September 4 in History

Romulus Augustus (c. 460–465 – c. 511–530), nicknamed Augustulus, was Roman emperor of the West from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476. Romulus was placed on the imperial throne while still a minor by his father Orestes, the magister militum, for whom he served as little more than a figurehead. After a rule of ten months, the barbarian general Odoacer defeated and killed Orestes and deposed Romulus. As Odoacer did not proclaim any successor, Romulus is typically regarded as the last Western Roman emperor, his deposition marking the end of the Western Roman Empire as a political entity. The deposition of Romulus Augustulus is also sometimes used by historians to mark the transition from antiquity to the medieval period. Very few records survive of Romulus's reign. There are no known policies, laws or inscriptions of significance of the emperor, which leaves the impression that he was a shadowy and relatively inconsequential figure. The nickname "Augustulus" means "little Augustus" and was a derisive reference to his young age. Romulus's immediate family, including his father and possibly his mother, and maybe both his paternal and maternal grandparents, were from the Roman province of Pannonia, and many of his family members had military backgrounds. Romulus came to power through the usurpation of his predecessor Julius Nepos (r. 474–475 in Italy) in 475. Nepos fled to Dalmatia and continued to claim the imperial title in exile, which hampered Romulus's legitimacy and ensured that he was never recognised by the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno. In 476, the allied barbarian foederati in Italy demanded Italian lands to settle on, which was refused by Orestes. Under Odoacer, the foederati defeated and killed Orestes and deposed Romulus, whereafter Odoacer became the first King of Italy and accepted Emperor Zeno as his nominal superior. Romulus's life was spared by Odoacer, and he was allowed to retire to the castellum Lucullanum, a great fortress in Campania. Little certain information is known concerning Romulus's life in exile. He might have played a role in founding a monastery at castellum Lucullanum in the 480s or 490s, dedicated to Saint Severinus of Noricum. Romulus could have been alive as late as 507 or 511 when Theodoric the Great, Odoacer's successor, wrote a letter to a "Romulus" concerning a pension, but was likely dead before his mid-40s, as accounts of the eastern Roman invasion of Italy at that time do not mention him.

The Battle of Lenzen was a land battle between a Saxon army of the Kingdom of Germany and the armies of the Slavic Redarii and Linones peoples, that took place on 4 September 929 near the fortified Linones stronghold of Lenzen in Brandenburg, Germany. The Saxon army, commanded by the Saxon magnate Bernhard, destroyed a Slavic Redarii army. It marked the failure of Slavic attempts to resist German king Henry the Fowler's expansionism to the Elbe. The Saxons had been laying siege to Lenzen, a Slavic fortress, since 30 August. On 3 September, Saxon mounted scouts alerted Bernhard to the presence of a Redarii army nearby. The next day, the Redarii formed up in an infantry phalanx opposite the Saxons, who did likewise. Bernhard's cavalry feigned retreat to draw out the Redarii, who had no cavalry units of their own, but the wet terrain prevented effective maneuvering. The Saxons launched infantry assaults, with heavy casualties for both sides in the drawn-out combat that went on for the rest of the day. Ultimately, the Saxon cavalry under the command of Count Thietmar of Merseburg was able to outflank the Redarii formation and charge upon them, routing them. The Saxons gave pursuit to completely destroy their opponents, slaughtering the fleeing Redarii en masse. The garrison of Lenzen surrendered the next morning. The German victory at Lenzen was total, resulting in the suppression of effective Slavic resistance to German rule along the Elbe for the rest of Henry's reign. Sources for the battle include the Deeds of the Saxons by Widukind of Corvey and Chronicon Thietmari by Thietmar of Merseburg.

Siena is a city in the region of Tuscany in central Italy, and the capital of the province of Siena. With a population of 53,180, it is the 12th-largest city in the region.

Peter III of Aragon (In Aragonese, Pero; in Catalan, Pere; in Italian, Pietro; c. 1239 – 11 November 1285) was King of Aragon, King of Valencia (as Peter I), and Count of Barcelona (as Peter II) from 1276 to his death. At the invitation of some rebels, he conquered the Kingdom of Sicily and became King of Sicily (as Peter I) in 1282, pressing the claim of his wife, Constance II of Sicily, uniting the kingdom to the crown.

