This Day in History: Sept. 1

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This Day In History: September 1

Take a look at all of the historic events that took place on September 1.

On this day, Sept. 1 ...

1939: World War II begins as Nazi Germany invades Poland.

Also on this day:

• 1715: Following a reign of 72 years, King Louis XIV of France dies four days before his 77th birthday.
• 1807: Former Vice President Aaron Burr is found not guilty of treason. 
• 1923: The Japanese cities of Tokyo and Yokohama are devastated by an earthquake that claims some 140,000 lives.
• 1942: U.S. District Court Judge Martin I. Welsh, ruling from Sacramento, Calif., on a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Fred Korematsu, upholds the wartime detention of Japanese Americans as well as Japanese nationals.
• 1961: The Soviet Union ends a moratorium on atomic testing with an above-ground nuclear explosion in central Asia. 
• 1969: A coup in Libya brings Moammar Gadhafi to power.

In this Aug. 31, 1972, file photo, Bobby Fischer, right, and Boris Spassky play the last game of their historic 1972 "Match of the Century" in Reykjavik, Iceland.(AP Photo/J. Walter Green, File)

• 1972: American Bobby Fischer wins the international chess crown in Reykjavik, Iceland, as Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union resigns before the resumption of Game 21.
• 1983: A Soviet jet fighter shoots down a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747, killing 269 people, after the airliner enters Soviet airspace.
• 1985: A U.S.-French expedition locates the wreckage of the Titanic on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 400 miles off Newfoundland.
• 2004: More than 1,000 people are taken hostage by heavily armed Chechen militants at a school in Beslan in southern Russia; more than 330 people, more than half of them children, would be killed in the three-day ordeal
• 2009: Vermont's law allowing same-sex marriage goes into effect.