Post by farmgal on Sept 24, 2012 21:36:25 GMT -5
September 26th is the 270th day of this leap year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 96 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days until Election Day, Tuesday November 6, 2012: 41
Countdown until Obama leaves Office www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1460 Pope Pius II (1405–1464; pope, 1458–1464) assembled European leaders and delivered a three-hour sermon to inspire them to launch a new crusade against the Turks. The speech worked, but another speaker, Cardinal Bessarion (1403–1472), added a three-hour sermon of his own. After six hours of preaching, the European princes lost all interest in the cause and never mount the called-for crusade.
A modern replica of Drake's Golden Hind
1580 - Sir Francis Drake finishes his circumnavigation of the Earth.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake
1772 - The soon-to-be state of New Jersey passed the first law in the US to license medical practioners, except those who do not charge for their services, or whose activity is bleeding patients or pulling teeth. There is no federal medical licensing law.
1777 - British troops occupy Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia#History
1783 - The first battle of Shays' Rebellion begins.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion
1789 - Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first United States Secretary of State, John Jay is appointed the first Chief Justice of the United States, Samuel Osgood is appointed the first United States Postmaster General, and Edmund Randolph is appointed the first United States Attorney General.
1814 - With over 1,000 delegates from 17 churches, the Flint River Association was established -- the first official Baptist organization of its kind in the history of Alabama.
1820 - Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson proved tomatoes weren't poisonous by eating several on the steps of the courthouse in Salem, New Jersey.
1835 - The Suwanee Association was formed, in Florida. Comprised of eight member churches, it was the first official Baptist organization in Florida history.
1861 President Lincoln's Fast Historians have argued whether or not Abraham Lincoln, one of America's best-known presidents, ever became a committed Christian. As a youth Lincoln mocked the scriptures. After the death of his favorite son, Willie, he groped for some hope which could give him solace. His wife Mary and he attended seances, but eventually renounced them as fraudulent. The cares and trials of the war drove Lincoln increasingly to his Bible.
His lifelong friend Joshua Speed remembered, "As I entered the room near night, [Lincoln] was sitting near a window reading his Bible. Approaching him, I said, 'I am glad to see you profitably engaged.' 'Yes,' said he, 'I am profitably engaged.' 'Well,' said I, 'if you have recovered from your skepticism I am sorry to say that I have not!' Looking me earnestly in the face, and placing his hand upon my shoulder, he said: 'You are wrong Speed; take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith and you will live and die a happier and better man.'"
Many of Lincoln's communications allude to God. In his personal correspondence to Mrs. Gurney, a Quakeress, he wrote, "We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war before this; but God knows best and has ruled otherwise." Increasingly he saw himself as an instrument of the Lord's will, inscrutable though that might be.
He wrestled to understand why the North continued to lose although its cause, the abolition of slavery and preservation of the union, seemed the more justifiable side. In the end, in a note not written for public consumption, Lincoln concluded that "the will of God prevails. . . .Both [sides] may be wrong. . . .in the present civil war it is quite possible God's purpose is something quite different from the purpose of either party."
There was as much sin to evoke God's wrath upon the Union as on the slave-owning Confederacy. On August 12, 1861 he issued a proclamation in the Northern States for a day of public humiliation, prayer and fasting "to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnities. ... It is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy... "
The fast was observed on this day, September 26, 1861, the last Thursday of the month. As anyone knows who is familiar with the history of the war, the fighting ground along for another three years, chewing up the lives and limbs of men in prodigious numbers. In the end Lincoln himself was assassinated. He left a legacy of profound words.
www.christianity.com/ChurchHistory/11630524/
1871 - U.S. patent No. 119,413 for the composition of portland cement was issued to David Oliver Saylor, of Allentown, Pa. In 1871, Saylor tried his hand at selecting and mixing different kinds of rock from his quarries to produce portland cement at the first US plant in Coplay, Pa. After initial difficulties, he succeeded with a mixture of magnesium clay with limestone clay. Samples shown at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition compared well with the best imported portland cements. In England, William Aspdin had patented "Portland cement," and coined the name (1852). The first recorded shipment of portland cement to the US was in 1868, when European manufacturers began shipping cement as ballast in tramp steamers at very low freight rates.
1872 - The first Shriners Temple (called Mecca) is established in New York City.
1890 - US stops minting $1 & $3 gold coin & 3 piece.
1892 - 1st public appearance of John Philip Sousa's band (NJ) The Sousa Band toured from 1892–1931, performing at 15,623 concerts.[5] In 1900, his band represented the United States at the Paris Exposition before touring Europe. In Paris, the Sousa Band marched through the streets including the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe – one of only eight parades the band marched in over its forty years.
1908 - Ed Reulbach becomes the first and only pitcher to throw two shutouts in one day against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1908 - An ad for the Edison Phonograph appeared in "The Saturday Evening Post"
1914 - The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is established by the Federal Trade Commission Act.
1918 - World War I: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the bloodiest single battle in American history, begins. At 5:30 on the morning of September 26, 1918, after a six-hour-long bombardment over the previous night, more than 700 Allied tanks, followed closely by infantry troops, advance against German positions in the Argonne Forest and along the Meuse River.
Building on the success of earlier Allied offensives at Amiens and Albert during the summer of 1918, the Meuse-Argonne offensive, carried out by 37 French and American divisions, was even more ambitious. Aiming to cut off the entire German 2nd Army, Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foch ordered General John J. Pershing to take overall command of the offensive. Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was to play the main attacking role, in what would be the largest American-run offensive of World War I.
After some 400,000 U.S. troops were transferred with difficulty to the region in the wake of the U.S.-run attack at St. Mihiel, launched just 10 days earlier, the Meuse-Argonne offensive began. The preliminary bombardment, using some 800 mustard gas and phosgene shells, killed 278 German soldiers and incapacitated more than 10,000. The infantry advance began the next morning, supported by a battery of tanks and some 500 aircraft from the U.S. Air Service.
By the morning of the following day, the Allies had captured more than 23,000 German prisoners; by nightfall, they had taken 10,000 more and advanced up to six miles in some areas. The Germans continued to fight, however, putting up a stiff resistance that ultimately forced the Allies to settle for far fewer gains than they had hoped.
Pershing called off the Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 30; it was renewed again just four days later, on October 4. Exhausted, demoralized and plagued by the spreading influenza epidemic, the German troops held on another month, before beginning their final retreat. Arriving U.S. reinforcements had time to advance some 32 kilometers before the general armistice was announced on November 11, bringing the First World War to a close.
1928 - First day of work at the Galvin Manufacturing CorporationOn this day in 1928, work begins at Chicago’s new Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. (The company had officially incorporated the day before.) In 1930, Galvin would introduce the Motorola radio, the first mass-produced commercial car radio. (The name had two parts: “motor” evoked cars and motion, while “ola” derived from “Victrola” and was supposed to make people think of music.)
In 1921, engineer Paul Galvin and his friend Edward Stewart started a storage-battery factory in Marshfield, Wisconsin; it went out of business two years later. In 1926, Galvin and Stewart re-started their battery-manufacturing company, this time in Chicago. That one went out of business too, but not before the partners figured out a way for home radios to draw power from an electrical wall outlet; they called it the dry-battery eliminator. Galvin bought back the eliminator part of his bankrupt company at auction for $750 and went right back into business, building and repairing eliminators and AC radio sets for customers like Sears, Roebuck.