The Treaty of Alcáçovas (also known as Treaty or Peace of Alcáçovas-Toledo) was signed on 4 September 1479 between the Catholic Monarchs of Castile and Aragon on one side and Afonso V and his son, Prince John of Portugal, on the other side. It put an end to the War of the Castilian Succession, which ended with a victory of the Castilians on land and a Portuguese victory on the sea. The four peace treaties signed at Alcáçovas reflected that outcome: Isabella was recognized as Queen of Castile while Portugal reached hegemony in the Atlantic Ocean. The treaty intended to regulate: The renunciation of Afonso V and Castilian Monarchs to the Castilian throne and Portuguese throne, respectively The division of the Atlantic Ocean and overseas territories into two zones of influence The destiny of Juana de Trastámara The contract of marriage between Isabella, the eldest daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, with Afonso, heir of Prince John. This was known as Tercerias de Moura, and included the payment to Portugal of a war compensation by the Catholic Monarchs in the form of marriage dowry. The pardon of the Castilian supporters of Juana

The Flight of the Earls (Irish: Imeacht na nIarlaí) took place on 14 September [O.S. 4 September] 1607, when Irish earls Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and Rory O'Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, permanently departed Rathmullan in Ireland for Catholic Europe during a period of extreme political tension with the English Crown. The Flight's exact motivation is unclear and the subject of debate. They were accompanied by their extended families, retinue, followers and fellow nobility, numbering about 100 people. The earls were patriarchs of the two most powerful clans in Ulster—the O'Neill and O'Donnell clans— which claim descent of Niall of the Nine Hostages and their emigration is considered to symbolise the end of Gaelic Irish society. The earls' lands were later escheated and settled by Protestants from Great Britain as part of the Plantation of Ulster. Both earls fought against the Crown in the Nine Years' War (1593–1603), which ended with their surrender. The newly crowned James I of England granted the earls generous peace terms which allowed them to retain most of their lands and titles. Many courtiers were unsatisfied with the king's leniency, and hostility towards the earls from officials gradually increased over time. The implementation of English law in Ireland led to financial difficulties for both earls as well as a major land rights dispute between Tyrone and his vassal Donnell Ballagh O'Cahan, which was weaponised by officials such as Arthur Chichester, John Davies, and George Montgomery. The earls may have been conspiring against the government, and their flight could have been an attempt to evade arrest or execution. The earls were bound for A Coruña, as Spain had allied with the earls' confederacy during the war. They could not reach Spain due to storms and disembarked in Quillebeuf-sur-Seine, France. Spanish king Philip III forbade the earls from entering Spain for fear of violating the 1604 Anglo-Spanish peace treaty. The refugees spent time in Leuven in the Spanish Netherlands, where the earls left their young children to be educated at the Irish College of St Anthony. The earls sought support from Pope Paul V and arrived in Rome on 29 April 1608, where they were granted small pensions. Their accommodation in Rome was paltry compared to their estates in Ireland. Tyrconnell died of a fever three months later. Tyrone repeatedly demonstrated his intent to return to Ireland and retake his lands, but he became ill and died in 1616 before doing so. Most of the passengers on the Flight never returned to Ireland. The Flight was declared as treasonous by King James, which led to the acquisition and plantation of the earls' lands. The Flight is considered a watershed moment in Irish history and has been depicted romantically by Irish nationalists.

The Great Fire of London occurred from Sunday 2 September to Wednesday 5 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the wall to the west. The death toll is generally thought to have been relatively small, although some historians have challenged this belief. The fire started in a bakery in Pudding Lane shortly after midnight on Sunday 2 September and spread rapidly. The main firefighting technique of the time was the creation of firebreaks by means of removing structures in the fire's path. The Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Bloodworth, hesitated in giving the order to employ this method. By the time large-scale demolitions were ordered on Sunday night, the wind had already fanned the bakery fire into a firestorm which defeated such measures. The fire pushed north on Monday into the heart of the City. Order in the streets broke down as rumours arose of suspicious foreigners setting fires. The fears of the homeless focused on the French and Dutch, England's enemies in the ongoing Second Anglo-Dutch War; these substantial immigrant groups became victims of street violence. On Tuesday, the fire spread over nearly the whole city, destroying Old St Paul's Cathedral and leaping the River Fleet to threaten Charles II's court at Whitehall Palace. Coordinated firefighting efforts were simultaneously getting underway. The battle to put out the fire is considered to have been won by two key factors: the strong east wind dropped, and the Tower of London garrison used gunpowder to create effective firebreaks, halting further spread eastward. The social and economic problems created by the disaster were overwhelming. Flight from London and settlement elsewhere were strongly encouraged by Charles II, who feared a London rebellion amongst the dispossessed refugees. Various schemes for rebuilding the city were proposed, some of them radical. After the fire, London was reconstructed on essentially the same medieval street plan, which still exists today.

