Shimla, Sept. 2 Keekli Bureau
2005
American actor Bob Denver, who was perhaps best known for portraying the title character in the hit TV series Gilligan’s Island (1964–67), died in North Carolina.
1998
Swissair flight 111 crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, killing all 229 on board; it was later determined that faulty wires had caused the plane’s flammable insulation to catch fire.
1973
English writer J.R.R. Tolkien, who was best known for the inventive fantasies The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), died.
1948
American teacher Christa Corrigan McAuliffe, who was chosen to be the first private citizen in space, was born; she and six other crew members died when the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff in 1986.
1945
World War II came to an end as Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru and General Umezu Yoshijiro signed Japan’s formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri.
1945
Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam independent from France.
1928
American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader Horace Silver, who was an exemplary performer of what came to be called the hard bop style of the 1950s and ’60s, was born.
1901
American politician Theodore Roosevelt, who was then the Republican vice presidential candidate, gave the first public speech in which he said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” The Big Stick policy later became a central feature of his presidency.
1898
Anglo-Egyptian forces under Major General Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener (later Lord Kitchener) defeated the Sudanese forces of the Mahdist leader ʿAbd Allāh in the Battle of Omdurman.
1792
The September Massacres—mass killings of prisoners in Paris—began, instigated by beliefs that political prisoners during the French Revolution were going to rise up in their jails to join a counterrevolutionary plot.
31 bce
Octavian (later Augustus Caesar) won a decisive victory over Mark Antony in the Battle of Actium.
