MILESFORTIS

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.

 

September 8

1380 – At Kulikovo, near modern day Tula, Russian forces defeat a mixed army of Tatars and Mongols of the Golden Horde, stopping their advance.

1504 – Michelangelo’s sculpture of David is unveiled in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy.

1565 – St. Augustine, Florida is founded by Spanish admiral and Florida’s first governor, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés.
The Knights of Malta lift the Ottoman siege of the island that began in May

1781 – During the Revolutionary War, the Battle of Eutaw Springs in South Carolina, the last major engagement of the war in the Carolinas, ends with the British winning an extremely narrow tactical victory, but having to retreat to Charleston and eventually cause the entire regular British force to abandon operations in the south.

1810 – The Tonquin sets sail from New York Harbor with 33 employees of John Jacob Astor’s newly created Pacific Fur Company on board. After a 6 month journey around the Horn of South America, the ship arrives at the mouth of the Columbia River and Astor’s men establish the fur trading town of Astoria, Oregon.

1860 – The steamship PS Lady Elgin collides with the schooner Augusta of Oswego, which is only damaged, and sinks on Lake Michigan off Port Clinton Illinois, with the loss of around 300 lives. The disaster remains the greatest loss of life on open water in the history of the Great Lakes.

1863 – In the Second Battle of Sabine Pass, a small Confederate force thwarts a Union invasion of Texas.

1883 – The Northern Pacific Railway is completed in a ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana. Former President Ulysses Grant driving in the final “golden spike”.

1888 – In London, the body of Jack the Ripper’s second murder victim, Annie Chapman, is found.

1892 – The earliest version of The Pledge of Allegiance is recited for the first time.
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

1900 – Even though receiving storm warnings days in advance, a powerful hurricane hits Galveston, Texas killing about 8,000 people.

1916 – In a bid to prove that women were capable of serving as military dispatch riders, Augusta and Adeline Van Buren arrive in Los Angeles, completing a 60-day, 5,500 mile cross-country trip on motorcycles.

1921 – 16 year old Margaret Gorman wins the Atlantic City Pageant’s Golden Mermaid trophy; pageant officials later dub her the first Miss America.

1930 – 3M begins marketing Scotch transparent tape.

1935 – Louisiana Senator Huey Long is shot by a relative of a political opponent while leaving the Louisiana State Capitol building. Mortally wounded, he dies 2 days later.

1944 – London is hit by a V-2 rocket for the first time.

1945 – The division of Korea begins when U.S. troops arrive to partition the southern part of Korea, responding to Soviet troops occupying the northern part of the peninsula

1960 –President Eisenhower formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,  Alabama.

1966 – Star Trek premieres on the NBC television network.

1970 – Trans International Airlines Flight 863, a Douglas DC-8, crashes during takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, killing all 11 passengers and crew aboard.

1974 – President Gerald Ford signs a pardon of Richard Nixon for any crimes committed while in office.

1994 – US Air Flight 427, a Boeing 737, crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 passengers and crew aboard.

2016 – NASA launches OSIRIS-REx, its first asteroid sample return mission, landing and departing 101955 Bennu on 20 October 2020,  and is expected to return with samples in September 2023.

2017 – Author and Presidential advisor, Jerry Pournelle dies at his home in Studio City, California.

2022 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom dies at Balmoral Castle in Scotland after reigning for 70 years, having taken the record as the longest reigning British monarch from Queen Victoria, almost to the day, 7 years earlier, on the 9th.