New Caledonia is a French territory consisting of a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, 220 km (140 mi) southwest of Vanuatu and 1,210 km (750 mi) east of Australia. Located 16,100 km (10,000 mi) from Metropolitan France, it forms a sui generis collectivity of the French Republic, having a unique legal status enshrined in a dedicated chapter of the French Constitution.

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula (Spanish for "the Town of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels, of the Porciúncula River"), shortened to the Pueblo de los Ángeles ("town of the angels"), was the Spanish civilian pueblo settled in 1781 which became the modern American metropolis of Los Angeles. The pueblo was built using labor from the adjacent village of Yaanga and was totally dependent on local Indigenous labor for its survival. Official settlements in Alta California were of three types: presidio (military), mission (religious) and pueblo (civil). The Pueblo de los Ángeles was the second pueblo (town) created during the Spanish colonization of California (the first was San Jose, in 1777). El Pueblo de la Reina de los Ángeles—'The Town of the Queen of Angels' was founded twelve years after the first presidio and mission, the Presidio of San Diego and Mission San Diego de Alcalá (1769). The original settlement consisted of forty-four people in eleven families, recruited mostly from Estado de Occidente. As new settlers arrived and soldiers retired to civilian life in Los Angeles, the town became the principal urban center of southern Alta California, whose social and economic life revolved around the raising of livestock on the expansive ranchos.

The Coup of 18 Fructidor, Year V (4 September 1797 in the French Republican Calendar), was a seizure of power in France by members of the Directory, then forming the government of the First French Republic, with support from the military. The coup was provoked by the results of elections held months earlier, which had given the majority of seats in the country's Corps législatif (Legislative body) to royalist candidates, threatening a restoration of the monarchy and a return to the ancien régime. Three of the five members of the Directory, Paul Barras, Jean-François Rewbell and Louis Marie de La Révellière-Lépeaux, with support of foreign minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, staged the coup d'état that annulled many of the previous election's results and ousted the monarchists from the legislature.

Valletta, also known as Città Umilissima, is the capital city of Malta and one of its 68 council areas. Located between the Grand Harbour to the east and Marsamxett Harbour to the west, its population as of 2021 was 5,157. As Malta's capital city, it is a commercial centre for shopping, bars, dining, and café life. It is also the southernmost capital of Europe, and, at just 0.61 square kilometres (0.24 sq mi), it is the European Union's smallest capital city.

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815.

Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. He rose to fame as a U.S. Army general and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. His political philosophy, which dominated his presidency, became the basis for the rise of Jacksonian democracy. His legacy is controversial: being praised as an advocate for white working Americans and preserving the union of states, and criticized for his racist policies, particularly towards Native Americans. Born in the colonial Carolinas before the American Revolutionary War, Jackson became a frontier lawyer, married Rachel Donelson, and briefly represented Tennessee in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. After resigning, he served as a Tennessee Superior Court justice from 1798 to 1804. He founded The Hermitage and became a wealthy planter who profited from the forced labor of hundreds of enslaved African Americans. As commander of the Tennessee militia, he led troops in the Creek War of 1813–1814, winning the Battle of Horseshoe Bend and negotiating the Treaty of Fort Jackson, which forced the indigenous Creek to cede vast tracts of the present day states of Alabama and Georgia. In the concurrent war against the British, Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815 made him a national hero. He later commanded United States forces during the First Seminole War; his campaign was one of the factors that prompted Spain to negotiate the cession of Florida to the United States. Jackson briefly served as Florida's first territorial governor before returning to the Senate. He ran for president in 1824, winning a plurality of the popular and electoral vote. Because no candidate secured the electoral majority, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams with the support of Henry Clay, who later joined Adams's cabinet. Jackson's supporters, who alleged that Adams and Clay had formed a "corrupt bargain", created a new political coalition that would become the Democratic Party. Jackson ran again in 1828, defeating Adams in a landslide victory despite issues such as his slave trading and "irregular" marriage. In 1830, he signed the Indian Removal Act. This act, which has been described as ethnic cleansing, displaced tens of thousands of Native Americans from their ancestral homelands east of the Mississippi River. It resulted in thousands of deaths in what has become known as the Trail of Tears. Jackson faced a challenge to the integrity of the federal union when South Carolina threatened to nullify a high protective tariff set by the federal government. He threatened the use of military force to enforce the tariff, but the crisis was defused when it was amended. In 1832, he vetoed a bill by Congress to reauthorize the Second Bank of the United States, viewing the Bank as a branch of government run by the elite. After a lengthy struggle, the Bank was dismantled. In 1835, Jackson became the only U.S. president to pay off the national debt. After leaving office, he supported the presidencies of Martin Van Buren and James K. Polk, as well as the annexation of Texas. Opinions about Jackson are often polarized. Supporters characterize him as a defender of democracy and the U.S. Constitution, while critics point to his reputation as a demagogue who ignored the law when it suited him. Scholarly rankings of U.S. presidents historically placed Jackson high in the ranking of presidents. In recent decades, his reputation has declined and his ranking has fallen.

