September 2 in History

The Battle of Actium, fought at sea off the western coast of Greece in 31 BCE, ended the last great contest of Rome's civil wars. Octavian, the adopted heir of Julius Caesar, defeated the combined forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Within a year he was master of the Mediterranean world, and the sequence of events that followed turned the Roman Republic into a monarchy in all but name.

The Great Fire of London was a catastrophic blaze that tore through the medieval heart of England's capital in 1666, destroying a large part of the walled City and forcing a rebuilding that reshaped how the city looked and how it managed the risk of fire. It is remembered as one of the most destructive urban disasters in English history, and also for the remarkably low number of recorded deaths, though historians suspect the true toll was undercounted.