Soon, however, Galvin’s attention turned to the car-radio business. The first car radios--portable “travel radios” powered by batteries, followed by custom-installed built-in radios that cost $250 apiece (about $2,800 in today’s dollars)--had appeared in 1926, but they were way too expensive for the average driver. If he could find a way to mass-produce affordable car radios, Galvin thought, he’d be rich. In June 1930, he enlisted inventors Elmer Wavering and William Lear to retrofit his old Studebaker with a radio and drove 800 miles to the Radio Manufacturers Association’s annual meeting in Atlantic City. He parked outside the convention, turned up the music (for this purpose, Wavering had installed a special speaker under the Studebaker’s hood), and waited for the RMAers’ orders to come rolling in.
A few did, and Galvin sold enough of his $110 5T71 car radios to come close to breaking even for the year. He changed his company’s name to Motorola and changed the way we drive--and ride in--cars forever.
For his part, William Lear went on to invent the eight-track cartridge-tape system, which came standard in every Ford car starting in 1966. Meanwhile, carmakers developed their own radio-manufacturing divisions, gradually squeezing Motorola out of the market it had built. The company stopped making car radios in 1984. Today, it’s best known for making cellular phones.
1936 - Denver, CO, was buried under 21.3 inches of snow, 19.4 inches of which fell in 24 hours. The heavy wet snow snapped trees and wires causing seven million dollars damage. (26th-27th) (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
1944 - World War II: Operation Market Garden fails. On this day in 1944, Operation Market-Garden, a plan to seize bridges in the Dutch town of Arnhem, fails, as thousands of British and Polish troops are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
British Gen. Bernard Montgomery conceived an operation to take control of bridges that crossed the Rhine River, from the Netherlands into Germany, as a strategy to make "a powerful full-blooded thrust to the heart of Germany." The plan seemed cursed from the beginning. It was launched on September 17, with parachute troops and gliders landing in Arnhem. Holding out as long as they could, waiting for reinforcements, they were compelled to surrender. Unfortunately, a similar drop of equipment was delayed, and there were errors in locating the proper drop location and bad intelligence on German troop strength. Added to this, bad weather and communication confused the coordination of the Allied troops on the ground.
The Germans quickly destroyed the railroad bridge and took control of the southern end of the road bridge. The Allies struggled to control the northern end of the road bridge, but soon lost it to the superior German forces. The only thing left was retreat-back behind Allied lines. But few made it: Of more than 10,000 British and Polish troops engaged at Arnhem, only 2,900 escaped.
Claims were made after the fact that a Dutch Resistance fighter, Christiaan Lindemans, betrayed the Allies, which would explain why the Germans were arrayed in such numbers at such strategic points. A conservative member of the British Parliament, Rupert Allason, writing under the named Nigel West, dismissed this conclusion in his A Thread of Deceit, arguing that Lindemans, while a double agent, "was never in a position to betray Arnhem."
Winston Churchill would lionize the courage of the fallen Allied soldiers with the epitaph "Not in vain." Arnhem was finally liberated on April 15, 1945.
1944 - World War II: On the central front of the Gothic Line Brazilian troops control the Serchio valley region after ten days of fighting.
1947 - Happy Chandler announces Ford & Gillette to sponsor World Series
1950 - Residents of the northeastern U.S. observed a blue sun and a blue moon, caused by forest fires in British Columbia. (David Ludlum)
1950 - United Nations troops recapture Seoul from the North Koreans.
1953 - "You You You" by the Ames Brothers topped the charts
1955 - NY Stock Exchange worst price decline since 1929
1956 - The first new concrete road surface to be paved as part of the Interstate Highway System following the signing of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was poured in Kansas for an 8-mile, two-lane section of U.S. 40 which became Interstate 70, a few miles west of Topeka. The 1956 Act established 90% federal funding for the U.S. System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The first State contract to begin new construction after the Act, had been issued earlier - on 2 Aug 1956, in Missouri - whereas the Kansas paving contract was awarded under the Act, but later in the month, on 31 Aug 1956. However, construction on the Kansas road had been under way prior to the Act, so Kansas had a head start, and was the first to complete a project under the Act. The road was opened on 14 Nov 1956.
1957 - Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld re-elected secretary-general of the UN
1957 Musical "West Side Story," opens on Broadway
1960 - In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
1960 - Longest speech in UN history (4 hrs, 29 mins, by Fidel Castro) Cuban leader Dr. Fidel Castro spoke before the United Nations on 26 September 1960. Castro was known as an eloquent speaker but also as long-winded. Often his speeches would be 3 to 4 hours long. In this speech, he alludes to that fact and promises to present a much shorter speech. Castro's presentation was primarily a complaint against U.S. policy toward his country and interference in their internal affairs.
1960 - "My Heart Has a Mind of its Own" by Connie Francis topped the charts
1961 - Roger Maris hits HR #60 off Jack Fisher, tying Babe Ruth's record
1961 - Patent for an aerial capsule (satellite) emergency separation device. A guided aerial delivery device which can be used to safely and accurately deliver a payload and supplies from an aircraft in flight to a specific target location in a reduced time. The aerial delivery device uses an overloaded ram-air drogue parachute controlled by a guidance system to steer the payload towards the intended target. When a selected altitude is reached, a recovery parachute is activated and the payload descends the remaining distance under the recovery parachute.
1962 - 1st to steal 100 bases in a season (Maury Wills goes on to 104)
1962 - TV comedy series "The Beverly Hillbillies" premiers on CBS
1963 - San Diego, CA, reached an all-time record high of 111 degrees. Los Angeles hit 109 degrees. (David Ludlum)
1963 - "Sugar Shack" by Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs entered Radio's Hot 100
1964 - "Oh, Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison topped the charts
1964 - Gilligan’s Island began its 98-show run on CBS
1968 - Hawaii Five-O debuts as an hourly program on CBS
1968 - St Louis Cards' Bob Gibson's 13th shutout, ends with 1.12 ERA
1969 - Beatles release "Abbey Road" album
1970 - "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross topped the charts
1970 - The Laguna Fire starts in San Diego County, California, burning 175,425 acres (710 km²).
1970 - Santa Ana winds brought fires to Los Angeles County, and to points south and east. Half a million acres were consumed by the fires, as were 1000 structures. Twenty firemen were injured. (25th-29th) (The Weather Channel)
1972 - American Museum of Immigration dedicated
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1973 - Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time.
1975 - Phillies & NY Mets play a doubleheader that ends at 3:15 AM
1978 - RR clerks go on strike, halting more than 2/3 of rail service
1977 - Sir Freddie Laker began cut-rate `Skytrain' service London to NY
1979 - In the midst of a hot September for Death Valley, California, the afternoon high was 104 degrees for the second of three days, the coolest afternoon highs for the month. (The Weather Channel)
1979 - 1984 summer LA Olympic coverage sold to ABC for $225 million
1981 - Baseball: Nolan Ryan sets a Major League record by throwing his fifth no-hitter beats LA Dodgers, 5-0.
1981 - The twin-engine Boeing 767 made its maiden flight in Everett, WA
1984 - President Reagan vetoes sanctions against South Africa
1985 - Shamu was born this day in 1985 at Sea World in Orlando, Florida. She was the first killer whale to be born in captivity and survive.
