On this date in history:

In 1666, the Great Fire of London began. (It destroyed 13,000 houses in four days).

In 1935, a hurricane hit the Florida Keys, killing more than 350 people.

In 1945, Japan signed an unconditional surrender aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay, formally ending World War II.

In 1992, earthquake-spawned tidal waves killed more than 100 people in Pacific coast villages in Nicaragua.

In 1998, a Swissair jetliner en route from New York to Geneva, Switzerland, crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. All 229 people aboard were killed.

In 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush accepted the GOP nomination for re-election, promising to build a safer world and a more hopeful America.

In 2010, BP warned the U.S. Congress the company might be unable to pay compensation for its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill if barred from new offshore drilling permits.

In 2011, the U.S. State Department warned American travelers the security threat in Yemen was extremely high and urged those already there to leave.

In 2012, several hundred people upset with corporate America marched in Charlotte, N.C., two days before the Democratic National Convention, chanting: Banks got bailed out. We got sold out.

In 2013, American Diana Nyad, 64, completed a 53-hour swim from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Fla., becoming the first swimmer to make the crossing without a shark cage.

In 2014,a judge in North Carolina ordered the release of Henry Lee McCollum, 50, and Leon Brown, 46, half-brothers who were declared innocent after spending decades in prison for their convictions in the murder of an 11-year-old girl. DNA evidence implicated another suspect, a man who was imprisoned in a different case.

Copyright 2015 by United Press International