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Addie Viola Smith (1893–1975) was an American attorney who served as the U.S. trade commissioner to Shanghai from 1928 to 1939, the first female Foreign Service officer in the U.S. Foreign Service to work under the Commerce Department, and the first woman to serve as trade commissioner. A native of Stockton, California, Smith moved to Washington, D.C., in 1917. While working for the United States Department of Labor, she attended the Washington College of Law part-time, earning a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1920. She joined the Foreign Service in October that year. Posted to Beijing as a clerk, she was promoted to assistant trade commissioner in Shanghai in 1922, and to trade commissioner in 1928. She later held roles in the U.S. government, world organizations, and the United Nations. Smith met her life partner, Eleanor Mary Hinder, in 1926; they moved to Hinder's native Australia in 1957, where stone seats are dedicated to them at the E. G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens. (Full article...)

Artur Phleps (29 November 1881 – 21 September 1944) was an Austro-Hungarian, Romanian and Nazi officer who was an SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS in the Waffen-SS during World War II. He was an Austro-Hungarian Army officer before and during World War I. During the interwar period, he joined the Romanian Army and became an adviser to King Carol. After he spoke out against the government, he was made to leave the army. In 1941 he joined the Waffen-SS. He saw action on the Eastern Front before raising two Waffen-SS mountain divisions and one corps in occupied Yugoslavia. Units under his command committed many crimes against the civilian population of the Independent State of Croatia. This became controversial when his onetime translator, Kurt Waldheim, successfully ran for the Austrian presidency in the 1980s. In addition to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, Phleps was awarded the German Cross in Gold, and, posthumously, was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross. (Full article...)

Alberto Fujimori in 1991

• At least 37 people are killed and more than 3,200 others injured after electronic devices used by Hezbollah members explode in Lebanon and Syria.
• Amid widespread protests, Mexico ratifies constitutional changes that will see the federal judiciary chosen by popular vote.
• Former president of Peru Alberto Fujimori (pictured) dies at the age of 86.
• Flooding following a dam collapse in Borno State, Nigeria, leaves at least 30 people dead.

September 20

Great Buddha of Kamakura

• 1498 – A tsunami caused by the Meiō earthquake washed away the building housing the statue of the Great Buddha (pictured) at Kōtoku-in in Kamakura, Japan; the statue has since stood in the open air.
• 1792 – The French Army achieved its first major victory of the War of the First Coalition at the Battle of Valmy.
• 1967 – L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, announced the story of Xenu in a taped lecture sent to all Scientologists.
• 1997 – Hurricane Erika, the strongest and longest-lasting hurricane of the 1997 Atlantic hurricane season, dissipated after causing flooding and power outages throughout Puerto Rico.