The Great Fire of Turku (Finnish: Turun palo; Swedish: Åbo brand; Russian: Пожар Або, romanized: Pozhar Abo) was a conflagration in the city of Turku in 1827. It is still the largest urban fire in the history of Finland and the Nordic countries. The city had faced several large fires before, including an especially devastating one in 1681.

The Battle of Kowloon (Chinese: 九龍海戰) was a skirmish between British and Chinese vessels off the Kowloon Peninsula, China, on 4 September 1839, located in Hong Kong, although Kowloon was then part of Guangdong province. The skirmish was the first armed conflict of the First Opium War and occurred when British boats opened fire on Chinese war junks enforcing a food sales embargo on the British community. The ban was ordered after a Chinese man died in a brawl with drunk British sailors at Tsim Sha Tsui. The Chinese authorities did not consider the punishment that was meted out by British officials to be sufficient, so they suspended food supplies in an attempt to force the British to turn over the culprit. Captain Charles Elliot was the chief superintendent of British trade in China, and he sailed to Kowloon in the cutter Louisa for food supplies during the embargo, accompanied by the schooner Pearl and a pinnace from HMS Volage. They encountered three Chinese junks, and Elliot sent interpreter Karl Gutzlaff with demands to allow the supply of provisions. He finally delivered an ultimatum after several hours of correspondence: the junks would be sunk if supplies were not received. The stated time period expired with no results, so the British opened fire on the junks, which returned fire with support from the on-shore fort. The larger junks pursued the British boats which were sailing away after running low on ammunition, but the British re-engaged the ships after replenishing their ammunition, and the Chinese retreated to their former position, ending the clash in a stalemate.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by Southern states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln as president in 1860 and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with a Union victory, dissolution of the Confederacy and the national abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

John Hunt Morgan (June 1, 1825 – September 4, 1864) was a Confederate general in the American Civil War. In April 1862, he raised the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry Regiment, fought at Shiloh, and then launched a costly raid in Kentucky, which encouraged Braxton Bragg's invasion of that state. He also attacked General William Rosecrans's supply lines. In July 1863, he set out on a 1,000-mile raid into Indiana and Ohio, taking hundreds of prisoners. But after most of his men had been intercepted by U.S. Navy gunboats, including the USS Moose, Morgan surrendered at Salineville, Ohio, the northernmost point ever reached by uniformed Confederates. Morgan carried out the diversionary "Morgan's Raid" against orders, which gained no tactical advantage for the Confederacy while losing the regiment. Morgan escaped prison, but his credibility was so low that he was restricted to minor operations. He was killed at Greeneville, Tennessee, in September 1864. Morgan was the brother-in-law of Confederate general A. P. Hill. Various schools and a memorial are dedicated to him.

Napoleon III (born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the first President of France from 1848 to 1852 and then Emperor of the French from 1852 until his deposition in 1870. He was the first elected president, second emperor, and the last monarch of France. He established the Second French Empire in 1852, which began a period of rapid industrialization and expansion of infrastructure in France and saw the rise of French influence in geopolitics after several decades of instability. As head of state of France for 22 years, he was the longest-reigning French head of state since the end of the Ancien régime. Napoleon III was born at the height of the First French Empire in the Tuileries Palace in Paris, the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland (r. 1806–1810), and Hortense de Beauharnais. He was the paternal nephew of the reigning Emperor Napoleon I. As a young man, he led two failed coups against the July Monarchy, for which he was imprisoned in 1840. In 1848, after the overthrow of the July Monarchy in the February Revolution, he was elected president of the French Second Republic. He seized power by force in 1851 when he could not constitutionally be re-elected. He later proclaimed himself Emperor of the French and founded the Second Empire, reigning until the defeat of the French Army and his capture by Prussia and its allies at the Battle of Sedan in 1870. Napoleon III commissioned a grand reconstruction of Paris carried out by the prefect of the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann. He expanded and consolidated the railway system throughout the nation and modernized the banking system in France. Napoleon promoted the building of the Suez Canal in Egypt and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made the country an agricultural exporter. He negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier Treaty with Britain and similar agreements with France's other European trading partners. Social reforms were enacted giving workers the right to organize and the right to strike, and women the right to be admitted to universities. In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and elsewhere. In Europe, he allied the French with Britain and defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853–1856). His regime assisted Italian unification by defeating the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence and later annexed Savoy and Nice through the Treaty of Turin as its deferred reward. At the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. He was also favourable towards the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities, which resulted in the establishment of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia. Napoleon III doubled the area of the French colonial empire with acquisitions in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. On the other hand, the intervention in Mexico, which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection, ended up in total failure. From 1866, Napoleon III had to face the aggressive mounting power of Prussia as its minister president Otto von Bismarck sought German unification (later serving as its first Chancellor) under Prussian leadership. In July 1870, Napoleon III reluctantly declared war on Prussia after pressure from the general public. The French Army was rapidly defeated, and Napoleon III was captured at Sedan. He was swiftly dethroned and the French Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris. After he was released from German custody, he went into exile in the United Kingdom, where he died in 1873.

