Today in History in 1881 Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as the 21st President of the United States. This is after the death of James Garfield the previous day, as a result of injuries from being shot on July 2 by Charles J. Guiteau.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

September 20 is the 263rd day of the year (264th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 102 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

331 BC – Alexander the Great crosses the Tigris on his way to conquering the Persians.

1058 – Agnes de Poitou and Andrew I of Hungary meet to talk about the border zone in present-day Burgenland.

1187 – Saladin begins the Siege of Jerusalem.

1260 – The Great Prussian Uprising among the old Prussians begins against the Teutonic Knights.

1459 – First documented mention of Bucharest.

1498 – An earthquake and tsunami washes away the building housing the Great Buddha at Kotoku-in in Kamagura, Kanagawa, Japan. Since then, the Buddha statue has sat in open-air.

1519 – Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Spain with 270 crew members, of whom only 18 return home in 1522. Magellan is killed in the Philippines in 1521.

1596 – Diego de Montemayor founds the city of Monterrey, Mexico.

1697 – The Treaty of Rijswijk is signed by France, England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, ending the Nine Years' War.

1848 – The American Association for the Advancement of Science is created.

1854 – Crimean War: British and French troops defeat the Russians in the Battle of Alma.

1859 – For the electric oven, American George B. Simpson is given a US patent.

1860 – Future King Edward VII of the United Kingdom (then the Prince of Wales), visits the United States.

1863 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chickamauga ends in Confederate victory.

1870 – The Unification of Italy is completed.

1881 – Chester A. Arthur is inaugurated as the 21st President of the United States. This is after the death of James Garfield the previous day, as a result of injuries from being shot on July 2 by Charles J. Guiteau.

1893 – The first gasoline-powered car in America debuts in Springfield, Massachusetts.

1906 – The Cunard Line's ship RMS Mauretania is launched in Newcastle upon Tyne.

1908 – Near Prince of Wales Island, Southeast Alaska, the barque (a type of ship) Star of Bengal collides with a rock and sinks, killing 110 people.

1909 – The British Parliament passes the South Africa Act of 1909, creating the Union of South Africa from the British colonies of Good Hope, Natal, Orange River and Transvaal.

1910 – The Ocean Liner SS France is launched.

1911 – The White Star line's RMS Olympic collides with British warship HMS Hawke.

1914 – World War I: The cathedral in Reims, France, is severely damaged by German artillery.

1920 – Foundation of the Spanish Legion.

1932 – Mahatma Gandhi begins a hunger strike in prison in Pune, India.

1942 – Holocaust: In Letychev, Ukraine, the SS murders 3,000 Jews in two days.

1946 – The first Cannes Film Festival is held. It still takes place every year, in May.

1961 – Konstantinos Dovas becomes Prime Minister of Greece.

1962 – African American James Meredith is temporarily barred from entering the University of Mississippi.

1967 – The ship RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is launched at Clydebank near Glasgow.

1971 – Hurricane Irene crosses the Caribbean Sea, through Nicaragua, to the Pacific Ocean to become Hurricane Olivia; This is the first time a hurricane is known to have crossed from the Caribbean to the Pacific.

1973 – Billie Jean King defeats Bobby Riggs in a 'Battle of the Sexes' tennis match in Houston, Texas.

1977 – The Socialist Republic of Vietnam joins the UN.

1978 – Johannes Rau, future President of Germany, is chosen as Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, a position he will hold for 20 years.

1979 – In the present-day Central African Republic, Jean Bedel Bokassa, self-declared Emperor Bokassa I, is overthrown.

1982 – NFL players begin a 57-day strike.

1984 – A bomb attack targets the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

1990 – South Ossetia declares its independence from the Republic of Georgia.

2001 – George W. Bush declares War on Terror.

2002 – A Rock-Ice Slide occurs with the partial collapse of the Kolka Glacier in North Ossetia, southern Russia. The resulting avalanche kills 125 people.

2003 – Voters in Latvia approve entry to the EU in a referendum.

2004 – Wikipedia publishes articles in its 100th language.

2008 – A bomb attack at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad kills 54 people.

2011 – Former President of Afghanistan Burhanuddin Rabbani is assassinated.

2014 – Prime Minister of New Zealand John Key wins a third term in office, after his New Zealand National Party wins the parliamentary election.

2017 – Hurricane Maria hits Puerto Rico, where it kills thousands of people and cuts the whole island's electricity supply.

2019 – Led by school pupils, worldwide protests take place calling for politicians to act on climate change.