Following Constantine the Great's order to build a church over the traditional site of Christ's crucifixion and burial, clergy consecrated the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and, according to tradition, exhibited fragments of the cross discovered by Helena, Constantine's mother. The event gave rise to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, observed by Eastern and Western churches alike.

After the bloody but indecisive Battle of Borodino, Napoleon pushed on to Moscow only to find the city abandoned by its governor and set ablaze by retreating Russians. He waited five weeks in the smoldering capital for peace terms that never arrived, a fatal delay that doomed his invasion as winter closed in.

McKinley was shot twice at the Pan-American Exposition on September 6 by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist angered by inequality and inspired by the assassination of Italy's king. Doctors could not locate one bullet, and gangrene set in around the wound. His death made Theodore Roosevelt, at 42, the youngest president in American history.

Frustrated by unilateral price cuts imposed by Western oil majors, five major oil-exporting nations formed OPEC to coordinate petroleum policy and defend their revenues. The organization, initially dismissed by Western observers, would go on to wield enormous influence over global oil prices, most dramatically during the 1973 oil embargo.

During Mir's extended operational life, cosmonauts routinely ventured outside the station to perform maintenance that kept the increasingly troubled complex functioning. These repairs, less glamorous than dramatic rescues, represented the unglamorous daily labor that let Mir remain crewed for over a decade despite fires, collisions, and equipment failures.