This Week in History

September 23

 

1909: The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantôme de l’Opéra), a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, was first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois.

1939: Psychologist Sigmund Freud died in London.
2010: A group of chefs at Harrah’s Fulton Square in New Orleans set a world record when they made a 2,469-pound macaroni and cheese as a fundraiser for New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, The Magnolia School, and Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans.
2018: Mud volcano, the Otman-Bozdag, erupts 300m (980ft) high, near Baku, Azerbaijan.
2019: US police officer fired after arresting two six-year-olds at a school on charges of misdemeanour battery in Florida.

September 24

 

1789: The U.S. Congress passed the Judiciary Act which created the office of the U.S. Attorney General and the federal judiciary system, and ordered the composition of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1890: The Mormon church officially renounced polygamy.

1906: President Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed Devils Tower in Wyoming as the nation’s first national monument.

1935: The first outdoor rodeo under electric lights was held in Columbia, Miss.

1948: Honda Motor Company was founded in Tokyo.

1957: President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered 101st Airborne Division troops to Little Rock, Ark., to enforce desegregation.
1960: USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was launched at Newport News, Va.
1968: The CBS news program 60 Minutes debuted.
1979: CompuServe, based in Columbus, Ohio, became the first consumer internet service provider, offering the first public email service.
 

 

 

September 25

 

1066: England’s King Harold Godwinson defeated Viking invaders in the Battle of Stamford Bridge, signaling the beginning of the end of the Viking Age.

1237: England and Scotland signed the Treaty of York, establishing their common border still in use today.

1513: Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached what would become known as the Pacific Ocean.

1690: The first newspaper in the Americas, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, was published for the first and only time, in Boston, Mass.

1890: Congress established Sequoia National Park in California.

1911: Ground was broken for Fenway Park in Boston, Mass.
1912: Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism was founded in New York City, with a $2 million bequest from Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911).
1929: Aviation pioneer Jimmy Doolittle performed the first “blind flight” from Mitchel Field near Garden City, N.Y., proving that full instrument flying from takeoff to landing is possible.
1956: The first transatlantic telephone cable began operating between Newfoundland and Scotland.
1974: The first ulnar collateral ligament replacement surgery was performed, on Major League Baseball player Tommy John. (The now-common procedure is called the Tommy John surgery)

2019: Australia’s Capital Territory becomes the 1st state in Australia to legalize recreational marijuana.

 

September 26

 

1580: Sir Francis Drake returned to London after circumnavigating of the Earth.

1789: Thomas Jefferson was appointed the first United States Secretary of State, and John Jay was appointed the first Chief Justice of the United States.

1820: Frontiersman and U.S. folk hero Daniel Boone died at Marthasville, Mo. (His remains were moved to Frankfort, Ky., in 1845.)

1872 :The first Shriners Temple (called Mecca) was established in New York City.

1914: The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was established. B 1933: Irish-American gangster George “Machine Gun Kelly” Barnes was captured by FBI agents in Memphis, Tenn. When he surrendered he shouted, “Don’t shoot, G-Men!”, which became a nickname for FBI agents. Ten convicts escaped from Indiana State Prison with guns smuggled into the prison by bank robber John Dillinger.

1950: United Nations troops recaptured Seoul, South Korea, from North Korean forces.

1960: The first televised presidential debate, between candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, took place in Chicago. Cuban dictator Fidel Castro announced his support for the U.S.S.R.

1971: The 84-acre micro-nation known as Freetown Christiania was founded in Copehagen Denmark, as an anarchist commune. The self-proclaimed autonomous neighborhood has about 850 residents.
1973: Concorde, the supersonic passenger jet, made its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time.

1984: The United Kingdom agreed to return control of Hong Kong to China when its lease expired in 1999.

2019: US Income inequality widest for over 50 years, worst in California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana and New York, according to new census figures.

September 27

 

1066: William the Conqueror and his army set sail from the mouth of the Somme River in France, beginning the Norman Conquest of England.

1540: The Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) received its charter from Pope Paul III.

1590: Pope Urban VII died 13 days after being elected as the Pope, making his reign the shortest papacy in history.

1777: Lancaster, Pa., became the capital of the United States for one day, after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia.

