1189 England’s King Richard I (the Lion-Hearted) was crowned in Westminster.
1658 Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of England, died.
1783 The Treaty of Paris between the United States and Great Britain officially ended the Revolutionary War. King George’s official reaction was “Ahhh, let them have their dumb old country. Who needs them anyway? They drive on the wrong side of the street and speak funny.”
1929 The Dow Jones industrial average closed at 381.17, it’s pre-crash high.
1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland.
1970 Hall of Fame football coach Vince Lombardi died at age 57.
1978 Pope John Paul I was installed as the 264th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.
1994 China and Russia pledged they would no longer target nuclear missiles at or use force against each other.
1997 Arizona Gov. Fife Symington was convicted of lying to get millions in loans to shore up his collapsing real estate empire. (The conviction was overturned in 1999.) His brother Viola and sister Flute claim that the charges were trumpeted up in an effort to drum him out of the statehouse.
2004 A three-day hostage siege at a school in Beslan, Russia, ended in bloody chaos after Chechen militants set off bombs and Russian commandos stormed the building; more than 330 people were killed, most of them children.
2005 President George W. Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast as his administration in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
2005 Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died at age 80.
2006 Tennis player Andre Agassi announced his retirement. (The official “who cares” entry for this date.)
2007 Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett, 63, vanished after taking off in a single-engine plane in western Nevada. (His remains were discovered in October 2008 in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.)
2008 Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain’s choice for running mate, roused delegates with a speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. (So, how’d that work out, Sen. McCain?)
2009 Disappointed at the failure of “JayMatt19”, “Jax” and “YW Moderator-39” or anyone else to update this thread for three consecutive days, a lazy poster takes the initiative to google “this day in history” for himself.