EVENTS:
- 869 – A magnitude 8.6Ms earthquake and subsequent tsunami strikes the area around Sendai in the northern part of Honshu, Japan.
- 1789 – In Versailles, the National Assembly reconstitutes itself as the National Constituent Assembly and begins preparations for a French constitution.
- 1810 – Napoleon annexes the Kingdom of Holland as part of the First French Empire.
- 1816 – Argentina declares independence from Spain.
- 1918 – Great Train Wreck of 1918: in Nashville, Tennessee, an inbound local train collides with an outbound express killing 101 and injuring 171 people, making it the deadliest rail accident in United States history.
- 1922 – Johnny Weissmuller swims the 100 meters freestyle in 58.6 seconds breaking the world swimming record and the ‘minute barrier’.
- 1958 – Lituya Bay is hit by a megatsunami. The wave is recorded at 524 meters high, the largest in recorded history.
- 2011 – South Sudan gains independence and secedes from Sudan.
- 2014 – A gunman kills six people including four children near Spring, Texas.
BIRTHS:
- 1819 – Elias Howe, American inventor, invented the sewing machine (d. 1867)
- 1893 – George Geary, English cricketer (d. 1981)
- 1894 – Pyotr Kapitsa, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
- 1925 – Guru Dutt, Indian actor, director, and producer (d. 1964)
- 1926 – Ben Roy Mottelson, American-Danish physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1930 – Roy McLean, South African cricketer (d. 2007)
- 1938 – Sanjeev Kumar, Indian actor (d. 1985)
- 1967 – Mark Stoops, American football player and coach
- 1969 – Jason Kearton, Australian footballer
- 1971 – Marc Andreessen, American software developer, co-founded Netscape
- 1990 – Fábio Pereira da Silva, Brazilian footballer
- 2003 – Conor Bradley, Northern Irish footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
- Constitution Day (Australia)
- Constitution Day (Palau)
- Constitutionalist Revolution Day (São Paulo)
- Independence Day, celebrates the declaration of independence of the United Provinces of South America by the Congress of Tucumán in 1816. (Argentina)
- Independence Day (South Sudan)