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1986 - William Rehnquist becomes Chief Justice of the United States When Chief Justice Warren Burger retired in 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to fill the position. During confirmation hearings, Senator Edward Kennedy challenged Rehnquist on his unwitting ownership of property that had a restrictive covenant against sale to Jews. Despite this and other controversies, the Senate confirmed his appointment by a 65-33 vote, and he assumed the office on September 26. Rehnquist's seat as an associate justice was filled by Antonin Scalia.
1986 - Bobby (Patrick Duffy) returns to Dallas, his death is attributed to his wife Pam's bad dream (erases all of last season)
1987 - Freezing temperatures were reported in the Northern and Central Appalachians, and the Upper Ohio Valley. The morning low of 27 degrees at Concord NH tied their record for the date. Temperatures soared into the 90s in South Dakota. Pierre SD reported an afternoon high of 98 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1987 - "Didn't We Almost Have It All" by Whitney Houston topped the charts
1988 - US space shuttle STS-26 launched
1988 - Unseasonably warm weather prevailed across Florida. Afternoon highs of 92 degrees at Apalachicola and 95 degrees at Fort Myers were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - Rain spread from the southeastern states across New England overnight. Cape Hatteras NC reported measurable rainfall for the fourteenth straight day, with 15.51 inches of rain recorded during that two week period. Phoenix AZ reported a record high of 108 degrees, and a record 134 days of 100 degree weather for the year. Afternoon temperatures were only in the 40s over parts of northwest Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. (The National Weather Summary)
1990 - In Russia, the Supreme Soviet ended decades of religious repression with a new declaration, forbidding government interference in religious activities and giving citizens the right to study religion in homes and private schools.
1991 - Four men and four women entered the Biosphere 2, an airtight, self-contained structure in Oracle, Ariz., where they would live for two years. The 7,200,000-cu-ft sealed glass and space-frame structure contained 5 biomes, including a 900,000-gallon ocean, a rain forest, a desert, agricultural areas and a human habitat. It was built in the late 1980s with $150 million in funding by Texas oil magnate Edward Bass. Biosphere 2 was designed as replica of Earth's environment (Biosphere 1). During their stay, the crew experienced various problems. Limited agricultural productivity restricted their diet. Micro-organisms in the soil reduced oxygen levels in the atmosphere and added nitrous oxide. The crew emerged on 26 Sep 1993. Unfortunately, the problems with the project's results brought scientific disdain.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#Praise_and_criticism
Births
1729 Moses Mendelssohn (d 4 January 1786) philosopher/critic/Bible translator.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Mendelssohn
1774 - Johnny Appleseed (d 1845), born John Chapman, American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, largely because of his kind and generous ways, his great leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples. He was also a missionary for the Church of the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgian Church, so named because it teaches the theological doctrines contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed
1794 Frederick A. Packard, Marlborough, Massachusetts. (d 1867) He became the editorial secretary of the American Sunday School Union and edited various Sunday school publications, without which the growing movement would have been at sea.
1854 - Edward Bausch (d 1944) Inventor and developer of microscopes and optical instruments. In business, he became chairman Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. His father, John J. Bausch (1830-1926), was born in Germany, emigrated to America in 1849, and started a spectacle making business (the Vulcanite Optical Instrument Co.) with German immigrant Henry Lomb (1828-1908). By 1866, their company was making a simple microscope. The company name was changed to Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. in 1874, the year they produced their first compound microscope. Edward, with brothers William, and Henry all helped in the design and production of a full product line of microscopes. Edward held a number of patents related to the design of microscopes.
www.modernmicroscopy.com/main.asp?article=41&page=8
1876 - Edith Abbott (d 1957) American economist, social worker, educator, and author. Born in Grand Island, Nebraska.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Abbott
1881 - Hiram Wesley Evans (d 1966) Imperial Wizard of the "second" Ku Klux Klan from 1922 until 1939. Evans succeeded William Joseph Simmons in the position of the Imperial Wizard in November 1922.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Wesley_Evans
1888 - James Frank Dobie (d 1964) American folklorist, writer, and newspaper columnist best known for many books depicting the richness and traditions of life in rural Texas during the days of the open range. As a public figure, he was known in his lifetime for his outspoken liberal views against Texas state politics, and for his long personal war against what he saw as bragging Texans, religious prejudice, restraints on individual liberty, and the assault of the mechanized world on the human spirit. He was also instrumental in the saving of the Texas Longhorn breed of cattle from extinction.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Frank_Dobie
1888 - Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (d 1965) was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Stearns_Eliot
1897 - Pope Paul VI 262nd Roman Catholic pope (1963-78)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Paul_VI
1897 Marmion Loyd Lowe (d 1975) Soon after his conversion, he was a student at Practical Bible Training School. He returned as a faculty member in the early 1930s and was a beloved Bible teacher for over four decades. Many of his students became laborers in God's kingdom.
1898 - George Gershwin Jacob Gershvin Brooklyn NY, composer (Rhapsody in Blue)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gershwin
1902 - Albert Anastasia (born Umberto Anastasio, d 1957) was boss of what is now called the Gambino Crime Family, one of New York City's Five Families, from 1951-1957. He also ran a gang of contract killers called Murder Inc. which enforced the decisions of the Commission, the ruling council of the American Mafia.[1] He was nicknamed the "Mad Hatter" and the "Lord High Executioner".
1914 - Jack LaLanne American fitness, exercise, nutritional expert, and motivational speaker who has been called "the godfather of fitness". He has published numerous books on fitness and hosted a fitness television show between 1951 and 1985. He has 4 children. LaLanne gained recognition for his success as a bodybuilder, as well as his prodigious feats of strength. He has been inducted to the California Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne
1917 - Harrison Scott Brown (d 1986) American geochemist known for his role in isolating plutonium for its use in the first atomic bombs and for his studies regarding meteorites and the Earth's origin. He was one of 67 concerned Manhattan Project scientists at Oak Ridge to sign a July 1945 petition to the President, which said, in part, "...Therefore we recommend that before this weapon be used without restriction in the present conflict, its powers should be adequately described and demonstrated, and the Japanese nation should be given the opportunity to consider the consequences of further refusal to surrender." His later studies included mass spectroscopy, thermal diffusion, fluorine and plutonium chemistry, geochemistry and planetary structure.
1925 - Martin David Robinson (b 1982), known professionally as Marty Robbins, American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. One of the most popular and successful country and Western singers of his era, for most of his nearly four-decade career, Robbins was rarely far from the country music charts, and several of his songs also became pop hits.
1926 - Julie London (d 2000) American singer, game show panelist and prolific character actress of stage, film and television. Best known for her smoky, sensual voice, she was at her singing career's peak in the 1950s. Her acting career lasted more than 35 years, concluding with the female lead role of nurse Dixie McCall on the television series Emergency! (1972–1979), co-starring her best friend Robert Fuller and her real-life husband Bobby Troup.
1927 - James Robert Cade (d 2007) American physician, university professor, research scientist and inventor. Cade, a native of Texas, earned his undergraduate and medical degrees, and became a professor of medicine and nephrology at the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida. widely remembered as the leader of the research team that formulated the sports drink Gatorade
1932 - Clifton Curtis 'C.C.' Williams (d 1967) NASA astronaut, a Naval Aviator, and a Major in the United States Marine Corps who was killed after a mechanical failure caused the flight controls in a NASA T-38 jet trainer he was piloting to stop responding. The aircraft crashed in Florida near Tallahassee within an hour of departing Patrick AFB.
