On this date in history:

In 1715, France's King Louis XIV died after ruling the country for 72 years, the longest reign for a French monarch.

In 1807, Aaron Burr, vice president of the United States under Thomas Jefferson, was acquitted of treason charges growing out of an alleged plot to set up an independent empire in the country's south and west.

In 1914, the last known passenger pigeon died at the Cincinnati Zoo.

In 1923, an earthquake struck Yokohama, Japan, killing an estimated 143,000 people.

In 1939, after Germany invaded Poland, Great Britain and France served an ultimatum on Adolf Hitler but it was ignored.

In 1972, American Bobby Fischer defeated Russian Boris Spassky for the world chess championship.

In 1983, a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 -- Flight 007 -- strayed into Soviet airspace and was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter. All 269 people on the airliner died.

In 1985, scientists found the wreck of the British luxury liner Titanic, sunk by an iceberg in 1912, in the Atlantic Ocean south of Newfoundland.

In 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush established diplomatic relations with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

In 2006, a fiery airport crash of a Russian-made Tupolev 154 airliner in Mashland, Iran, left 29 people dead, but 148 passengers survived.

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav slammed into Louisiana southwest of New Orleans as a Category 2 storm, forcing the evacuation of about 2 million people. New Orleans' levee system, strengthened since 2005's Hurricane Katrina devastated the area, held against a 12-foot storm surge.

In 2010, Israel would be willing to consider dividing Jerusalem if it meant peace with the Palestinians, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in an interview.

In 2011, embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, believed to be holed up in a desert stronghold after his forces were beaten in Tripoli, said in a television interview he was prepared for a long drawn-out war and proclaimed, Let Libya burn. (He was killed seven weeks later.)

In 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said there was new evidence that the Syrian government used sarin gas in a chemical weapons attack that killed hundreds of people in August.

Copyright 2014 by United Press International