American actress, director and writer
1964 Robert Fico, former Prime Minister of Slovakia
1966 Sherman Douglas, American basketball player
1967 Huw Bunford, Welsh guitarist and songwriter (Super Furry Animals)
1969 Revaz Arveladze, Georgian footballer
1970 Svetlana Zakharova, Russian long-distance runner
1971 Josh Charles, American actor
1972 Jimmy Carr, British comedian
1972 Queen Letizia of Spain
1973 Daniel Westling, Swedish royal
1973 Julie Cox, British actress
1973 Alyn Smith, Scottish politician
1974 Murat Yakin, Swiss footballer
From 1976
1976 Paul Thomson, Scottish musician
1977 Angela Aki, Japanese singer-songwriter
1977 Sophie Dahl, British model
1977 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian writer
1977 Tom Hardy, English actor, screenwriter and producer
1977 Rene Haselbacher, Austrian cyclist
1977 Jason Terry, American basketball player
1978 Eidur Gudjohnsen, Icelandic footballer
1978 Kew Jaliens, Dutch footballer
1979 Patrick Marleau, Canadian ice hockey player
1979 Carlos Ruiz, Guatemalan footballer
1979 Amy Davidson, American actress
1980 Mike Dunleavy, Jr., American basketball player
1980 Jolin Tsai, Taiwanese singer
1981 Miyavi, Japanese composer, singer and guitarist
1983 Ashleigh McIvor, Canadian freestyle skier
1983 Tomas Sivok, Czech footballer
1983 Santeri Palin, Finnish writer
1984 Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, British royal
1986 Heidi Montag, American television personality and singer
1986 Anan Anwar, Thai singer and actor
1986 Peter Wilson, English sport shooter and Olympic gold medalist
1986 Poppy Delevingne, English model
1987 Clare Maguire, English singer-songwriter
1988 Chelsea Kane, American actress and singer
1988 Kate Mansi, American actress
1990 Gwyneth Keyworth, Welsh actress
1996 Jake Cherry, American actor
1996 Nao Furuhata, Japanese idol and singer
1999 Nana Owada, Japanese idol singer and actress
Deaths
Up to 1900
668 Constans II, Emperor (b. 630)
921 Saint Ludmila of Bohemia, Bohemian martyr (b. 860)
1134 Alfonso the Battler, King of Aragon and Navarra (b. 1073)
1231 Louis I, Duke of Bavaria (b. 1173)
1326 Dmitry of Tver (b. 1299)
1352 Ewostatewos, Ethiopian monk and religious leader (b. 1273)
1750 Charles Theodore Pachelbel, German composer (b. 1690)
1794 Abraham Clark, Signer of the Declaration of Independence (b. 1725)
1803 Gian Francesco Albani, Italian cardinal (b. 1719)
1805 Christopher Gadsden, American soldier and statesman (b. 1724)
1830 William Huskisson, English politician, first rail fatality (b. 1770)
1835 Sarah Knox Taylor, wife of Jefferson Davis (b. 1814)
1841 Alessandro Rolla, Italian violinist and composer (b. 1757)
1842 Pierre Baillot, French violinist and composer (b. 1771)
1842 Francisco Morazan, President of Central America (b. 1792)
1859 Isambard Kingdom Brunel, British engineer (b. 1806)
1864 John Hanning Speke, British explorer (b. 1827)
1875 Duchenne de Boulogne, French psychologist (b. 1806)
1883 Joseph Plateau, Belgian physicist (b. 1801)
1885 Jumbo, African elephant (b. 1861)
1891 John Steell, Scottish sculptor (b. 1804)
1893 Thomas Hawksley, English engineer (b. 1807)
1901 2000
1926 Rudolf Christoph Eucken, German writer (b. 1846)
1930 Milton Sills, American actor (b. 1882)
1938 Thomas Wolfe, American writer (b. 1900)
1940 William B. Bankhead, American politician (b. 1874)
1945 Andre Tardieu, French statesman (b. 1876)
1945 Anton Webern, Austrian composer and conductor (b. 1883)
1972 Geoffrey Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1887)
1972 Asgeir Asgeirsson, second President of Iceland (b. 1894)
1973 King Gustav VI Adolf of Sweden, King of Sweden (b. 1882)
1973 Victor Jara, Chilean musician (b. 1932)
1975 Pavel Sukhoi, Russian aircraft designer (b. 1895)
1978 Willy Messerschmidt, German aircraft designer (b. 1898)
1979 Tommy Leonetti, American singer-songwriter and actor (b. 1929)
1981 Harold Bennett, English actor (b. 1899)
1985 Cootie Williams, American trumpeter (b. 1910)
1989 Robert Penn Warren, American writer (b. 1905)
1995 Gunnar Nordahl, Swedish footballer (b. 1921)
1998 Luke Rasminsky, Canadian economist (b. 1908)
From 2001
2001 June Salter, Australian actress (b. 1932)
2004 Johnny Ramone, American guitarist (The Ramones) (b. 1948)
2005 Sidney Luft, American director (b. 1915)
2006 Oriana Fallaci, Italian journalist and writer (b. 1929)
2007 Colin McRae, Scottish rally driver (b. 1968)
2008 Richard Wright, English musician (Pink Floyd) (b. 1943)
2009 Timothy Bateson, English actor (b. 1926)
2014 Post Bahadur Bogati, Nepalese politician (b. 1953)
2014 Yitzhak Hofi, Israeli general (b. 1927)
2014 Eugene I. Gordon, American physicist (b. 1930)
2014 John Anderson, Jr., American politician, Governor of Kansas (b. 1917)
2014 Jackie Cain, American jazz singer (b. 1928)
2014 Jeremy Ball, Australian actor and politician (b. 1969)
2015 Meir Pa'il, Israeli politician and military historian (b. 1926)
2015 Bernard Van De Kerckhove, Belgian racing driver (b. 1941)
2015 Mihai Volontir, Moldovan actor (b. 1934)
2015 Harry J. Lipkin, Israeli nuclear physicist (b. 1921)
2017 Maria Cristina Arango Vega, First Lady of Colombia (b. 1928)
2017 Violet Brown, Jamaican supercentenarian (b. 1900)
2017 Dwijen Sharma, Bangladeshi naturalist and science writer (b. 1929)
2017 Harry Dean Stanton, American actor (b. 1926)
2017 Albert Speer Jr., German architect (b. 1934)
2018 Kirin Kiki, Japanese actress (b. 1943)
2018 Dudley Sutton, English actor (b. 1933)
2018 Jose Manuel de la Sota, Argentine politician (b. 1949)
2018 Victor Veselago, Soviet-Russian physicist (b. 1929)
2018 Fritz Wintersteller, Austrian mountaineer (b. 1927)
2018 Zhu Xu, Chinese actor (b. 1930)
2019 Chadlia Caid Essebsi, First Lady of Tunisia (b. 1936)
2019 Lol Mahamat Choua, 4th President of Chad (b. 1939)
2019 Roberto Leal, Portuguese-Brazilian singer-songwriter (b. 1951)
2019 Phyllis Newman, American actress and singer (b. 1933)
2019 Ric Ocasek, American singer, songwriter and record producer (b. 1944)
2019 Mike Stefanik, American racing driver (b. 1958)
Observances
Battle of Britain Day (United Kingdom)
Grito de Dolores (Mexico)
Independence Day (Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Nicaragua)
International Day of Democracy
Engineers' Day (India)
Days of the year