Today in History....September 20

On this day in …

* 1519, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan and his crew set out from Spain on five ships on a voyage to find a western passage to the Spice Islands in Indonesia. (Magellan was killed en route, but one of his ships eventually circled the world.)

* 1857, Delhi, India, fell to British forces

* 1870, Italian troops took control of the Papal States, leading to the unification of Italy

* 1881, Chester A. Arthur was sworn in as the 21st president of the United States, succeeding the assassinated James A. Garfield

* 1984, a suicide car bomber, a practitioner of that "religion of peace", attacked the U.S. Embassy annex in north Beirut, killing a dozen people

* 1997, President Bill Clinton's attorneys insisted no laws were broken as it was disclosed that Attorney General Janet Reno had taken a first step toward seeking a special prosecutor to investigate the president's 1996 fund-raising activities

* 2002, President Bush appealed to a reluctant Russian President Vladimir Putin to back a new U.N. resolution that would threaten Iraq with war if it did not disarm; Russian officials indicated there might be room for compromise


* 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez repeatedly referred to President Bush as "the devil" during a speech to the United Nations.
ALSO: The African Union announced it would extend the mandate of a peacekeeping force in Darfur