Pearl Street Station was Thomas Edison's first commercial power plant in the United States. It was located at 255–257 Pearl Street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City, just south of Fulton Street on a site measuring 50 by 100 feet (15 by 30 m). The station was built by the Edison Illuminating Company, under the direction of Francis Upton, hired by Thomas Edison. It had a generation capacity of 600 kW DC.

The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were initially fought by European colonial empires, the United States, and briefly the Confederate States of America and Republic of Texas against various American Indian tribes in North America. These conflicts occurred from the time of the earliest colonial settlements in the 17th century until the end of the 19th century. The various conflicts resulted from a wide variety of factors, the most common being the desire of settlers and governments for tribal lands. The European powers and their colonies enlisted allied Indian tribes to help them conduct warfare against each other's colonial settlements. After the American Revolution, many conflicts were local to specific states or regions and frequently involved disputes over land use; many involved retaliatory violence. As American settlement expanded westward after the American Revolution, conflicts between the United States and Native American nations increased in scale and frequency. A major turning point came during the War of 1812, when Native confederacies in the Old Northwest and the Southern United States allied with the British against the United States. Following the war, armed resistance continued in some regions, but relations between the United States and Native nations were increasingly governed through treaties that transferred large areas of Indigenous land to the United States. Historians have noted that the United States frequently failed to uphold treaty obligations, contributing to recurring disputes and further conflict. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 authorized the president to negotiate treaties exchanging Native American lands east of the Mississippi River for lands in the west. Although the act itself provided for negotiated removals, federal and state authorities subsequently used a combination of treaties, political pressure, and coercion to relocate many Native nations from the southeastern United States to Indian Territory. The resulting removals, including the Trail of Tears, transferred millions of acres of Indigenous land to the United States and opened much of the Southeast to American settlement. As American settlement expanded across the Great Plains and the Western United States, the federal government increasingly confined Native peoples to Indian reservations through treaties, military campaigns, and congressional legislation. Native American tribes and confederacies often achieved significant military victories against American settlers and soldiers, but generally lacked the population, resources, and logistical capacity to sustain prolonged resistance against the expanding United States. Some scholars have characterized aspects of United States policies toward Native Americans, including forced removals, warfare, and reservation policies, as constituting genocide against Native Americans. Other scholars dispute the application of the term genocide to the American Indian Wars as a whole, arguing that the conflicts varied significantly across time and place.

George Eastman (July 12, 1854 – March 14, 1932) was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. After a decade of experiments in photography, he patented and sold a roll film camera, making amateur photography accessible to the general public for the first time. Working as the treasurer and later president of Kodak, he oversaw the expansion of the company and the film industry. Eastman was a major philanthropist, establishing the Eastman School of Music, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and schools of dentistry and medicine at the University of Rochester and Eastman Dental Hospital at University College London, and making large contributions to the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), the construction of several buildings at the second campus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the Charles River, and Tuskegee University and Hampton University, two historically black universities in the South. With interests in improving health, he provided funds for clinics in London and other European cities to serve low-income residents. In his final two years, Eastman was in intense pain caused by a disorder affecting his spine. On March 14, 1932, he shot himself in the heart, leaving a note which read, "To my friends: my work is done. Why wait?" Eastman is regarded as one of the most influential and well-known residents of Rochester, New York. He has been commemorated on several college campuses and the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the George Eastman Museum has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