1937 - Jerry Weintraub, American film producer
1947 - Lynn Anderson ND, country singer (I Never Promised you a Rose Garden)
1963 - Joe Nemecheck, NASCAR Nationwide Champion (1992)
1968 - James Patrick Caviezel, Jr. American film actor, sometimes credited as Jim Caviezel, known for the roles of Jesus in the 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, Bobby Jones in Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius, Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, Catch in Angel Eyes and Private Witt in The Thin Red Line.
Deaths
1820 - Daniel Boone (b 1734) American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States dies quietly in his sleep at his son's home near present-day Defiance, Missouri. The indefatigable voyager was 86.
Boone was born in 1734 to Quaker parents living in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Following a squabble with the Pennsylvania Quakers, Boone's family decided to head south and west for less crowded regions, and they eventually settled in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. There the young Daniel Boone began his life-long love for wilderness, spending long days exploring the still relatively unspoiled forests and mountains of the region. An indifferent student who never learned to write more than a crude sentence or two, Boone's passion was for the outdoors, and he quickly became a superb marksman, hunter and woodsman.
Never satisfied to stay put for very long, Boone soon began making ever longer and more ambitious journeys into the relatively unexplored lands to the west. In May of 1769, Boone and five companions crossed over the Cumberland Gap and explored along the south fork of the Kentucky River. Impressed by the fertility and relative emptiness of the land--although the native inhabitants hardly considered it to be empty--Boone returned in 1773 with his family, hoping to establish a permanent settlement. An Indian attack prevented that first attempt from succeeding, but Boone returned two years later to open the route that became known as Boone's Trace (or the Wilderness Road) between the Cumberland Gap and a new settlement along the Kentucky River called Fortress Boonesboro. After years of struggles against both Native Americans and British soldiers, Boonesboro eventually became one of the most important gateways for the early American settlement of the Trans-Appalachian West.
Made a legend in his own time by John Filson's "Boone Autobiography" and Lord Byron's depiction of him as the quintessential frontiersman in the book Don Juan, Boone became a symbol of the western pioneering spirit for many Americans. Ironically, though, Boone's fame and his success in opening the Trans-Appalachian West to large-scale settlement later came to haunt him. Having lost his Kentucky land holdings by failing to properly register them, Boone moved even further west in 1799, trying to escape the civilized regions he had been so instrumental in creating. Finally settling in Missouri--though he never stopped dreaming of continuing westward--he lived out the rest of his life doing what he loved best: hunting and trapping in a fertile wild land still largely untouched by the Anglo pioneers who had followed the path he blazed to the West.
1867 - James Ferguson (b 1797) Scottish-American astronomer who discovered the first previously unknown asteroid to be detected from North America. He recorded it on 1 Sep 1854 at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where he worked 1848-67. This was the thirty-first of the series and is now known as 31 Euphrosyne, named after one of the Charites in Greek mythology. It is one of the largest of the main belt asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter. He was involved in some of the earliest work in micrometry was done at the old U.S. Naval Observatory at Foggy Bottom in the midst of the Civil War using a 9.6 inch refractor. He also contributed to double star astronomy. Earlier in his life he was a civil engineer, member of the Northwest Boundary Survey, and an assistant in the U.S. Coast Survey.
1900 - Jesse William Lazear (b 1866) American physician and bacteriologist, who died of yellow fever in Quemados, Cuba, during his own research into the cause of the disease. He graduated from Columbia's medical school, worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and upon an outbreak of yellow fever in Cuba he was appointed an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army. As a member of the Yellow Fever Commission with Walter Reed, James Carroll and Aristides Agramonte, he was in Cuba early in 1900. Their investigation yielded proof that the disease was borne by mosquitoes. Unfortunately, Lazear was bitten accidentally by an infected mosquito. Five days later, he developed yellow fever and died on the seventh day of his illness.
1902 - Levi Strauss (born 26 Feb 1829) Inventor and manufacturer of jeans, Levi Strauss was one of the best-known beneficiaries of California's gold rush economic boom. He was born in Bavaria and trained as a tailor. One of thousands, he travelled to San Francisco in 1850, hoping to make his fortune. His original plan was to manufacture tents and wagon covers, but instead found a market using the stout canvas he had brought with him to make very durable pants for the Forty-niners. Finding that these pants sold as fast as he could make them, Strauss opened a factory, improved the design by adding copper rivets at the stress points in his pants, and adopted a heavy blue denim material called genes in France, that originated the now familiar name of "jeans".
1937 - Bessie Smith (b 1894) was an American blues singer.
Sometimes referred to as "The Empress of the Blues," Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s.[1] She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and, along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists.
1972 - Charles James Correll (b 1890) American radio comedian, best known for his work on the Amos 'n' Andy show with Freeman S. Gosden. Correll voiced the central character of Andy Brown, along with various supporting characters. Before teaming up with Gosden, Correll worked as a stenographer and a bricklayer. The two men met in Durham, North Carolina while working for the Joe Bren Producing Company. Both Correll and Freeman vacationed at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in the 1930s and would broadcast Amos 'n' Andy from there. From 1928 to 1934, the team never took a vacation away from their radio show. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Amos 'n' Andy on the air, the broadcast of March 19, 1958 was done by Correll and Gosden using their real voices and calling each other by their real names; this had never been done on the show before.
1973 - Ralph Lee Earnhardt (February 23, 1928 – September 26, 1973) was a NASCAR racing legend. He was the father of Dale Earnhardt, the grandfather of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Kerry Earnhardt, and great grandfather of Jeffrey Earnhardt.
1973 - Anna Magnani (b 1908) Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo. Born in Rome to an Egyptian father and an Italian-Jewish mother, she worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs.
1982 - Paul Kollsman (b 1900) German-American engineer who invented the world’s first accurate barometric altimeter (1928) that became vital to aviation safety. The original barometric altimeter was a simple instrument which displayed altitude by sensing barometric pressure, within an accuracy of 20 feet. On 24 Sep 1929, Jimmy Doolittle’s historic "blind flight" proved that the Kollsman altimeter made navigation possible "flying on the gauges." The guage was widely known as the “Kollsman Window” because it included a window to dial in a manual setting to calibrate the barometric pressure at the current sea-level. The invention played a major role in establishing routine scheduled air service in the U.S. and around the world.
1991 - Richard "Billy" Vaughn (b 1919) was an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, and orchestra leader.
1999 - Oseola McCarty (b 1908) local washerwoman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi who became The University of Southern Mississippi’s (USM) most famous benefactor. McCarty drew global attention after it was announced in July 1995 that she had established a trust through which, at her death, a portion of her life’s savings would be left to the university to provide scholarships for deserving students in need of financial assistance. The amount was estimated at $150,000, a surprising amount given her menial occupation.
2008 - Paul Leonard Newman (b 1925) American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing. Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of August 2010, these donations had exceeded US $300 million.
