Today in History: September 1, Titanic wreckage found

Today in History

Today is Tuesday, Sept. 1, the 244th day of 2026. There are 121 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Sept. 1, 1985, a U.S.-French expedition located the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

Also on this date:

In 1715, following a reign of 72 years, King Louis XIV of France died four days before his 77th birthday; he was succeeded by his five-year-old great-grandson, Louis XV.

In 1807, a federal jury in Virginia acquitted former Vice President Aaron Burr of treason for plotting to seize lands belonging to Spain in Louisiana and Mexico.

In 1897, the first section of Boston’s new subway was opened, creating the first underground rapid transit system in North America.

In 1914, the passenger pigeon, once one of the most abundant bird species on earth, went extinct as the last known example, named Martha, died in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo.

In 1923, the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama were devastated by an earthquake that claimed some 140,000 lives.

In 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland, an event regarded as the start of World War II.

In 1952, Life magazine published Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” in its entirely; also released as a book, it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1953.

In 1964, pitcher Masanori Murakami of the San Francisco Giants became the first Japanese baseball player to play in a Major League Baseball game.

In 1969, a coup in Libya brought Moammar Gadhafi to power.

In 1972, American Bobby Fischer won the international chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, as Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union resigned before the resumption of their 21st and final game.

In 1983, 269 people were killed when a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 was shot down by a Soviet fighter jet after the airliner entered Soviet airspace.

In 2004, Islamic terrorists took more than 1,000 people hostage in a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia; the siege would end three days later in gunfire and explosions, leaving 334 people dead — more than half of them children.

In 2015, invoking “God’s authority,” Rowan County, Kentucky, Clerk Kim Davis denied marriage licenses to gay couples again in direct defiance of the federal courts and vowed not to resign, even under the pressure of steep fines or jail. (Davis would spend five days in jail as a result, and is currently appealing a ruling ordering her to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in related legal fees.)

Today’s Birthdays: Attorney and law professor Alan Dershowitz is 88. Comedian-actor Lily Tomlin is 87. Singer Barry Gibb is 80. Talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw is 76. Singer Gloria Estefan is 69. TV host-author Padma Lakshmi is 56. Actor Ricardo Antonio Chavira is 55. Fashion designer Rachel Zoe is 55. Actor Scott Speedman is 51. Composer-producer Ludwig Göransson is 42. Actor-singer Zendaya is 30.