September 20 in History

The Battle of Valmy, also known as the Cannonade of Valmy, was the first major victory by the army of France during the Revolutionary Wars that followed the French Revolution. The battle took place on 20 September 1792 as Prussian troops commanded by the Duke of Brunswick attempted to march on Paris. Generals François Kellermann and Charles Dumouriez stopped the advance near the northern village of Valmy in Champagne-Ardenne.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the betterment of all humanity. AAAS was the first permanent organization established to promote science and engineering nationally and to represent the interests of American researchers from across all scientific fields. It is the world's largest general scientific society, with over 120,000 members, and is the publisher of the well-known scientific journal Science.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a military threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858. On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war lasted a little over four years, ending with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

John Coleridge Patteson was an English Anglican bishop, missionary to the South Sea Islands, and an accomplished linguist, learning 23 of the islands' more than 1,000 languages.

Charles Edgar Duryea was an American engineer. He was the engineer of the second working American gasoline-powered car and co-founder of Duryea Motor Wagon Company. He was born near Canton, Illinois, a son of George Washington Duryea and Louisa Melvina Turner, and died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but spent most of his life working in Springfield, Massachusetts.

The Irish War of Independence, also known as the Anglo-Irish War, was a guerrilla war fought in Ireland from 1919 to 1921 between the Irish Republican Army and British forces: the British Army, along with the quasi-military Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and its paramilitary forces the Auxiliaries and Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). It was part of the Irish revolutionary period.

The Cannes Film Festival is considered the most prestigious film festival in the world. Held in Cannes, France, it previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from all around the world. Founded in 1946, the invitation-only festival is held annually at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès. The festival was formally accredited by the FIAPF in 1951. Cannes is considered one of the "Big Three" major European film festivals, alongside Venice and Berlin, as well as one of the "Big Five" major international film festivals, alongside Venice, Berlin, Toronto and Sundance.

Moomin is a comic strip created by Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Tove Jansson, and followed up by her younger brother Lars Jansson, featuring their Moomin family of characters. The first comic strip, entitled Mumintrollet och jordens undergång was a short-lived project for the children's section of the Finland-Swedish leftist newspaper Ny Tid. It was written between 1947 and 1948, at the request of the editor, a friend of Jansson's, Atos Wirtanen. The series was published with two new strips weekly, and was mainly an adaptation of Comet in Moominland. The series has been reprinted in book form under the name Jorden går under by the newspaper.

Konstantinos Dovas was a Greek general and interim Prime Minister.

The Battle of Burki was a battle between the Indian and Pakistan Army during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 at Burki, a village that lies 11 km south-east of Lahore, Pakistan near the border with India and which is connected to Lahore by a bridge over the Bambawali-Ravi-Bedian Canal.

Hurricane Irene–Olivia was the first actively tracked tropical cyclone to move into the eastern Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic basin. It originated as a tropical depression on September 11, 1971, in the tropical Atlantic. The cyclone tracked nearly due westward at a low latitude, passing through the southern Windward Islands and later over northern South America. In the southwest Caribbean Sea, it intensified to a tropical storm and later a hurricane. Irene made landfall on southeastern Nicaragua on September 19, and maintained its circulation as it crossed the low-lying terrain of the country. Restrengthening after reaching the Pacific, Irene was renamed Hurricane Olivia, which ultimately attained peak winds of 115 mph (185 km/h). Olivia weakened significantly before moving ashore on the Baja California Peninsula on September 30; the next day it dissipated.

James Joseph Croce was an American folk and rock singer-songwriter. Between 1966 and 1973, he released five studio albums and numerous singles. During this period, Croce took a series of odd jobs to pay bills while he continued to write, record, and perform concerts. After forming a partnership with the songwriter and guitarist Maury Muehleisen in the early 1970s, Croce's fortunes turned. His breakthrough came in 1972, when his third album, You Don't Mess Around with Jim, produced three charting singles, including "Time in a Bottle", which reached number one after Croce died. The follow-up album Life and Times included the song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", Croce's only number-one hit during his lifetime.

Operation Caban, also known as the 1979 Central African coup d’état, was a bloodless military operation by the French intelligence service SDECE in September 1979 to depose Emperor Bokassa I, reinstate the exiled former president David Dacko, and rename the Central African Empire back to Central African Republic.

On September 20, 1984, the Shi'a Islamic militant group Hezbollah, with support and direction from the Islamic Republic of Iran, carried out a suicide car bombing targeting the US embassy annex in East Beirut, Lebanon during the Lebanese Civil War. The attack killed 23 people and 1 attacker.

South Ossetia, formally known as the State of Alania since 2017, or originally the Republic of South Ossetia is a partially recognised state in the South Caucasus. It has an officially stated population of just over 56,500 people (2022), who live in an area of 3,900 square kilometres (1,500 sq mi), with 33,000 living in the capital city, Tskhinvali. It borders only Russia and Georgia.

The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is a global military campaign initiated by the United States in response to the September 11 attacks in 2001. A global conflict spanning multiple wars, some researchers and political scientists have argued that it replaced the Cold War.

The Jena Six were six black teenagers in Jena, Louisiana, United States, convicted in the 2006 beating of Justin Barker, a white student at the local Jena High School, which they also attended. Barker was injured on December 4, 2006, by the members of the Jena Six, and received treatment at an emergency room. While the case was pending, it was often cited by some media commentators as an example of racial injustice in the United States. Some commentators believed that the defendants had been charged initially with too-serious offenses and had been treated unfairly.

"Don't ask, don't tell" (DADT) was the official United States policy on military service of homosexual people for a period of over 17 years, starting in the mid-1990s. Instituted during the presidency of Bill Clinton, the policy was issued under Department of Defense Directive 1304.26 on December 21, 1993, and was in effect from February 28, 1994, until September 20, 2011. The policy prohibited military personnel from discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service members or applicants, while barring openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service. This relaxation of legal restrictions on service by gays and lesbians in the armed forces was mandated by Public Law 103–160, which was signed November 30, 1993. The policy prohibited people who "demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the United States Armed Forces, because their presence "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability".

MV Nyerere was a Tanzanian ferry that capsized on 20 September 2018 while travelling between the islands of Ukerewe and Ukara on Lake Victoria. The Tanzanian government have declared that 228 people died as a result of the capsizing while 41 could be rescued. The capsized ferry was successfully righted, retrieved and unloaded more than one week after the disaster.