On September 12

An explosion involving illegally stored mining detonators in Petlawad, India, killed 104 people and injured more than 150 others.

A Metrolink train collided head-on with a freight train in Los Angeles, California, resulting in 25 deaths and 135 injuries; the Metrolink driver had passed through a red signal, having likely been distracted by text messaging.

The first public release of Steam, a distribution service for computer games, was made available for download.

Typhoon Maemi, the strongest recorded typhoon to strike South Korea, made landfall near Busan.

Hurricane Ismael formed off the southwest coast of Mexico; it went on to kill over a hundred people in the country.

Aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour, American Mae Jemison became the first Black woman to travel to space.

The clandestine Boricua Popular Army staged a bank robbery in West Hartford, Connecticut, making off with $7 million in the largest cash theft in U.S. history at the time.

South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko died after being beaten in police custody in Port Elizabeth.

In a speech at Rice Stadium in Houston, U.S. president John F. Kennedy reiterated an aspiration to land a man on the Moon before 1970 (video featured).

Three boys in Flatwoods, West Virginia, U.S., reported seeing a ten-foot-tall (3 m) monster in the woods while investigating a UFO.

The People's Liberation Army launched the Liaoshen campaign, the first of the three major military campaigns during the late stage of the Chinese Civil War.

World War II: The Imperial Japanese Army began the Battle of Edson's Ridge in an effort to retake Henderson Field on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands from the Allies.

RMS Laconia was sunk by a U-boat off the coast of West Africa, which then attempted to rescue the passengers as it was acting under the old prize rules.

Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for a traffic light in Bloomsbury, London.

The Okeechobee hurricane first struck the island of Guadeloupe; eventually it reached the United States and caused over 4,000 deaths overall.

Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire and popularly known as the "Symphony of a Thousand", was first performed in Munich (1916 performers pictured).

The Scottish Cup match between Arbroath and Bon Accord ended 36–0, which is still a world record for an unrigged professional association football match.

The English poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning (both pictured) married in secret to avoid their disapproving families before moving to Italy.

Reconquista: Castilian forces captured Gibraltar from the Emirate of Granada.

Yax Nuun Ahiin I took the throne as the ruler (ajaw) of the Mayan city of Tikal.