Christian Feast Days:
John of Meda
Cosmas and Damian
September 26 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Repose of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian (presumed author of the Gospel of John, 1, 2 and 3 John, and the Book of Revelation)
Righteous Gideon, Judge of Israel (1307 BC)
Saint Ephraim, abbot of Perekop, wonderworker of Novgorod (1492)
Saint Nilus of Rossano (Calabria) (1004)
Martyr Cyra
Other Commemorations
Glorification (1989) of New Hiero-confessor Tikhon, patriarch of Moscow and all Russia (1925)
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akaCG
www.amug.org/~jpaul/sep26.html
www.history.com/this-day-in-history
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_26
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.todayinsci.com/9/9_26.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_26_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.christianity.com/HistoryByDay/0926/
www.hymntime.com/tch/index.htm
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih0926.htm
There are 96 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days until Election Day, Tuesday November 6, 2012: 41
Countdown until Obama leaves Office www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1460 Pope Pius II (1405–1464; pope, 1458–1464) assembled European leaders and delivered a three-hour sermon to inspire them to launch a new crusade against the Turks. The speech worked, but another speaker, Cardinal Bessarion (1403–1472), added a three-hour sermon of his own. After six hours of preaching, the European princes lost all interest in the cause and never mount the called-for crusade.
A modern replica of Drake's Golden Hind
1580 - Sir Francis Drake finishes his circumnavigation of the Earth.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Drake
1772 - The soon-to-be state of New Jersey passed the first law in the US to license medical practioners, except those who do not charge for their services, or whose activity is bleeding patients or pulling teeth. There is no federal medical licensing law.
1777 - British troops occupy Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia#History
1783 - The first battle of Shays' Rebellion begins.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion
1789 - Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first United States Secretary of State, John Jay is appointed the first Chief Justice of the United States, Samuel Osgood is appointed the first United States Postmaster General, and Edmund Randolph is appointed the first United States Attorney General.
1814 - With over 1,000 delegates from 17 churches, the Flint River Association was established -- the first official Baptist organization of its kind in the history of Alabama.
1820 - Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson proved tomatoes weren't poisonous by eating several on the steps of the courthouse in Salem, New Jersey.
1835 - The Suwanee Association was formed, in Florida. Comprised of eight member churches, it was the first official Baptist organization in Florida history.
1861 President Lincoln's Fast Historians have argued whether or not Abraham Lincoln, one of America's best-known presidents, ever became a committed Christian. As a youth Lincoln mocked the scriptures. After the death of his favorite son, Willie, he groped for some hope which could give him solace. His wife Mary and he attended seances, but eventually renounced them as fraudulent. The cares and trials of the war drove Lincoln increasingly to his Bible.
His lifelong friend Joshua Speed remembered, "As I entered the room near night, [Lincoln] was sitting near a window reading his Bible. Approaching him, I said, 'I am glad to see you profitably engaged.' 'Yes,' said he, 'I am profitably engaged.' 'Well,' said I, 'if you have recovered from your skepticism I am sorry to say that I have not!' Looking me earnestly in the face, and placing his hand upon my shoulder, he said: 'You are wrong Speed; take all of this book upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith and you will live and die a happier and better man.'"
Many of Lincoln's communications allude to God. In his personal correspondence to Mrs. Gurney, a Quakeress, he wrote, "We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war before this; but God knows best and has ruled otherwise." Increasingly he saw himself as an instrument of the Lord's will, inscrutable though that might be.
He wrestled to understand why the North continued to lose although its cause, the abolition of slavery and preservation of the union, seemed the more justifiable side. In the end, in a note not written for public consumption, Lincoln concluded that "the will of God prevails. . . .Both [sides] may be wrong. . . .in the present civil war it is quite possible God's purpose is something quite different from the purpose of either party."
There was as much sin to evoke God's wrath upon the Union as on the slave-owning Confederacy. On August 12, 1861 he issued a proclamation in the Northern States for a day of public humiliation, prayer and fasting "to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnities. ... It is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals to humble ourselves before Him, and to pray for His mercy... "
The fast was observed on this day, September 26, 1861, the last Thursday of the month. As anyone knows who is familiar with the history of the war, the fighting ground along for another three years, chewing up the lives and limbs of men in prodigious numbers. In the end Lincoln himself was assassinated. He left a legacy of profound words.
www.christianity.com/ChurchHistory/11630524/
1871 - U.S. patent No. 119,413 for the composition of portland cement was issued to David Oliver Saylor, of Allentown, Pa. In 1871, Saylor tried his hand at selecting and mixing different kinds of rock from his quarries to produce portland cement at the first US plant in Coplay, Pa. After initial difficulties, he succeeded with a mixture of magnesium clay with limestone clay. Samples shown at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition compared well with the best imported portland cements. In England, William Aspdin had patented "Portland cement," and coined the name (1852). The first recorded shipment of portland cement to the US was in 1868, when European manufacturers began shipping cement as ballast in tramp steamers at very low freight rates.
1872 - The first Shriners Temple (called Mecca) is established in New York City.
1890 - US stops minting $1 & $3 gold coin & 3 piece.
1892 - 1st public appearance of John Philip Sousa's band (NJ) The Sousa Band toured from 1892–1931, performing at 15,623 concerts.[5] In 1900, his band represented the United States at the Paris Exposition before touring Europe. In Paris, the Sousa Band marched through the streets including the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe – one of only eight parades the band marched in over its forty years.
1908 - Ed Reulbach becomes the first and only pitcher to throw two shutouts in one day against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1908 - An ad for the Edison Phonograph appeared in "The Saturday Evening Post"
1914 - The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is established by the Federal Trade Commission Act.
1918 - World War I: The Meuse-Argonne Offensive, the bloodiest single battle in American history, begins. At 5:30 on the morning of September 26, 1918, after a six-hour-long bombardment over the previous night, more than 700 Allied tanks, followed closely by infantry troops, advance against German positions in the Argonne Forest and along the Meuse River.
Building on the success of earlier Allied offensives at Amiens and Albert during the summer of 1918, the Meuse-Argonne offensive, carried out by 37 French and American divisions, was even more ambitious. Aiming to cut off the entire German 2nd Army, Allied Supreme Commander Ferdinand Foch ordered General John J. Pershing to take overall command of the offensive. Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was to play the main attacking role, in what would be the largest American-run offensive of World War I.
After some 400,000 U.S. troops were transferred with difficulty to the region in the wake of the U.S.-run attack at St. Mihiel, launched just 10 days earlier, the Meuse-Argonne offensive began. The preliminary bombardment, using some 800 mustard gas and phosgene shells, killed 278 German soldiers and incapacitated more than 10,000. The infantry advance began the next morning, supported by a battery of tanks and some 500 aircraft from the U.S. Air Service.
By the morning of the following day, the Allies had captured more than 23,000 German prisoners; by nightfall, they had taken 10,000 more and advanced up to six miles in some areas. The Germans continued to fight, however, putting up a stiff resistance that ultimately forced the Allies to settle for far fewer gains than they had hoped.
Pershing called off the Meuse-Argonne offensive on September 30; it was renewed again just four days later, on October 4. Exhausted, demoralized and plagued by the spreading influenza epidemic, the German troops held on another month, before beginning their final retreat. Arriving U.S. reinforcements had time to advance some 32 kilometers before the general armistice was announced on November 11, bringing the First World War to a close.
1928 - First day of work at the Galvin Manufacturing CorporationOn this day in 1928, work begins at Chicago’s new Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. (The company had officially incorporated the day before.) In 1930, Galvin would introduce the Motorola radio, the first mass-produced commercial car radio. (The name had two parts: “motor” evoked cars and motion, while “ola” derived from “Victrola” and was supposed to make people think of music.)