Albania, officially the Republic of Albania, is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is located in the Balkans, on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea, and shares land borders with Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, North Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south. With an area of 28,748 km2 (11,100 sq mi), it has a varied range of climatic, geological, hydrological and morphological conditions. Landscapes range from rugged snow-capped mountains in the Albanian Alps and the Korab, Skanderbeg, Pindus and Ceraunian Mountains, to fertile lowland plains extending from the Adriatic and Ionian sea coasts. Tirana is the capital and largest city, followed by Durrës, Vlorë, and Shkodër.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (c. 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal and statesman who was the founder of the Republic of Turkey and served as its first president from 1923 until his death in 1938. He led sweeping reforms, turning Turkey into an industrialising nation. Ideologically a republican, secularist, and nationalist, his policies and socio-political theories became known as Kemalism. Atatürk's personality cult and the Kemalist historiography developed around it have had significant and ongoing influences on Turkey's political culture and historical narrative. Born in Salonica in the Ottoman Empire, Atatürk was early on persecuted for agitating against Sultan Abdul Hamid II's autocracy, joining opposition movements like the Committee of Union and Progress and the Young Turks. He participated in the Young Turk Revolution and the 31 March Incident. His early military career saw him involved in the Italo-Turkish and Balkan Wars. He rose to prominence with his role in the Defence of Gallipoli during World War I. Following his country's defeat after the war, in the Turkish War of Independence he directed the Turkish National Movement in a nationalist resistance against Turkey's partition among the victorious Allied powers. Establishing the provisional "Ankara government", he achieved a Turkish victory against Greece, Armenia, France, and the United Kingdom, confirmed in the Treaty of Lausanne. During and after the war, the ethnic cleansing of Armenians and Greeks from Anatolia outside of Istanbul, including the Kars region invaded by the Kemalist armies, was largely completed via large-scale massacres, flight, expulsions, and the population exchange between Greece and Turkey. His government subsequently proceeded to abolish the Ottoman sultanate in 1922 and proclaimed the Republic of Turkey in 1923. As the president of the newly formed Turkish Republic, Atatürk introduced far reaching reforms to build a republican and secular nation-state with a modern, Western facing society. By the mid-1920s, opponents to Atatürk's rule were suppressed as a one-party regime was cemented around him. This included abolishing the Ottoman Caliphate and curtailing religion as part of a larger secularist campaign. The semi-secular Mecelle was replaced by a fully secular civil code. Western cultural mores were encouraged: such as the banning of the fez and certain men's clothing. State-owned enterprises were established, foreign industrial assets were nationalised, and the first five-year plan was implemented. He opened thousands of schools and introduced the Latin-based Turkish alphabet. Turkish women received equal civil and political rights during his presidency. His government carried out a policy of Turkification, trying to create a homogeneous, unified, and above all secular nation under the Turkish banner. Atatürk attempted rapprochement with Iran, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Romania, and Greece, as well as the creation of the Balkan Pact that resisted the expansionist aggressions of Italy and Bulgaria during the interwar period of the 1930s. He died on 10 November 1938 at Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, at the age of 57; he was succeeded as president by his long-time prime minister İsmet İnönü. Atatürk has been praised for his military accomplishments, nation-building efforts, social and economic reforms, and diplomatic successes, serving as an inspiration to anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements. He has been condemned for instituting a dictatorship, introducing assimilationist policies that targeted minorities like the Kurds, and continuing a persecution of Christian minorities started by the CUP, while conservative Muslims have criticised his secular agenda. The Turkish Parliament granted him the surname Atatürk in 1934, meaning "Father of the Turks" or "Turk like his ancestors", in recognition of the role he played in building the Turkish Republic.

An airship, dirigible balloon or dirigible is a type of aerostat (lighter-than-air) aircraft that can navigate through the air flying under its own power. Aerostats use buoyancy from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air to achieve the lift needed to stay airborne.

