September 20: What Happened on This Day in History (Elementary Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1498 - The 1498 Meiō Nankaidō earthquake generates a tsunami that washes away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan; since then the Buddha has sat in the open air.
2. 1519 - Ferdinand Magellan sets sail from Sanlúcar de Barrameda with about 270 men on his expedition to circumnavigate the globe.
3. 1893 - Charles Duryea and his brother road-test the first American-made gasoline-powered automobile.
4. 1971 - Having weakened after making landfall in Nicaragua the previous day, Hurricane Irene regains enough strength to be renamed Hurricane Olivia, making it the first known hurricane to cross from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific.
5. 1973 - Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in The Battle of the Sexes tennis match at the Houston Astrodome in Houston, Texas.
6. Famous Birthdays: Prince Arthur Tudor (son of King Henry VII of England), Chulalongkorn (King of Thailand), Shriram Sharma Acharya (Indian spiritual leader), Takayuki Kubota (Japanese martial artist), Steve Gerber (American comics writer)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: September 19

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: September 21

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.