September 20
1519 - Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan left Spain to find a route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia. Magellan was killed during the trip, but one of his ships eventually made the journey.
1870 - The Papal States came under the control of Italian troops, leading to the unification of Italy.
1881 - Chester A. Arthur became the 21st president of the U.S. President James A. Garfield had died the day before.
1884 - The Equal Rights Party was formed in San Francisco, CA.
1921 - KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA, started a daily radio newscast. It was one of the first in the U.S.
1946 - The first Cannes Film Festival premiered. The original premier was delayed in 1939 due to World War II.
1946 - WNBT-TV in New York became the first station to promote a motion picture. Scenes from "The Jolson Story" were shown.
1953 - The TV show "Letter to Loretta" premiered. The name was changed to "The Loretta Young Show" on February 14, 1954.
1953 - Jimmy Stewart debuted on the radio western "The Six Shooter" on NBC.
1955 - "You'll Never Be Rich" premiered on CBS-TV. The name was changed less than two months later to "The Phil Silvers Show."
1962 - James Meredith, a black student, was blocked from enrolling at the University of Mississippi by Governor Ross R. Barnett. Meredith was later admitted.
1963 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy proposed a joint U.S.-Soviet expedition to the moon in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
1967 - The ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) was launched. It went out of service on November 27, 2008.
1977 - The first of the "boat people" arrived in San Francisco from Southeast Asia under a new U.S. resettlement program.
1982 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that the U.S., France, and Italy were going to send peacekeeping troops back to Beirut.
1984 - "The Cosby Show" premiered on NBC-TV.
1988 - The United Nations opened it 43rd General Assembly.
1989 - F.W. de Klerk was sworn in as president of South Africa.
1991 - U.N. weapons inspectors left for Iraq in a renewed search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
1992 - French voters approved the Maastricht Treaty.
1995 - AT&T announced that it would be splitting into three companies. The three companies were AT&T, Lucent Technologies, and NCR Corp.
1995 - The U.S. House of Representatives voted to drop the national speed limit. This allowed the states to decide their own speed limits.
2013 - Apple released the iPhone 5s.
