Today in History in 1896 Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather, King George III, as the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Elizabeth II beats her record on September 9, 2015.

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 22 is the 265th day of the year (266th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 100 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

66 – Emperor Nero creates the legion I Italica.

904 – The warlord Zhu Quanzhong kills Emperor Zhaozong of Tong, the second-last Emperor of China's Tang Dynasty, after seizing control of the imperial government.

1236 – Lithuanians and Semigallians beat Livonian Brothers of the Sword in Battle of Siauliai

1499 – Treaty of Basel: Switzerland becomes an independent state.

1503 – Pope Pius III becomes Pope, though his reign only lasts for 27 days.

1598 – English playwright Ben Jonson is indicted for manslaughter.

1692 – Last people hanged for witchcraft in the United States.

1761 – George III of Great Britain and Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz are crowned.

1776 – Nathan Hale is hanged for spying during American Revolution.

1784 – Russia establishes a colony at Kodiak, Alaska.

1789 – Position of United States Postmaster General established.

1823 – Mormon leader Joseph Smith, Jr. stated that he found the Golden Plates on this date, being directed by God through the Angel Moroni to the place where they were buried.

1857 – Russian warship Lefort capsizes and sinks in the Gulf of Finland, killing all 806 people on board.

1862 – A preliminary version of the Emancipation Proclamation is released.

1864 – American Civil War: End of the Battle of Fishers Hill.

1869 – Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold debuts in Munich.

1877 – French astronomer Edouard Jean-Marie Stephan discovers five galaxies, that together are now known as the "Stephan Quintet".

1888 – The first issue of National Geographic Magazine is published.

1893 – The first American-built automobile, built by the Duryea Brothers, is displayed.

1896 – Queen Victoria surpasses her grandfather, King George III, as the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Elizabeth II beats her record on September 9, 2015.

1908 – Independence of Bulgaria recognised.

1910 – The Duke of York's Picture House opens in Brighton, now the oldest continually operating cinema in the United Kingdom.

1914 – German submarine 5M U-9 torpedoes and sinks British cruisers HMS Aboukir, HMS Hague and HMS Cressy on the Broad Fourteens off the Dutch coast with the loss of 1,400 men and boys.

1919 – The Steel Strike of 1919 begins in Pennsylvania, later spreading across the United States.

1927 – Jack Dempsey loses the "Long Count" boxing match to Gene Tunney.

1934 – An explosion occurs at Gresford Colliery in Wales, killing 266 miners and rescuers.

1937 – Spanish Civil War: Peña Blanca is taken; the end of the Battle of El Mazuco.

1941 – Holocaust: On Yom Kippur, Jewish New Year, SS officers murder 6,000 Jews in Vinnytsya, Ukraine.

1949 – Soviet Union detonates its first nuclear weapon.

1955 – UK television channel ITV begins broadcasting.

1957 – Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) is elected President of Haiti. Establishing a one-party state, he remains in power until his death in 1971, when his son takes over.

1960 – Mali gains independence from France.

1961 – The Peace Corps is formed.

1964 – The musical Fiddler on the Roof has its first performance on Broadway in New York City.

1965 – The war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir ends after the UN calls for a cease-fire.

1968 – The move of the Abu Simbel temple ruins in Egypt is completed, in order to make way for Lake Nasser.

1970 – Tunku Abdul Rahman resigns as Prime Minister of Malaysia.

1975 – Sara Jane Moore tries to assassinate President Gerald Ford.

1979 – The South Atlantic Flash is observed near Bouvet Island, thought to be a nuclear weapons test.

1980 – Iraq invades Iran.

1985 – The Farm Aid concert takes place in Champaign, Illinois.

1985 – The Plaza Accord was signed in New York City.

1990 – Start of the 1990 Asian Games, held in Beijing.

1991 – The Dead Sea Scrolls are made available to the public for the first time, by the Huntington Library.

1993 – A Transair Georgian Airlines Tu-154 is shot down by a missile in Sukhumi, Georgia.

1993 – A barge strikes a railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama, killing 47 people.

1994 – The first episode of Friends aired on NBC.

1995 – The Nagercovil School Bombing is carried out by Sri Lankan Air Force, killing at least 24 people, most of them ethnic Tamil children.

1997 – Bentalha massacre in Algeria; over 200 villagers are killed.

2002 – German Bundestag election: incumbent Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder narrowly defeats Edmund Stoiber.

2003 – David Hempleman-Adams becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an open-air, wicker-basket hot air balloon.

2013 – A bomb attack on a church in Peshawar, Pakistan, kills at least 70 people.

2013 – Angela Merkel is elected to a third term as Chancellor of Germany, after the CDU/CSU scored around 42%. Her coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), are voted out of the Bundestag.

2014 – Ewa Kopacz becomes Prime Minister of Poland, replacing Donald Tusk, who resigned to take up his post as President of the European Council.

2016 – Yahoo! confirms that hackers entered its network in late 2014 and stole information connected to at least 500 million user accounts, in the largest data breach reported to date.