02 September History
- 1666 - The Great Fire of London, which devastates the city, begins.
- 1789 - The Treasury Department, headed by Alexander Hamilton, is created in New York City.
- 1792 - Verdun, France, surrenders to the Prussian Army.
- 1798 - The Maltese people revolt against the French occupation, forcing the French troops to take refuge in the citadel of Valetta in Malta.
- 1870 - Napoleon III capitulates to the Prussians at Sedan, France.
- 1885 - In Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, 28 Chinese laborers are killed and hundreds more chased out of town by striking coal miners.
- 1898 - Sir Herbert Kitchner leads the British to victory over the Mahdists at Omdurman and takes Khartoum.
- 1910 - Alice Stebbins Wells is admitted to the Los Angeles Police Force as the first woman police officer to receive an appointment based on a civil service exam.
- 1915 - Austro-German armies take Grodno, Poland.
- 1944 - Troops of the U.S. First Army enter Belgium.
- 1945 - Japan signs the document of surrender aboard the USS Missouri, ending World War II
- 1945 - Vietnam declares its independence and Nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh proclaims himself its first president.
- 1956 - Tennessee National Guardsmen halt rioters protesting the admission of 12 African-Americans to schools in Clinton.
- 1963 - Alabama Governor George Wallace calls state troopers to Tuskegee High School to prevent integration.
- 1975 - Joseph W. Hatcher of Tallahassee, Florida, becomes the state's first African-American supreme court justice since Reconstruction.
02 September Birthdays
- 1838 - Lydia Kamekeha Liliuokalani, last sovereign before annexation of Hawaii by the United States.
- 1850 - Eugene Field, poet and journalist.
- 1877 - Frederick Soddy, named an isotope and received 1921 Nobel prize for chemistry.
- 1901 - Adolph Rupp, basketball coach at the University of Kentucky who achieved a record 876 victories.
- 1948 - Christa McAuliffe, the first civilian passenger on a space mission. During that mission, she and the six other crew members on the space shuttle Challenger perished in an explosion shortly after launch.