John Carroll secured a charter establishing Georgetown Academy in Maryland, the first Catholic institution of higher learning in the newly formed United States.

The U.S. Constitution officially went into effect as the first Congress convened in New York City, though a quorum did not arrive for weeks.

Fletcher Christian led a mutiny against Captain William Bligh aboard HMS Bounty in the South Pacific, casting Bligh adrift in a small boat.

Parisian crowds stormed the Bastille fortress-prison, seizing gunpowder and freeing prisoners in the spark that ignited the French Revolution.

The morning after the storming of the Bastille, Louis XVI arrived in Paris to appease the revolutionary crowd, effectively acknowledging the collapse of royal absolutism.

In an all-night session, France's National Assembly voted to abolish feudal privileges, tithes, and seigneurial rights, dismantling the legal foundation of the old regime.

The French National Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, enshrining liberty, equality, and popular sovereignty.

President George Washington appointed Alexander Hamilton as the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, shaping the young nation's financial system.

Michael Faraday's contemporaries aside, this date instead marks William Herschel's earlier telescope work; astronomers note the autumnal equinox typically falls near September 22-23 each year.

The First US Congress approved twelve amendments to the Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification, ten of which became the Bill of Rights.

Thousands of Parisian women, enraged by bread shortages, marched to Versailles and forced King Louis XVI to return with them to Paris.

George Washington issued a national proclamation designating this day as a day of public thanksgiving, the first such presidential declaration in the United States.