This day in history.....

[Mare]

9-02-08


1666: The Great Fire of London starts in a baker's shop. The fire devastates the city, destroying many buildings, including Saint Paul's Cathedral and the Guildhall.

1864: Union armies led by General William Tecumseh Sherman occupy Atlanta, Georgia. They will burn much of the city before beginning their march to the Atlantic Ocean.


1945: On board the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japanese officials make their formal surrender to the United States, ending the conflict between the two countries in World War II.


1945: Viet Minh forces, led by Ho Chi Minh, declare the independence of Vietnam from France, beginning an eight-year colonial war that will result in a partitioned country.


1969: Ho Chi Minh, leader of North Vietnam and architect of Vietnamese independence, dies at the age of 79.


31 BC: The forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra are decisively defeated near Actium by the Roman army of Octavian (later known as Augustus), allowing Octavian to consolidate his rule of the Roman empire.

 

[Mare]

9-05-08


1774: Delegates from all of the 13 American colonies except Georgia meet as the First Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


1877: Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse is killed by a U.S. soldier while in custody, allegedly after he resists his confinement.


1905: Russia and Japan sign the Treaty of Portsmouth in New Hampshire, ending the Russo-Japanese War. The treaty gives the victorious Japanese a territorial stake on the Asian mainland.


1916: D. W. Griffith's epic motion picture Intolerance opens in New York City.


1957: Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road, based on Kerouac's friendship with Neal Cassidy, is published. The novel becomes one of the best known works of the Beat Generation.


1972: At the Summer Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, Palestinian terrorists murder 11 members of the Israeli Olympic delegation in a hostage-taking attempt that ends in a firefight with German police.

 

[Mare]

9-06-08


1837: Already one of the few U.S. colleges to admit African Americans, the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio becomes the first U.S. college to admit women to its regular college program.

1899: U.S. secretary of state John Hay circulates a letter arguing for an Open Door policy with regard to trade with China, rather than one that would carve up China into European spheres of influence.


1901: Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots U.S. president William McKinley at the Pan-American exposition in Buffalo, New York. McKinley dies eight days later.


1926: The Kuomintang Chinese nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek reach Hankou at the confluence of the Han and the Yangtze rivers; Hankou becomes the Kuomintang capital.


1941: The Nazi government requires that all Jews in German-occupied territories wear the yellow star of David for identification.


1998: Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, who often adapted Western literary works and forms to Japanese subjects, dies at the age of 88.

 

[Mare]

9-9-08


1850: Under the Compromise of 1850, California enters the United States as a free state, in which slavery is illegal. California is the 31st state in the Union.


1914: The First Battle of the Marne ends, in which German troops in World War I are decisively halted in their drive toward Paris, France.


1968: Amateur Arthur Ashe wins the U.S. Open tennis tournament in the first year it is open to both professionals and amateurs.


1971: Inmates at the state prison in Attica, New York, take 30 guards hostage in a revolt over prison conditions. Forty-three prisoners and guards will die in the revolt, which is violently suppressed four days later.


1976: Mao Zedong, the leader of the People's Republic of China since its founding in 1949, dies of Parkinson's disease at the age of 82.


1997: As part of the peace process in Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist political party associated with the Irish Republican Army, formally renounces violence.

 

[Mare]

9-10-08


1608: The colony of Jamestown in Virginia, after a troubled first year, elects John Smith as its president.


1846: American inventor Elias Howe patents his sewing machine.


1935: Two days after being wounded by an assassin, U.S. senator Huey Long, the dominant political figure in Louisiana during the Depression, dies in Baton Rouge.


1963: Twenty African American schoolchildren enter public high schools in Birmingham, Mobile, and Tuskegee, Alabama, after Governor George Wallace yields to federal pressure to desegregate.


1981: The mural Guernica (1937), painted by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso in reaction to the German bombing of the town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, returns to Spain for the first time.

1988: German tennis player Steffi Graf completes the sport's first Grand Slam since 1970 by winning her fourth major title of the year, the U.S. Open.

 

[Mare]

9-12-08


1919: Poet and Italian nationalist Gabriele D'Annunzio, leading an unofficial army, captures the city of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia), whose possession has been disputed by Italy and Yugoslavia.


1935: American multimillionaire Howard Hughes sets the world's landplane record of 567.23 kph (352.46 mph) in an airplane of his own design.


