• 1777 – American soldiers win the first Battle of Saratoga during the Revolutionary War
• 1796 – President George Washington's farewell address is published
• 1934 – Bruno Hauptmann is arrested in New York and charged with the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby
• 1945 – Nazi propagandist William Joyce, known as Lord Haw-Haw, is sentenced to death by a British court
• 1957 –  The United States conducts its first underground nuclear test, in the Nevada desert
• 1970 – "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" debuts on CBS
• 1982 – Emoticons are born when Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman proposed punctuating humorous or sarcastic computer messages with a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis as a horizontal "smiley face." :-)
• 1985 –  The Mexico City area is struck by the first of two devastating earthquakes that claimed some 6,000 lives
• 1994 – U.S. troops enter Haiti to enforce the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
• 1995 – The New York Times and The Washington Post publish the Unabomber's manifesto
• 2001 – The Pentagon orders combat aircraft to the Persian Gulf in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks
• 2002 – President George W. Bush asks Congress for authority to "use all means," including military force if necessary, to disarm and overthrow Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein if he did not quickly meet United Nations demands to abandon all weapons of mass destruction
• 2004 – Hu Jintao becomes the undisputed leader of China with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin from his top military post
• 2005 – Former Tyco CEO L. Dennis Kozlowski is sentenced in New York to up to 25 years in prison for looting the company of hundreds of millions of dollars; Tyco's former finance chief, Mark Swartz, received the same sentence
• 2005 –  Al-Qaida deputy Ayman al-Zawahri says his terror network had carried out the July 7 London bombings that killed 52 people

Famous and Historical Birthdays - Say Happy Birthday to . . .

• Adam West (Actor)
• Freda Payne (Singer)
• Jeremy Irons (Actor)
• Joan Lunden (TV Personality)
• Trisha Yearwood (Singer)
• Cheri Oteri (Comedian)
• Soledad O’Brien (Journalist)
• Jimmy Fallon (Comedian)