EVENTS
- 1776 – The Continental Congress adopts a resolution severing ties with Great Britain.
- 1777 – Vermont is first American state to vote to abolish slavery.
- 1788 – Congress announced the United States Constitution had been ratified by the required nine states and that a committee had been appointed to make preparations for the new American government.
- 1843 – Alligator Falls Out of the Sky in Charleston, South Carolina during a thunderstorm. It is believed that the strange incident happened when a waterspout carried an alligator from a body of water and dropped in on the city.
- 1881 – President James A. Garfield was shot and mortally wounded as he entered a railway station in Washington, D.C. He died on September 19th.
- 1900 – The Zeppelin takes off for the first time. The rigid aircraft named after Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, the inventor of the dirigible and founder of the Zeppelin Airship Construction Company, made its first flight over Lake Constance in Germany. Unlike blimps or balloons, Zeppelins are built by stretching material over a rigid framework, usually made of metal. Zeppelins can be steered and they were used by the German Air Force to conduct aerial attacks during the First World War.
- 1917 – A race riot occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, resulting in an estimated 75 African Americans killed and hundreds injured. To protest the violence against blacks, W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson later led a silent march down Fifth Avenue in New York.
- 1937 – Amelia Earhart’s plane disappears while attempting to make the first round-the-world flight at the equator.
- 1962 – The first Wal-Mart store officially opens for business.
- 1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race in public accommodations, publicly owned or operated facilities, employment and union membership and in voter registration. The Act allowed for cutoff of Federal funds in places where discrimination remained.
- 2001 – World’s First Self-Contained Artificial Heart Transplant. 59-year old American Robert L. Tools became the first person to receive the a self-contained artificial heart transplant called the AbioCor at the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky. The AbioCor is an artificial heart that is not connected to wires or an external pump.
- 2002 – American businessman, Steve Fossett completes the first solo around-the-world Balloon Flight. This was Fossett’s 6th attempt to circumnavigate the world. It took him 13 days in a balloon called Spirit of Freedom to cover 20,000 miles.
BIRTHDAYS
- 1489 – Thomas Cranmer (English Archbishop of Canterbury)
- 1877 – Hermann Hesse (German writer, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1908 – Thurgood Marshall (First African-American US Supreme Court Justice)
- 1925 – Medgar Evers (American civil rights activist)
- 1925 – Patrice Lumumba (Congolese politician, 1st Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)
- 1937 – Richard Petty (NASCAR race driver)
- 1946 – Ron Silver (Actor)
- 1964 – Jose Canseco (Baseball Player)
- 1985 – Ashley Tisdale (Actress)
- 1986 – Lindsay Lohan (Actress)
DEATHS
- 1566 – Nostradamus (French astrologer)
- 1778 – Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Swiss philosopher, polymath)
- 1914 – Joseph Chamberlain (British politician)
- 1961 – Ernest Hemingway (American writer, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1977 – Vladimir Nabokov (Russian/American author)