September 1

1772 – The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa is founded in San Luis Obispo, California.

1774 –  Under orders from General Gage, Middlesex County, Massachusetts Sheriff, David Phips confiscates the Massachusetts provincial gun powder supply at the Powder House in Somerville, causing Militia to form and preemptively begin removing other powder stores and accouterments to more secure locations.

1862 –Confederate Army troops defeat a group of retreating Union Army troops near Chantilly, Virginia.

1864 – Confederate General John Bell Hood orders the evacuation of Atlanta, ending a 4 month long siege by General Sherman.

1873 – Cetshwayo ascends to the throne as king of the Zulu nation in Southern Africa following the death of his father Mpande.

1878 – Finding that the young men originally hired as telegraph messengers are providing unsatisfactory customer service, Emma Nutt becomes the first female telephone operator when she is recruited by Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company. It is not until the early 1970s before men are again hired to be operators.

1880 – The army of Mohammad Ayub Khan is routed by the British at the Battle of Kandahar, ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

1894 – 418 people die in the Great Hinckley Fire, a forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota.

1897 – The Tremont Street Subway in Boston opens, becoming the first underground rapid transit system in North America.

1934 – The first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated cartoon, The Discontented Canary, is released

1939 – Ground, Air and Naval forces of Nazi Germany begin an attack and invasion of Poland beginning what will be World War II.
Switzerland mobilizes its forces and the Swiss Parliament elects Henri Guisan to head the Swiss Armed Forces.

1961 – TWA Flight 529, a Lockheed Constellation, crashes shortly after takeoff from Midway Airport in Chicago, killing all 78 passengers and crew on board. At the time, it was the deadliest single plane disaster in U.S. history.

1969 – A coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power.

1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American Bobby Fischer beats Russian Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.

1974 – The SR-71 Blackbird sets the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of over 1,435 miles per hour

1979 – The NASA space probe Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 13,000 mi.

1982 – The U.S. Air Force Space Command is founded.

1983 – Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace, killing all 269 passengers and crew on board.

1985 – A joint American–French expedition led by Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel locates the wreckage of the RMS Titanic.

2008 – The U.S. transfers control of Anbar Province back to the reformed Iraqi government