September 23

1215 – Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan is born in Mongolia.

1338 – A naval battle during the ‘Hundred Years War’ off the North Sea coast of modern Belgium between French and English fleets is the first in which gunpowder artillery is used

1779 – Aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard, Captain John Paul Jones, as Commodore of a combined French and American squadron, engages and captures the British ship HMS Serapis near Flamborough Head off the coast of Yorkshire.

1780 – British Major John André is arrested as a spy by American soldiers, exposing Benedict Arnold’s treason.

1806 – Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery Expedition return to St. Louis from exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States.

1845 – The Knickerbockers Baseball Club, the first baseball team to play under the modern rules, is founded in New York.

1846 – At the Berlin Observatory, European astronomers Urbain Le Verrier, John Couch Adams and Johann Gottfried Galle collaborate on the discovery of Neptune.

1889 – The game manufacturer Nintendo Koppai is founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi, in Kyoto.

1899 – During the Philippine–American War, the American Asiatic Squadron destroys a Filipino coastal battery at Olongapo, which had been harassing U.S. shipping, in Subic Bay, Luzon island.

1911 – Pilot Earle Ovington makes the first official airmail delivery in America under the authority of the United States Post Office Department

1942 – On Guadalcanal, U.S. Marines begin an attack on Japanese units along the Matanikau River

1950 – During the Battle of Hill 282 in the Korean War, British troops of the 1st Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders mistakenly come under fire from U.S. Air Force F-51 Mustangs of the 18th Fighter Bomber Wing. The first ‘friendly fire’ incident of the war.

1981 – Chief Dan George dies in Vancouver, British Columbia.

1992 – Author Glendon Swarthout, dies of emphysema in his home in Scottsdale, Arizona.

2002 – The first public version of the web browser Mozilla Firefox -Phoenix 0.1- is released.

2018 – American film director and producer Gary Kurtz dies, age 78, in London.