MILESFORTIS

September 13

1229 – Ögedei Khan, the 3rd son of Genghis Kahn, is proclaimed Khagan of the Mongol Empire

1501 – Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David.

1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to begin his reformation of the church

1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him – the Hudson River.

1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the nation’s temporary capital.

1814 – Observing, through the night, the battle against the British attempt to capture Baltimore, Francis Scott Key composes his poem “Defence of Fort McHenry“, which is later set to music and becomes the national anthem.

1847 – During the final assault on Chapultepec Castle, 6 Mexican military cadets known as Niños Héroes refuse to surrender and die in its defense as U.S. troops under General Winfield Scott capture Mexico City

1862 –  At the Best Farm, outside Frederick, Maryland, Union Corporal Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers finds a copy of General Robert E. Lee’s Special Order 191, detailing upcoming battle plans. Union forces use this knowledge to good effect in engaging Confederate forces at Antietam and the South Mountain area in Maryland. Later, author Harry Turtledove writes an alternate history novel – How Few Remain – where the plans are not intercepted, and how that would likely have changed not just the outcome of the war, and U.S./C.S. history, but world history.

1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film.

1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident.

1942 – On the second day of the Battle of Edson’s Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign, U.S. Marines successfully defeat attacks, with heavy losses inflicted on the Japanese forces.

1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator becoming the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC computer is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage.

1971 – New York State police and National Guardsmen storm Attica Prison to quell a prison revolt.

1977 – General Motors introduces Diesel engines for the first time in passenger vehicle models Delta 88, Oldsmobile 98, and Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser.

1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat sign the Oslo Accords at the White House granting limited Palestinian autonomy.

1998 – Former Alabama Governor George Wallace dies at Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama.

2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks.

2005 – Former President of Columbia, Julio César Turbay Ayala dies in Bogotá, Colombia

2008 – Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, killing 214 people and causing $38 Billion in damage to Galveston Island, Houston, and surrounding areas.

2018 – 1 person is killed, 25 are injured, and 40 homes are destroyed when excessive pressure in natural gas lines owned by Columbia Gas of Massachusetts causes fires and explosions in the Merrimack Valley, in Massachusetts

September 12

490 BC – The Athenians and their Plataean allies defeat the first Persian invasion force of Greece at Marathon. Afterwards, the Greek messenger Pheidippides runs with the news of the victory to Athens. Announcing νικῶμεν – nikomen –  (We’ve won) – he then dies of exhaustion after the 25+ mile run.

1229 – During the Spanish Reconquista, the Aragon army under the command of James I of Aragon, lands at Santa Ponça, Majorca, held by the Almohad caliphate.

1309 – During the Spanish Reconquista, the Castile army under the command of Juan Núñez II de Lara, lays siege to Gibraltar, held by the Emirate of Granada.

1609 – Henry Hudson begins his exploration up the Hudson River from Manhattan.

1683 – The combined European armies complete the defeat of the army of Ottoman Empire that had besieged Vienna

1814 – A detachment of the Maryland Militia under General John Stricker, engages the British under General Robert Ross, at North Point outside Baltimore. Having suffered significant casualties inflicted by the U.S. troops,  before they retreat in good order, the deputy commanding British officer, Colonel Arthur Brooke delays their advance to Baltimore allowing the city to reinforce the defenses to the point the British plan to take Baltimore fails.

1847 – The Battle of Chapultepec in the Mexican-American War begins

1857 – Carrying over 13 tons of gold from the California Gold Rush, the SS Central America sinks about 160 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, contributing to the financial Panic of 1857. Located in 1988, the wreck has had large quantities of the cargo recovered.

1933 – While living in England, Leó Szilárd comes up with the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.

1938 – Adolf Hitler demands autonomy and self-determination for the Germans of the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. European leaders cave.

1940 – An explosion at the Hercules Powder plant at Roxbury, New Jersey kills 51 people and injures over 200 more

1942 – On Guadalcanal, Imperial Japanese Army troops begin an attack along “Edson’s Ridge” against U.S. Marines defending the Henderson airfield.

1943 – German commando forces, led by Otto Skorzeny, rescue Benito Mussolini from house arrest in a hotel northeast of Rome

1958 – Jack Kilby demonstrates the first working integrated circuit while working at Texas Instruments.

1962 – President Kennedy delivers his “We choose to go to the Moon” speech at Rice University.

1966 – NASA launches Gemini 11, with astronauts “Pete” Conrad and Richard Gordon aboard, from Cape Kennedy for a 3 day mission to practice rendezvous and docking procedures.

1972 – William ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ Boyd dies from complications related to Parkinson’s disease at Laguna Beach, California

1974 – Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia is deposed following a military coup by the Provisional Military Administrative Council, ending a reign of 58 years.

1983 – A Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut, United States, is robbed of approximately $7 million by the Puerto Rican Los Macheteros gang.

1990 – The two German states and the ‘Four Powers’ (UK, France, USSR & U.S) sign the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, in Moscow, paving the way for German reunification.

1992 – NASA launches Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-47, the 50th shuttle mission. On board are Mae Carol Jemison, the first African American woman in space, Mamoru Mohri, the first Japanese citizen to fly in a US spaceship, and Mark Lee and Jan Davis, the first married couple in space.

1994 – Frank Eugene Corder fatally crashes a single engine Cessna 150 aircraft into the White House’s south lawn, striking the West wing. There were no other casualties.

2001 – Out of thousands of people unable to escape from the World Trade Center towers before they collapsed, only 20 survivors are finally rescued and pulled out of the rubble.

2003 – Johnny Cash dies at at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee

2008 – The engineer of a Metrolink commuter train runs it through a red light onto a single track and collides head on with a Union Pacific freight train on the Metrolink Ventura County Line just east of Stoney Point, Los Angeles killing 25 people and injuring 135 more.

2013 – NASA confirms that the Voyager 1 probe has become the first manmade object to enter interstellar space.