1940: Four French teenagers, following their dog into an underground cavern near Lascaux, France, discover 17,000-year old cave paintings made by Stone Age artists.

1953: Future U.S. president John F. Kennedy marries Jacqueline Lee Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island.


1974: Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I, who has ruled the country since 1930, is deposed by the Ethiopian military.


1992: U.S. astronaut and physician Mae Jemison, a payload specialist on the space shuttle Endeavor, becomes the first African American woman in space.



The day after 911

 

[Mare]

9-14-08


1741: Composer George Frideric Handel completes his Messiah after 23 consecutive days of work.


1752: Britain shifts from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, which has been in use through much of Europe since 1582. The change requires the calendar to make a one-time leap from September 2 to September 14.


1814: Inspired by the defense of Baltimore's Fort McHenry during a British attack in the War of 1812, lawyer Francis Scott Key writes the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner."


1939: After many years of experimentation, Russian-born aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky flies his first successful helicopter, the VS-300.


1982: Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly American film actor Grace Kelly, dies of injuries she received in an automobile accident the previous day.

 

[Mare]

9-19-08


1846: English poets Elizabeth Barrett and Richard Browning elope to Italy after marrying, against Barrett's father's wishes, in England.


1914: The Reims Cathedral in France, built in the 13th century, is severely damaged by German shells during a World War I bombardment.


1928: Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse makes his first appearance in the animated short Plane Crazy. Later that year, he will star in Steamboat Willie, the first animated film with synchronized sound.


1934: Carpenter Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the kidnapping and murder two years before of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., the baby son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh.


1959: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, on a tour of the United States, denounces the security restrictions that prevent him from visiting California's Disneyland.


1994: Twenty thousand U.S. troops land in Haiti to oversee the return to power of elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

 

[Professur]

9-19-08


1846: English poets Elizabeth Barrett and Richard Browning elope to Italy after marrying, against Barrett's father's wishes, in England.

The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction of the planet Earth.

 

[Mare]

9-21-08


1897: In response to a child's letter, the New York Sun publishes an editorial that begins, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."


1904: Chief Joseph, the Nez Perce Native American chief who led his people on a 1,600 km (1,000 mi) journey to escape the U.S. Army, dies on the Colville Reservation in Washington at about the age of 64.


1937: The Hobbit, Oxford University professor J. R. R. Tolkien's tale of Middle Earth, is published.


1976: In an assassination widely credited to the secret police of Chile, Chilean opposition leader Orlando Letelier and his American secretary are killed by a car bomb in Washington, D.C.


1989: The U.S. Senate confirms President George Bush's appointment of General Colin Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

 

[Mare]

1642: Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the oldest college in the United States, holds its first commencement exercises.

1780: British agent John André is captured while carrying documents that reveal the treason of American general Benedict Arnold, who has agreed to hand over the American fort at West Point to the British.


1846: German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle discovers the eight planet, Neptune, on the basis of French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier's calculations of its position.


1912: After leaving the Biograph company to start his own film studio, director Mack Sennett releases the first Keystone comedy short, starring Mabel Normand, Ford Sterling, and Fred Mace.


1939: Sigmund Freud, the Austrian founder of psychoanalysis and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, dies in London at the age of 83, having fled the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938.


1952: U.S. senator Richard Nixon, a candidate for vice president, answers charges that he used an improper expense fund in the nationally televised "Checkers" speech, in which he mentions his dog, Checkers.

 

[Mare]

8-24-08


1869: In the financial crisis known as Black Friday, American speculators James Fisk and Jay Gould attempt to corner the U.S. market in gold, causing the stock and commodity exchanges to fluctuate wildly.


1896: In one of his final speeches before his death two years later, former British prime minister William Ewart Gladstone urges Britain to intervene in the massacre of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire.


1957: Playing their last game at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field before moving to Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Dodgers defeat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 2-0.

1969: The trial of the Chicago Eight (later the Chicago Seven), anti-Vietnam War activists charged with inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, begins.

1988: American athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee wins the gold medal in the heptathalon at the Olympic Games in Seoul, Korea, setting a new world record of 7,291 points in the event.


1991: Theodor Seuss Geisel, writer of children's books under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, dies in La Jolla, California, at the age of 87.

 

[Mare]

9-25-08


1513: The members of a Spanish expedition under Vasco Núñez de Balboa cross the Panamanian isthmus, becoming the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean.