The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: guerra civil española) was fought in Spain from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalist rebels. Republicans loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists, supported by the Soviet Union. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists, who established the military-led Spanish State and were directly aided by an intervention from Fascist Italy and participation of Nazi Germany. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war was variously viewed as class struggle, religious struggle, or struggle between republican democracy and dictatorship, revolution and counterrevolution, or communism and fascism. The Nationalists won the war in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975. The war began after the partial failure of the coup d'état of July 1936 against the Popular Front government by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces. They were supported by right-wing groups including the Christian traditionalist party CEDA; monarchists, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists; and the Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist political party. However, rebelling units in almost all important cities did not gain control, leaving Spain militarily and politically divided. The Nationalists were initially led by a military junta, until General Francisco Franco was appointed supreme leader on 1 October 1936 of what he called the Spanish State. The rebellion was countered by the arming of left-wing social movements and parties, and the formation of militias. This led to rapid socioeconomic and political transformation in the Republican zone, referred to as the Spanish Revolution. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Fascist Italy which conducted a large-scale intervention and Nazi Germany which sent its Condor Legion, while the Republican government received support from the Soviet Union and Mexico. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, continued to recognise the Republican government, but followed official policies of non-intervention. Despite this, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict, mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades. Franco gradually emerged as the primary leader of the Nationalists, becoming the dictator of the Spanish State by 1937 and co-opting Falangism, gaining recognition as a fascist leader. The Nationalists advanced from their strongholds in the south and west, capturing most of Spain's northern coastline in 1937 and besieging Madrid. After much of Catalonia was captured in 1938 and 1939 and Madrid was cut off from Barcelona, the Republican military position became hopeless. On 5 March 1939, in response to allegedly increasing communist dominance of the Republican government and the deteriorating military situation, Colonel Segismundo Casado led a military coup against the Republican government, intending to seek peace with the Nationalists. These peace overtures, however, were rejected by Franco. Following internal conflict between Republican factions in Madrid in the same month, Franco entered the capital and declared victory on 1 April 1939. Hundreds of thousands of those associated with the Republicans fled Spain, mostly to refugee camps in southern France; many of those who stayed were persecuted by the victorious Nationalists. The war became notable for the passion and political division it inspired worldwide, and for the many atrocities that occurred. Organised purges occurred in territory captured by Franco's forces to consolidate power. Mass executions took place in areas controlled by the Republicans, with the participation of local authorities varying by location.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

USS Greer (DD–145) was a Wickes-class destroyer in the United States Navy, the first ship named for Rear Admiral James A. Greer (1833–1904). In what became known as the "Greer incident," she became the first US Navy ship to fire on a German ship, three months before the United States officially entered World War II. The incident led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue what became known as his "shoot-on-sight" order, with the intention of creating a casus belli in the Atlantic, provoking Germany to declare war on the US.

The 11th Armoured Division was an armoured division of the British Army which was created in March 1941 during the Second World War. The division was formed in response to the unanticipated success of the German panzer divisions. The 11th Armoured was responsible for several major victories in the Battle of Normandy from in the summer of 1944, shortly after the Normandy landings, and it participated in the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine, the Rhine crossing in March 1945. It was disbanded in January 1946 and reformed towards the end of 1950. In 1956, it was converted into the 4th Infantry Division.

The Continuation War, also known as the Second Soviet–Finnish War, was a conflict fought by Finland and Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union during World War II. It began with a Finnish declaration of war on 25 June 1941 and ended on 19 September 1944 with the Moscow Armistice. The Soviet Union and Finland had previously fought the Winter War from 1939 to 1940, which ended with the Soviet failure to conquer Finland and the Moscow Peace Treaty. Numerous reasons have been proposed for the Finnish decision to invade, with regaining territory lost during the Winter War regarded as the most common. Other justifications for the conflict include Finnish President Risto Ryti's vision of a Greater Finland and Commander-in-Chief Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim's desire to annex East Karelia.

Wilhelmina was Queen of the Netherlands from 1890 until her abdication in 1948. She reigned for nearly 58 years, making her the longest-reigning monarch in Dutch history. Her reign encompassed World War I, the Dutch economic crisis of 1933, and World War II.

Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass-baritone concert artist, actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances.

Darlington Raceway is a 1.366 mi (2.198 km) egg-shaped oval track in Darlington, South Carolina, United States. The track has hosted racing events since its inaugural season in 1950, primarily races sanctioned by NASCAR. The venue has a capacity of 47,000 as of 2021. Darlington Raceway is owned by NASCAR and led by track president Josh Harris.

San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the 17th-largest city and second-densest major city in the United States, with a 2025 population of 826,079. It is the fourth-most populous city in California and the second most-populous in the Bay Area. Some 4.6 million residents live in the city's metropolitan statistical area. Around 9.2 million live in the San Jose–San Francisco–Oakland combined statistical area, the fifth-largest in the United States. San Francisco is a global center for technology and finance, and is well-known for its affluence, eclectic architecture, and mild climate.

Swissair Flight 306, a Sud Aviation Caravelle named Schaffhausen, was a scheduled international flight from Zurich to Rome, via Geneva. It crashed near Dürrenäsch, Aargau, on 4 September 1963, shortly after take-off, killing all 80 people on board.

The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge that crosses the Firth of Forth in Scotland. The bridge opened in 1964 and, at the time, was the longest suspension bridge in the world outside the United States. The bridge connects Edinburgh to Fife; replacing a centuries-old ferry service to carry vehicular traffic, cyclists and pedestrians across the Forth. Railway crossings are made by the nearby Forth Bridge, opened in 1890.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens was a Chilean socialist politician who served as the 29th president of Chile from 1970 until his death in 1973. He has been described as the first Marxist to be elected president in a liberal democracy in Latin America. Due to his commitment to democracy in the pursuit of socialism, and the manner of his death and deposition, he is revered as a hero and martyr by many socialists worldwide, across many different strains of beliefs, to a degree unusual in socialist politics.