In 1921, engineer Paul Galvin and his friend Edward Stewart started a storage-battery factory in Marshfield, Wisconsin; it went out of business two years later. In 1926, Galvin and Stewart re-started their battery-manufacturing company, this time in Chicago. That one went out of business too, but not before the partners figured out a way for home radios to draw power from an electrical wall outlet; they called it the dry-battery eliminator. Galvin bought back the eliminator part of his bankrupt company at auction for $750 and went right back into business, building and repairing eliminators and AC radio sets for customers like Sears, Roebuck.
Soon, however, Galvin’s attention turned to the car-radio business. The first car radios--portable “travel radios” powered by batteries, followed by custom-installed built-in radios that cost $250 apiece (about $2,800 in today’s dollars)--had appeared in 1926, but they were way too expensive for the average driver. If he could find a way to mass-produce affordable car radios, Galvin thought, he’d be rich. In June 1930, he enlisted inventors Elmer Wavering and William Lear to retrofit his old Studebaker with a radio and drove 800 miles to the Radio Manufacturers Association’s annual meeting in Atlantic City. He parked outside the convention, turned up the music (for this purpose, Wavering had installed a special speaker under the Studebaker’s hood), and waited for the RMAers’ orders to come rolling in.
A few did, and Galvin sold enough of his $110 5T71 car radios to come close to breaking even for the year. He changed his company’s name to Motorola and changed the way we drive--and ride in--cars forever.
For his part, William Lear went on to invent the eight-track cartridge-tape system, which came standard in every Ford car starting in 1966. Meanwhile, carmakers developed their own radio-manufacturing divisions, gradually squeezing Motorola out of the market it had built. The company stopped making car radios in 1984. Today, it’s best known for making cellular phones.
1936 - Denver, CO, was buried under 21.3 inches of snow, 19.4 inches of which fell in 24 hours. The heavy wet snow snapped trees and wires causing seven million dollars damage. (26th-27th) (David Ludlum) (The Weather Channel)
1944 - World War II: Operation Market Garden fails. On this day in 1944, Operation Market-Garden, a plan to seize bridges in the Dutch town of Arnhem, fails, as thousands of British and Polish troops are killed, wounded, or taken prisoner.
British Gen. Bernard Montgomery conceived an operation to take control of bridges that crossed the Rhine River, from the Netherlands into Germany, as a strategy to make "a powerful full-blooded thrust to the heart of Germany." The plan seemed cursed from the beginning. It was launched on September 17, with parachute troops and gliders landing in Arnhem. Holding out as long as they could, waiting for reinforcements, they were compelled to surrender. Unfortunately, a similar drop of equipment was delayed, and there were errors in locating the proper drop location and bad intelligence on German troop strength. Added to this, bad weather and communication confused the coordination of the Allied troops on the ground.
The Germans quickly destroyed the railroad bridge and took control of the southern end of the road bridge. The Allies struggled to control the northern end of the road bridge, but soon lost it to the superior German forces. The only thing left was retreat-back behind Allied lines. But few made it: Of more than 10,000 British and Polish troops engaged at Arnhem, only 2,900 escaped.
Claims were made after the fact that a Dutch Resistance fighter, Christiaan Lindemans, betrayed the Allies, which would explain why the Germans were arrayed in such numbers at such strategic points. A conservative member of the British Parliament, Rupert Allason, writing under the named Nigel West, dismissed this conclusion in his A Thread of Deceit, arguing that Lindemans, while a double agent, "was never in a position to betray Arnhem."
Winston Churchill would lionize the courage of the fallen Allied soldiers with the epitaph "Not in vain." Arnhem was finally liberated on April 15, 1945.
1944 - World War II: On the central front of the Gothic Line Brazilian troops control the Serchio valley region after ten days of fighting.
1947 - Happy Chandler announces Ford & Gillette to sponsor World Series
1950 - Residents of the northeastern U.S. observed a blue sun and a blue moon, caused by forest fires in British Columbia. (David Ludlum)
1950 - United Nations troops recapture Seoul from the North Koreans.
1953 - "You You You" by the Ames Brothers topped the charts
1955 - NY Stock Exchange worst price decline since 1929
1956 - The first new concrete road surface to be paved as part of the Interstate Highway System following the signing of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was poured in Kansas for an 8-mile, two-lane section of U.S. 40 which became Interstate 70, a few miles west of Topeka. The 1956 Act established 90% federal funding for the U.S. System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The first State contract to begin new construction after the Act, had been issued earlier - on 2 Aug 1956, in Missouri - whereas the Kansas paving contract was awarded under the Act, but later in the month, on 31 Aug 1956. However, construction on the Kansas road had been under way prior to the Act, so Kansas had a head start, and was the first to complete a project under the Act. The road was opened on 14 Nov 1956.
1957 - Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld re-elected secretary-general of the UN
1957 Musical "West Side Story," opens on Broadway
1960 - In Chicago, the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
1960 - Longest speech in UN history (4 hrs, 29 mins, by Fidel Castro) Cuban leader Dr. Fidel Castro spoke before the United Nations on 26 September 1960. Castro was known as an eloquent speaker but also as long-winded. Often his speeches would be 3 to 4 hours long. In this speech, he alludes to that fact and promises to present a much shorter speech. Castro's presentation was primarily a complaint against U.S. policy toward his country and interference in their internal affairs.
1960 - "My Heart Has a Mind of its Own" by Connie Francis topped the charts
1961 - Roger Maris hits HR #60 off Jack Fisher, tying Babe Ruth's record
1961 - Patent for an aerial capsule (satellite) emergency separation device. A guided aerial delivery device which can be used to safely and accurately deliver a payload and supplies from an aircraft in flight to a specific target location in a reduced time. The aerial delivery device uses an overloaded ram-air drogue parachute controlled by a guidance system to steer the payload towards the intended target. When a selected altitude is reached, a recovery parachute is activated and the payload descends the remaining distance under the recovery parachute.
1962 - 1st to steal 100 bases in a season (Maury Wills goes on to 104)
1962 - TV comedy series "The Beverly Hillbillies" premiers on CBS
1963 - San Diego, CA, reached an all-time record high of 111 degrees. Los Angeles hit 109 degrees. (David Ludlum)
1963 - "Sugar Shack" by Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs entered Radio's Hot 100
1964 - "Oh, Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison topped the charts
1964 - Gilligan’s Island began its 98-show run on CBS
1968 - Hawaii Five-O debuts as an hourly program on CBS
1968 - St Louis Cards' Bob Gibson's 13th shutout, ends with 1.12 ERA
1969 - Beatles release "Abbey Road" album
1970 - "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross topped the charts
1970 - The Laguna Fire starts in San Diego County, California, burning 175,425 acres (710 km²).
1970 - Santa Ana winds brought fires to Los Angeles County, and to points south and east. Half a million acres were consumed by the fires, as were 1000 structures. Twenty firemen were injured. (25th-29th) (The Weather Channel)
1972 - American Museum of Immigration dedicated
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1973 - Concorde makes its first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in record-breaking time.
1975 - Phillies & NY Mets play a doubleheader that ends at 3:15 AM
1978 - RR clerks go on strike, halting more than 2/3 of rail service
1977 - Sir Freddie Laker began cut-rate `Skytrain' service London to NY
1979 - In the midst of a hot September for Death Valley, California, the afternoon high was 104 degrees for the second of three days, the coolest afternoon highs for the month. (The Weather Channel)
1979 - 1984 summer LA Olympic coverage sold to ABC for $225 million
1981 - Baseball: Nolan Ryan sets a Major League record by throwing his fifth no-hitter beats LA Dodgers, 5-0.
