On this day, September 6: The deaths of Sultan Suleiman II, Kurosawa and Pavarotti

September 6 has marked a series of turning points across exploration, imperial history, political life and war. In 1522, Spanish navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano completed the first voyage around the world, begun by Ferdinand Magellan in 1519 with five ships and 270 sailors. Elcano took command after Magellan was killed in the Philippines in 1521 and returned to Spain with one ship and 18 sailors.

The date also marks the death in 1566 of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman II the Magnificent. During his 46-year reign, the Ottoman Empire reached the height of its power and its greatest territorial expansion. He died during the siege of Szigetvár, on his third campaign toward Vienna.

In 1688, an Austrian army commanded by the Bavarian prince Maximilian Emanuel, aided by Serbian volunteers, overcame Ottoman resistance and entered Belgrade. The Ottomans retook the city in 1690. The chronology also records the birth of German writer and rationalist philosopher Moses Mendelssohn in 1729, and the birth in 1757 of French general and statesman the Marquis de Lafayette, later known as the “hero of two worlds.”

Other entries include the birth of American pacifist and social reformer Jane Addams in 1860, the accession of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands in 1898, and her abdication in favor of Princess Juliana on the same date in 1948. In 1901, anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot U.S. President William McKinley in Buffalo. McKinley died from his wounds a week later, and Theodore Roosevelt became president on September 14.

The list continues with the First World War battles on the Marne and the Drina, the 1940 abdication of Romanian King Carol II under Axis pressure, the 1965 India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, and the 1966 assassination of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd during a parliamentary debate in Cape Town.