Alaska Airlines Flight 1866 was a regularly scheduled passenger flight operated by Alaska Airlines from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seattle, Washington, with several intermediate stops in southeast Alaska. The aircraft was a Boeing 727-100 with U.S. registry N2969G manufactured in 1966. On September 4, 1971, the aircraft operating the flight crashed into a mountain in Haines Borough, about 18 miles west of Juneau, Alaska, while on approach for landing. All 111 people aboard were killed. The subsequent investigation found that erroneous navigation readouts led the crew to descend prematurely. No definitive cause for the misleading data was found. It was the first fatal jet aircraft crash involving Alaska Airlines, and remained the deadliest single-aircraft accident in United States history until June 24, 1975, when Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 crashed. It is still, however, the worst air disaster in Alaska state history.

Mark Andrew Spitz is an American former competitive swimmer and nine-time Olympic champion. He was the most successful athlete at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, winning seven gold medals, each in world-record time. This achievement set a record that lasted for 36 years, until it was surpassed by fellow American Michael Phelps, who won eight golds at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Phelps, like Spitz, set seven world records.

The Price Is Right is an American television game show. A 1972 revival by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman of their 1956–1965 show of the same name, the new version adds many distinctive gameplay elements. Contestants compete in a variety of games to determine the prices of products or prizes which they may win. These contestants are selected from the studio audience and are called onstage to compete by the announcer using the show's catchphrase of "come on down!"

A gang-related mass shooting took place on September 4, 1977, inside the Golden Dragon restaurant at 822 Washington Street in Chinatown, San Francisco, California, United States. The shooting was planned and committed by members of the Joe Boys, a Chinese-American youth gang, who were attempting to kill leaders of the Wah Ching, a rival Chinatown gang. The attack left five people dead and 11 others injured, none of whom were gang members. Seven perpetrators were later convicted and sentenced in connection with the murders. The massacre led to the establishment of the San Francisco Police Department's Asian Gang Task Force, credited with ending gang-related violence in Chinatown by 1983. The restaurant closed in 2006.

Buckminsterfullerene is a type of fullerene with the formula C60. It has a cage-like fused-ring structure made of twenty hexagons and twelve pentagons, and resembles an association football. Each of its 60 carbon atoms is bonded to its three neighbors.

Leipzig is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 633,592 residents as of 31 December 2025. It is the eighth-largest city in Germany and is part of the Central German Metropolitan Region. Leipzig is located about 150 km (90 mi) southwest of Berlin, in the southernmost part of the North German Plain, at the confluence of the White Elster and its tributaries Pleiße and Parthe.

Google is an American multinational technology corporation focused on information technology, online advertising, search engine technology, email, cloud computing, software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has been referred to as "the most powerful company in the world" by the BBC, and is one of the world's most valuable brands. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., has been described as a Big Tech company.

Tokyo DisneySea is a theme park at the Tokyo Disney Resort located in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, just next to Tokyo. It opened on 4 September 2001, at a cost of 335 billion yen. The Oriental Land Company owns the park and licenses intellectual property from the Walt Disney Company. In 2024, Tokyo DisneySea hosted 12.4 million visitors, making it the seventh-most visited theme park in the world and the third-most visited in Japan.

The Oakland Athletics were an American Major League Baseball (MLB) team based in Oakland, California, from 1968 to 2024. The Athletics were a member club of the American League (AL) West Division and played its home games at the Oakland Coliseum throughout their entire time in Oakland. The franchise won four World Series championships while based in Oakland.

Al-Qaeda is a transnational pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni Islamist jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate. Its core membership is primarily composed of Arabs, with additional representation from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military targets of the U.S. and its allies; such as the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, and the September 11 attacks. It has been designated a terrorist organization by the United Nations and over two dozen countries around the world.

Pope Benedict XVI was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City from 2005 until his resignation in 2013. Following his resignation, he chose to be known as "pope emeritus", a title he held until his death on 31 December 2022. In addition to this, he was an important philosopher and theologian of the 20th and early 21st centuries.

On September 4, 2024, a school shooting occurred at Apalachee High School near Winder, Georgia, United States. The perpetrator, 14-year-old Colt Gray, fatally shot four people. Two students and two teachers were killed, while seven others were injured by gunfire. It is the deadliest school shooting in Georgia’s history.