1981 - The twin-engine Boeing 767 made its maiden flight in Everett, WA
1984 - President Reagan vetoes sanctions against South Africa
1985 - Shamu was born this day in 1985 at Sea World in Orlando, Florida. She was the first killer whale to be born in captivity and survive.
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1986 - William Rehnquist becomes Chief Justice of the United States When Chief Justice Warren Burger retired in 1986, President Ronald Reagan nominated Rehnquist to fill the position. During confirmation hearings, Senator Edward Kennedy challenged Rehnquist on his unwitting ownership of property that had a restrictive covenant against sale to Jews. Despite this and other controversies, the Senate confirmed his appointment by a 65-33 vote, and he assumed the office on September 26. Rehnquist's seat as an associate justice was filled by Antonin Scalia.
1986 - Bobby (Patrick Duffy) returns to Dallas, his death is attributed to his wife Pam's bad dream (erases all of last season)
1987 - Freezing temperatures were reported in the Northern and Central Appalachians, and the Upper Ohio Valley. The morning low of 27 degrees at Concord NH tied their record for the date. Temperatures soared into the 90s in South Dakota. Pierre SD reported an afternoon high of 98 degrees. (The National Weather Summary)
1987 - "Didn't We Almost Have It All" by Whitney Houston topped the charts
1988 - US space shuttle STS-26 launched
1988 - Unseasonably warm weather prevailed across Florida. Afternoon highs of 92 degrees at Apalachicola and 95 degrees at Fort Myers were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1989 - Rain spread from the southeastern states across New England overnight. Cape Hatteras NC reported measurable rainfall for the fourteenth straight day, with 15.51 inches of rain recorded during that two week period. Phoenix AZ reported a record high of 108 degrees, and a record 134 days of 100 degree weather for the year. Afternoon temperatures were only in the 40s over parts of northwest Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. (The National Weather Summary)
1990 - In Russia, the Supreme Soviet ended decades of religious repression with a new declaration, forbidding government interference in religious activities and giving citizens the right to study religion in homes and private schools.
1991 - Four men and four women entered the Biosphere 2, an airtight, self-contained structure in Oracle, Ariz., where they would live for two years. The 7,200,000-cu-ft sealed glass and space-frame structure contained 5 biomes, including a 900,000-gallon ocean, a rain forest, a desert, agricultural areas and a human habitat. It was built in the late 1980s with $150 million in funding by Texas oil magnate Edward Bass. Biosphere 2 was designed as replica of Earth's environment (Biosphere 1). During their stay, the crew experienced various problems. Limited agricultural productivity restricted their diet. Micro-organisms in the soil reduced oxygen levels in the atmosphere and added nitrous oxide. The crew emerged on 26 Sep 1993. Unfortunately, the problems with the project's results brought scientific disdain.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#Praise_and_criticism
Births
1729 Moses Mendelssohn (d 4 January 1786) philosopher/critic/Bible translator.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Mendelssohn
1774 - Johnny Appleseed (d 1845), born John Chapman, American pioneer nurseryman who introduced apple trees to large parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. He became an American legend while still alive, largely because of his kind and generous ways, his great leadership in conservation, and the symbolic importance he attributed to apples. He was also a missionary for the Church of the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgian Church, so named because it teaches the theological doctrines contained in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Appleseed
1794 Frederick A. Packard, Marlborough, Massachusetts. (d 1867) He became the editorial secretary of the American Sunday School Union and edited various Sunday school publications, without which the growing movement would have been at sea.
1854 - Edward Bausch (d 1944) Inventor and developer of microscopes and optical instruments. In business, he became chairman Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. His father, John J. Bausch (1830-1926), was born in Germany, emigrated to America in 1849, and started a spectacle making business (the Vulcanite Optical Instrument Co.) with German immigrant Henry Lomb (1828-1908). By 1866, their company was making a simple microscope. The company name was changed to Bausch & Lomb Optical Co. in 1874, the year they produced their first compound microscope. Edward, with brothers William, and Henry all helped in the design and production of a full product line of microscopes. Edward held a number of patents related to the design of microscopes.
www.modernmicroscopy.com/main.asp?article=41&page=8
1876 - Edith Abbott (d 1957) American economist, social worker, educator, and author. Born in Grand Island, Nebraska.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Abbott
1881 - Hiram Wesley Evans (d 1966) Imperial Wizard of the "second" Ku Klux Klan from 1922 until 1939. Evans succeeded William Joseph Simmons in the position of the Imperial Wizard in November 1922.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Wesley_Evans
1888 - James Frank Dobie (d 1964) American folklorist, writer, and newspaper columnist best known for many books depicting the richness and traditions of life in rural Texas during the days of the open range. As a public figure, he was known in his lifetime for his outspoken liberal views against Texas state politics, and for his long personal war against what he saw as bragging Texans, religious prejudice, restraints on individual liberty, and the assault of the mechanized world on the human spirit. He was also instrumental in the saving of the Texas Longhorn breed of cattle from extinction.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Frank_Dobie
1888 - Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (d 1965) was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Stearns_Eliot
1897 - Pope Paul VI 262nd Roman Catholic pope (1963-78)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Paul_VI
1897 Marmion Loyd Lowe (d 1975) Soon after his conversion, he was a student at Practical Bible Training School. He returned as a faculty member in the early 1930s and was a beloved Bible teacher for over four decades. Many of his students became laborers in God's kingdom.
1898 - George Gershwin Jacob Gershvin Brooklyn NY, composer (Rhapsody in Blue)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gershwin
1902 - Albert Anastasia (born Umberto Anastasio, d 1957) was boss of what is now called the Gambino Crime Family, one of New York City's Five Families, from 1951-1957. He also ran a gang of contract killers called Murder Inc. which enforced the decisions of the Commission, the ruling council of the American Mafia.[1] He was nicknamed the "Mad Hatter" and the "Lord High Executioner".
1914 - Jack LaLanne American fitness, exercise, nutritional expert, and motivational speaker who has been called "the godfather of fitness". He has published numerous books on fitness and hosted a fitness television show between 1951 and 1985. He has 4 children. LaLanne gained recognition for his success as a bodybuilder, as well as his prodigious feats of strength. He has been inducted to the California Hall of Fame and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne
1917 - Harrison Scott Brown (d 1986) American geochemist known for his role in isolating plutonium for its use in the first atomic bombs and for his studies regarding meteorites and the Earth's origin. He was one of 67 concerned Manhattan Project scientists at Oak Ridge to sign a July 1945 petition to the President, which said, in part, "...Therefore we recommend that before this weapon be used without restriction in the present conflict, its powers should be adequately described and demonstrated, and the Japanese nation should be given the opportunity to consider the consequences of further refusal to surrender." His later studies included mass spectroscopy, thermal diffusion, fluorine and plutonium chemistry, geochemistry and planetary structure.
1925 - Martin David Robinson (b 1982), known professionally as Marty Robbins, American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. One of the most popular and successful country and Western singers of his era, for most of his nearly four-decade career, Robbins was rarely far from the country music charts, and several of his songs also became pop hits.