1821: Mexico gained its independence from Spain.
1822: Jean-François Champollion announced that he had deciphered the Rosetta stone, providing the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.
1825: The Stockton and Darlington Railway—the world’s first public railway to use steam locomotives—began operating in northeast England.
1854: The U.S. steamship SS Arctic collided with the SS Vesta off the coast of Newfoundland and sank with 300 people on board, marking the first great shipping disaster in the Atlantic Ocean.
1903: The Wreck of the Old 97, a train crash made famous by the song of the same name, occurred when the fast mail train derailed while crossing a trestle near Danville, Va.
1905: The German physics journal Annalen der Physik received Albert Einstein’s paper, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?”, introducing the equation E=mc².

1937: The Balinese tiger, a distinct subspecies of tiger found only on the island of Bali in Indonesia, was declared extinct.
1941: The SS Patrick Henry was launched in Baltimore, Md., becoming the first of more than 2,700 Liberty ships.
1954: The Tonight Show Starring Steve Allen debuted on NBC-TV.
1968: The stage musical Hair opened at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London. (It played 1,998 performances until being forced to close by the roof collapsing in July 1973.)
1989: Lincoln County officials and business leaders buried a time capsule beneath a large boulder on the courthouse lawn alongside California Avenue in Libby, Mont., with a plaque indicating it should be opened on Sept. 27, 2089.

1998: The internet search engine Google went online for the first time.
2017:  Researchers confirm existence of giant tree rat “Vika” in the Solomon Islands that can crack open coconuts.
2018: Half of all orca could die through pollution involving polychlorinated biphenyls in the ocean, according to study published in “Science”.

 

September 28

 

1066: William the Bastard (as he was known at the time) invaded England and began the Norman conquest of England.

1787: Congress submitted the new U.S. Constitution for ratification the state legislatures.

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1867: The United States took control of Midway Island, at the far northwestern end of the Hawaiian archipelago.

1885: Riots broke out in Montreal, Quebec, to protest against compulsory smallpox vaccination.

1889: The first General Conference on Weights and Measures, meeting in Sèvres, France, defined the length of a meter as the distance between two lines on a standard bar of an alloy of platinum with 10 percent iridium, measured at the melting point of ice.

1892: The first nighttime football game took place in Wyoming Valley, Pennsylvania, between Wyoming Seminary and Mansfield State Normal. (The lighting system turned out to be inadequate. The game lasted only 20 minutes, with only 10 plays. Both sides agreed to end at halftime with a 0-0 tie after several players ran into light poles.)

1928: The Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Dangerous Drugs Act outlawing cannabis. Scottish biologist Sir Alexander Fleming observed a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory, discovering what would become known as penicillin.

1961: A military coup in Damascus, Syria ended the United Arab Republic, the union between Egypt and Syria.
1971: The Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 banning the medicinal use of cannabis.
1973: The ITT Building in New York City was bombed in protest of ITT’s alleged involvement in the Sept. 11, 1973, coup d’état in Chile.
2015: NASA scientists announce the discovery of flowing water on Mars.
2018: Up to 50 million Facebook accounts hacked due to a code weakness.

 

September 29

 

1789: The United States Department of War established the country’s first regular army with a strength of several hundred men. The First U.S. Congress adjourned in New York City.

1907: The cornerstone for the Washington National Cathedral was laid in the U.S. capital.

1913: Virtuoso cornet player Ernst A. Couturier received a patent for his “quick-change A-Bb” trumpet design. B

1938: Nazi Germany was given permission by France, Italy, and Great Britain to seize the territory of Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia. The meeting took place in Munich, and leaders from neither the Soviet Union nor Czechoslovakia attended.

1951: A college football game between Duke and the University of Pittsburgh became the first live sporting event seen coast-to-coast in the United States, televised on NBC.

1966: Chevrolet introduced the Camaro, its answer to the hugely successful Ford Mustang. (Chevrolet originally named the new model the Panther.)

1975: WGPR in Detroit, Mich., became the world’s first black-owned-and-operated television station.
1979: Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit Ireland.
1990: Construction of the Washington National Cathedral was completed.
2002: A record 2 pound 13 ounce southern kingfish was caught near Sandbridge, Va.
2007: Calder Hall, the world’s first commercial nuclear power plant, in Cumbria, England, was demolished in a controlled explosion.
2008: The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 777.68 points, the largest single-day point loss in history.
2005: Chicago White Sox clinch their first division title since 2000 and become just the 10th team in the history of baseball to be in first place on every day of the season.