September 9

337 – Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans succeed their father Constantine I as co-emperors. The Roman Empire is divided between the three.

1493 – Christopher Columbus, with 17 ships and 1,200 men, sails on a second voyage from Cadiz to the New World.

1776 – The Continental Congress officially names its union of states the United States.

1791 – Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington.

1850 –The Compromise of 1850 transfers a 1/3rd of Texas’s claimed territory to federal control in return for the U.S. government assuming $10 million of Texas’s pre-annexation debt.
California is admitted as the 31st state.

1863 – Union forces occupy Chattanooga, Tennessee during the Civil War.

1892 – Using the 36 inch refractor telescope at the University of California’s Lick Observatory east of San Jose, California, American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard, discovers the 3rd closest and 5th found moon of Jupiter; named Amalthea in 1976.

1940 – At Dartmouth College, George Robert Stibitz, a mathematician with Bell Telephone laboratories, demonstrates the first remote operation of a digital computer.

1942 –Launching a Yokosuka E14Y float plane from the Japanese submarine I-25, pilots Nobuo Fujita and Okuda Shoji execute the 1st and only air attack of World War II on the contiguous U.S. mainland, dropping incendiary bombs on Mount Emily in Oregon, lighting a small fire in the state forest.

1943 – During World War II, the Allies land at Salerno and Taranto, Italy.

1945 – Japanese Imperial forces formally surrender to China.

1956 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time.

1965 – Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion in damages, becoming the first hurricane to cause over $1 billion in damage.

1969 – Allegheny Airlines Flight 853, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, collides in mid air with a Piper PA-28 Cherokee over Moral Township, Shelby County, Indiana, killing all 83 passengers and crew on board both aircraft.

1971 – The 4 day Attica Prison riot begins, eventually resulting in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers retaking the prison.

1972 – In Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park, a Cave Research Foundation exploration and mapping team discovers a link between the Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems, making it the longest known cave passageway in the world.

1976 – Mao Zedong dies in Beijing, China at exactly 00:00 hours as his doctors ‘pull the plug’ on him after he fell into a coma 2 days earlier.

1994 –  Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-64.

2001 – Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al-Qaeda assassins

2015 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, overtaking Queen Victoria.