September 17
Today is
Constitution Day and Citizenship Day in the United States, commemorating the adoption of the United States Constitution, and those who have become citizens of the United States of America.
1382 –
Louis the Great's daughter,
Mary, is crowned "king" of Hungary.
1630 – The city of
Boston, Massachusetts is founded.
1683 –
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek writes a letter to the Royal Society describing "
animalcules": the first known description of protozoa.
1716 –
Jean Thurel (
<--interesting read) enlists in the
Touraine Regiment at the age of 18, the first day of a military career that would span for over 90 years. Born in the reign of
Louis XIV and dying during that of
Napoleon I, Thurel lived in three different centuries.
1776 –
The Presidio of San Francisco is founded in
New Spain.
1778 – The
Treaty of Fort Pitt is signed. It is the first formal treaty between the United States and a Native American tribe (the
Lenape or Delaware Indians).
1787 – The
United States Constitution is signed in Philadelphia.
1814 –
Francis Scott Key finishes his poem "
Defence of Fort McHenry", later to be the lyrics of "
The Star-Spangled Banner".
1849 – American abolitionist
Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery.
1859 –
Joshua A. Norton declares himself "Norton I, Emperor of the United States."
1862 – American Civil War:
George B. McClellan halts the northward drive of
Robert E. Lee's Confederate Army in the single-day
Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in American military history (combined total of 22,717 dead, wounded, or missing).
1916 – World War I:
Manfred von Richthofen ("The Red Baron"), a flying ace of the German
Luftstreitkräfte, wins his first aerial combat near Cambrai, France.
1920 – The
National Football League is organized as the American Professional Football Association in Canton, Ohio.
1923 -
Hank Williams, Sr., regarded as one of the most important country music artists of all time, is born in Mount Olive, Alabama.
1928 – The
Okeechobee hurricane strikes southeastern Florida, killing more than 2,500 people. It is the third deadliest natural disaster in United States history, behind the
Galveston hurricane of 1900 and the
1906 San Francisco earthquake.
1931 - The first
long-playing record, a 33 1/3 rpm recording, was demonstrated at the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York by
RCA-Victor. The venture was doomed to fail however due to the high price of the record players, which started around $95 (about $1140 in today's dollars) and wasn't revived until 1948.
1944 – World War II: Allied Airborne troops parachute into the Netherlands as the "Market" half of
Operation Market Garden.
1961 – The world's first retractable-dome stadium, the
Civic Arena, opens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1969, Media on both sides of the Atlantic were running stories that said
Paul McCartney was dead. He was supposedly killed in a car accident in Scotland on November 9th, 1966 and that a double had been taking his place for public appearances. In fact, Paul and his girlfriend
Jane Asher were on vacation in Kenya at the time.
1976 – The first Space Shuttle,
Enterprise, is unveiled by NASA.
1983 –
Vanessa Williams becomes the first black Miss America.
1991 – The first version of the
Linux kernel (0.01) is released to the Internet.
Over 4 million copies of
Guns N' Roses' album, '
Use Your Illusion I' and '
Use Your Illusion II' were simultaneously released for retail sale, making it the largest ship-out in pop history in the US.
2001 – The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression.
2006 –
Fourpeaked Mountain in Alaska erupts, marking the first eruption for the long-dormant volcano in at least 10,000 years.
2011 –
Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City.
Births
879 – Charles the Simple; 1854 – David Dunbar Buick (yeah,
that Buick); 1859 – Billy the Kid; 1868 – James Alexander Calder (not the sculptor, there was another one); 1900 – J. Willard Marriott (yeah,
that Marriott); 1904 – Jerry Colonna♪ ♫; 1907 – Warren E. Burger (Chief Justice SCOTUS); 1923 – Hank Williams♪ ♫; 1926 – Bill Black
(Elvis Presley); 1927 – George Blanda; 1928 – Roddy McDowall; 1929 – Stirling Moss
; 1930 – David Huddleston, Edgar Mitchell; 1931 – Anne Bancroft; 1935 – Ken Kesey; 1938 – Paul Benedict (neighbor 'Bentley' on
The Jeffersons); 1939 – David Souter (Associate Justice SCOTUS); 1947 – Jeff MacNelly (created comic strip
Shoe); 1948 – John Ritter; 1953 – Rita Rudner; 1962 – Baz Luhrmann, 1962 – BeBe Winans♪ ♫; 1965 – Kyle Chandler (
Friday Night Lights, tv series), Yuji Naka (created
Sonic the Hedgehog); 1966 – Doug E. Fresh♪ ♫; 1967 – Michael Carbajal
; 1971 – Nate Berkus; 1975 – Jimmie Johnson
Deaths
1621 – Robert Bellarmine (namesake of Bellarmine University); 1858 – Dred Scott; 1868 –
Roman Nose (Cheyenne warrior); 1899 – Charles Alfred Pillsbury (yeah,
that Pillsbury); 1908 – Thomas Selfridge (first person to die in a powered airplane crash); 1972 – Akim Tamiroff; 1984 – Richard Basehart; 1985 – Laura Ashley; 1996 – Spiro Agnew (39th VPOTUS); 1997 – Red Skelton; 2014 – George Hamilton IV♪ ♫(not the tan one, this one's a country music singer)