Associated Press

On Sept.28,1781, American forces in the Revolutionary War, backed by a French fleet, began their successful siege of Yorktown, Virginia.

In 1928, Scottish medical researcher Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin.

In 1941, Ted Williams became the most recent American League baseball player to hit over .400 for a season, batting .406 for the Boston Red Sox.

In 1962, a federal appeals court found Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett in civil contempt for blocking the admission of James Meredith, a Black student, to the University of Mississippi.

In 2000, capping a 12-year battle, the U.S. government approved use of the abortion pill RU-486.

In 2020, the worldwide death toll from the coronavirus pandemic reached 1 million, according to a count by Johns Hopkins University.