On this day (or two days later) in 1513, Spanish conquistador and explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, standing “silent, upon a peak in Darién,” on the Isthmus of Panama, became the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean.
| 1970: | | Hostilities came to an end during Black September, the brief but violent civil war between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Jordan. |
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| 1962: | | Sonny Liston became world heavyweight boxing champion with a first-round knockout of Floyd Patterson in Chicago. |
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| 1799: | | André Masséna, French nobleman and general under Napoleon, defeated Russian forces in the Second Battle of Zürich. |
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| 1777: | | Philadelphia, then the American capital, was occupied by British forces during the American Revolution. |
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| 1066: | | Tostig, earl of Northumbria, and Harald III, king of Norway, were killed in an attempt to depose Tostig's brother, King Harold II of England. |
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