1690: Publick Occurrences, Both Forreign and Domestick, the first newspaper in the American colonies, publishes its only issue before being suppressed by the government.


1789: Led by James Madison, the U.S. Congress approves 12 amendments to the Constitutition. Ten of these amendments, which will be ratified by the states in 1791, are known as the Bill of Rights.


1957: After prolonged resistance by local leaders, nine African American students enter Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, under the protection of the National Guard.


1965: Satchel Paige becomes the oldest pitcher in major league baseball history when he throws three scoreless innings for the Kansas City Athletics at the age of 59.

 

[Mare]

9-26-08


1580: The British ship the Golden Hind, commanded by Sir Francis Drake, returns from its around-the-world journey bearing a cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasure.


1789: U.S. president George Washington appoints John Jay the nation's first chief justice of the Supreme Court, and Thomas Jefferson its first Secretary of State.


1907: New Zealand, formerly a British colony, becomes a dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations.


1957: West Side Story, the stage musical by Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins with songs by Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein, makes its Broadway debut.


1960: In Chicago, Illinois, Democratic senator John F. Kennedy and Republican vice president Richard Nixon stage the first televised debate between U.S. presidential candidates.

 

[Mare]

10/07/08


1571: The Battle of Lepanto, the first major victory of the Christians against the Ottoman Empire, is fought.


1765: Delegates from nine American colonies meet in New York City to respond to the Stamp Act. In the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the Stamp Act Congress resolves to boycott goods subject to the tax.


1950: Under General Douglas MacArthur, the first American tank crew crosses the 38th parallel and invades North Korea.

 

[Mare]

10-14-08


1066: Harold II Godwinson, last Anglo-Saxon king of England, falls in the Battle of Hastings against William I's Norman forces at Hastings, Sussex, England.


1912: Theodore Roosevelt, the presidential candidate for the Progressive Party, is shot at close range by a would-be assassinator.


1947: American pilot Chuck Yeager flies faster than the speed of sound in the experimental X-1 aircraft built by the Bell Aircraft Company.


1964: American clergyman Martin Luther King, Jr., wins the Nobel Peace Prize.


1968: Apollo 7 astronauts give a tour of the inside of the spacecraft and show views through the windows in the first live telecast from space.


1979: Over 100,000 supporters march on Washington, D.C., in the first national gay rights march.

2003: On the brink of their first World Series since 1945, the Chicago Cubs blow a 3-0 eighth-inning lead after a fan interferes with a catchable fly ball.

 

[Mare]

10-19-08


1453: The port of Bordeaux, France, finally surrenders to the forces of King Charles VII of France; the Hundred Years' War ends this same year.


1781: The Siege of Yorktown—the last major battle of the Revolutionary War—ends as General Charles Cornwallis surrenders to American and French forces at Yorktown, Virginia.


1935: The League of Nations imposes economic sanctions against fascist Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia.


1960: The U.S. Treasury Department declared a trade embargo, halting commerce with communist Cuba, in an attempt to oust revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.

 

[Mare]

10-20-08


1818: Britain and the United States sign a diplomatic convention establishing a boundary between the United States and British Canada along the 49th parallel.


1960: In Providence, Rhode Island, the first fully automated post office system goes into service, electronically sorting and canceling 18,000 pieces of mail per hour.


1973: President Richard Nixon orders Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox over access to Watergate tapes; Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resign.

 

[Mare]

10-23-08


1864: The Battle of Westport is fought in Kansas City, Missouri.


1906: Woman suffragists demonstrate in the outer lobby of the British House of Commons. Ten of the demonstrators are charged the following day and sent to prison.


1924: The first radio network broadcast to the Pacific Coast allows listeners in California, Oregon, and Washington to hear U.S. President Calvin Coolidge dedicate the Chamber of Commerce building in Washington, D.C.


1956: In Budapest, Hungarian students and workers demonstrate against Soviet domination and Communist rule.

 

[Mare]

10-24-08


1861: Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line.


1901: Anna Edson Taylor goes over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel, initiating a stunt tradition.


1934: Mohandas Gandhi resigns as leader of the Indian nationalist Congress Party, disillusioned by its use of civil disobedience as a political expedient rather than a fundamental principle.


1945: The United Nations (UN) formally comes into existence.