Thursday, September 1, 1672

Speakers' Corner, a free speech area in Hong Lim Park in Singapore, was launched.

A 76-hour multinational rescue effort off the coast of Ireland resulted in the deepest sub rescue in history.

In a match widely publicized as a Cold War confrontation, American chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer became the 11th World Chess Champion with his victory over Soviet Boris Spassky.

Muammar Gaddafi (pictured) led a coup d'état to overthrow King Idris of Libya.

At an Arab League summit, eight nations issued the Khartoum Resolution, declaring that there would be "no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, [and] no negotiations with it".

Rioting erupted in Dayton, Ohio, resulting in one death and the mobilization of the Ohio National Guard.

Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea, which later won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, was first published.

German forces attacked multiple locations in Poland, including Wieluń and Westerplatte, starting World War II in Europe.

The first group of around 172,000 Koreans were deported by Soviet authorities from the Russian Far East to the Kazakh and Uzbek SSRs; around 10 to 25 percent died.

The passenger pigeon, which once numbered in the billions, became extinct when the last individual died in captivity.

Construction began on the Saline Valley salt tram, which during its operation was the steepest tram in the United States.

The first science fiction film, titled A Trip to the Moon and based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, was released in France.