1926 - Julie London (d 2000) American singer, game show panelist and prolific character actress of stage, film and television. Best known for her smoky, sensual voice, she was at her singing career's peak in the 1950s. Her acting career lasted more than 35 years, concluding with the female lead role of nurse Dixie McCall on the television series Emergency! (1972–1979), co-starring her best friend Robert Fuller and her real-life husband Bobby Troup.
1927 - James Robert Cade (d 2007) American physician, university professor, research scientist and inventor. Cade, a native of Texas, earned his undergraduate and medical degrees, and became a professor of medicine and nephrology at the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida. widely remembered as the leader of the research team that formulated the sports drink Gatorade
1932 - Clifton Curtis 'C.C.' Williams (d 1967) NASA astronaut, a Naval Aviator, and a Major in the United States Marine Corps who was killed after a mechanical failure caused the flight controls in a NASA T-38 jet trainer he was piloting to stop responding. The aircraft crashed in Florida near Tallahassee within an hour of departing Patrick AFB.
1937 - Jerry Weintraub, American film producer
1947 - Lynn Anderson ND, country singer (I Never Promised you a Rose Garden)
1963 - Joe Nemecheck, NASCAR Nationwide Champion (1992)
1968 - James Patrick Caviezel, Jr. American film actor, sometimes credited as Jim Caviezel, known for the roles of Jesus in the 2004 film The Passion of the Christ, Bobby Jones in Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius, Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo, Catch in Angel Eyes and Private Witt in The Thin Red Line.
Deaths
1820 - Daniel Boone (b 1734) American pioneer, explorer, and frontiersman whose frontier exploits made him one of the first folk heroes of the United States dies quietly in his sleep at his son's home near present-day Defiance, Missouri. The indefatigable voyager was 86.
Boone was born in 1734 to Quaker parents living in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Following a squabble with the Pennsylvania Quakers, Boone's family decided to head south and west for less crowded regions, and they eventually settled in the Yadkin Valley of North Carolina. There the young Daniel Boone began his life-long love for wilderness, spending long days exploring the still relatively unspoiled forests and mountains of the region. An indifferent student who never learned to write more than a crude sentence or two, Boone's passion was for the outdoors, and he quickly became a superb marksman, hunter and woodsman.
Never satisfied to stay put for very long, Boone soon began making ever longer and more ambitious journeys into the relatively unexplored lands to the west. In May of 1769, Boone and five companions crossed over the Cumberland Gap and explored along the south fork of the Kentucky River. Impressed by the fertility and relative emptiness of the land--although the native inhabitants hardly considered it to be empty--Boone returned in 1773 with his family, hoping to establish a permanent settlement. An Indian attack prevented that first attempt from succeeding, but Boone returned two years later to open the route that became known as Boone's Trace (or the Wilderness Road) between the Cumberland Gap and a new settlement along the Kentucky River called Fortress Boonesboro. After years of struggles against both Native Americans and British soldiers, Boonesboro eventually became one of the most important gateways for the early American settlement of the Trans-Appalachian West.
Made a legend in his own time by John Filson's "Boone Autobiography" and Lord Byron's depiction of him as the quintessential frontiersman in the book Don Juan, Boone became a symbol of the western pioneering spirit for many Americans. Ironically, though, Boone's fame and his success in opening the Trans-Appalachian West to large-scale settlement later came to haunt him. Having lost his Kentucky land holdings by failing to properly register them, Boone moved even further west in 1799, trying to escape the civilized regions he had been so instrumental in creating. Finally settling in Missouri--though he never stopped dreaming of continuing westward--he lived out the rest of his life doing what he loved best: hunting and trapping in a fertile wild land still largely untouched by the Anglo pioneers who had followed the path he blazed to the West.
1867 - James Ferguson (b 1797) Scottish-American astronomer who discovered the first previously unknown asteroid to be detected from North America. He recorded it on 1 Sep 1854 at the U.S. Naval Observatory, where he worked 1848-67. This was the thirty-first of the series and is now known as 31 Euphrosyne, named after one of the Charites in Greek mythology. It is one of the largest of the main belt asteroids, between Mars and Jupiter. He was involved in some of the earliest work in micrometry was done at the old U.S. Naval Observatory at Foggy Bottom in the midst of the Civil War using a 9.6 inch refractor. He also contributed to double star astronomy. Earlier in his life he was a civil engineer, member of the Northwest Boundary Survey, and an assistant in the U.S. Coast Survey.
1900 - Jesse William Lazear (b 1866) American physician and bacteriologist, who died of yellow fever in Quemados, Cuba, during his own research into the cause of the disease. He graduated from Columbia's medical school, worked at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and upon an outbreak of yellow fever in Cuba he was appointed an assistant surgeon in the U.S. Army. As a member of the Yellow Fever Commission with Walter Reed, James Carroll and Aristides Agramonte, he was in Cuba early in 1900. Their investigation yielded proof that the disease was borne by mosquitoes. Unfortunately, Lazear was bitten accidentally by an infected mosquito. Five days later, he developed yellow fever and died on the seventh day of his illness.
1902 - Levi Strauss (born 26 Feb 1829) Inventor and manufacturer of jeans, Levi Strauss was one of the best-known beneficiaries of California's gold rush economic boom. He was born in Bavaria and trained as a tailor. One of thousands, he travelled to San Francisco in 1850, hoping to make his fortune. His original plan was to manufacture tents and wagon covers, but instead found a market using the stout canvas he had brought with him to make very durable pants for the Forty-niners. Finding that these pants sold as fast as he could make them, Strauss opened a factory, improved the design by adding copper rivets at the stress points in his pants, and adopted a heavy blue denim material called genes in France, that originated the now familiar name of "jeans".
1937 - Bessie Smith (b 1894) was an American blues singer.
Sometimes referred to as "The Empress of the Blues," Smith was the most popular female blues singer of the 1920s and 1930s.[1] She is often regarded as one of the greatest singers of her era and, along with Louis Armstrong, a major influence on subsequent jazz vocalists.
1972 - Charles James Correll (b 1890) American radio comedian, best known for his work on the Amos 'n' Andy show with Freeman S. Gosden. Correll voiced the central character of Andy Brown, along with various supporting characters. Before teaming up with Gosden, Correll worked as a stenographer and a bricklayer. The two men met in Durham, North Carolina while working for the Joe Bren Producing Company. Both Correll and Freeman vacationed at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin in the 1930s and would broadcast Amos 'n' Andy from there. From 1928 to 1934, the team never took a vacation away from their radio show. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Amos 'n' Andy on the air, the broadcast of March 19, 1958 was done by Correll and Gosden using their real voices and calling each other by their real names; this had never been done on the show before.
1973 - Ralph Lee Earnhardt (February 23, 1928 – September 26, 1973) was a NASCAR racing legend. He was the father of Dale Earnhardt, the grandfather of Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Kerry Earnhardt, and great grandfather of Jeffrey Earnhardt.
1973 - Anna Magnani (b 1908) Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo. Born in Rome to an Egyptian father and an Italian-Jewish mother, she worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing at night clubs.
1982 - Paul Kollsman (b 1900) German-American engineer who invented the world’s first accurate barometric altimeter (1928) that became vital to aviation safety. The original barometric altimeter was a simple instrument which displayed altitude by sensing barometric pressure, within an accuracy of 20 feet. On 24 Sep 1929, Jimmy Doolittle’s historic "blind flight" proved that the Kollsman altimeter made navigation possible "flying on the gauges." The guage was widely known as the “Kollsman Window” because it included a window to dial in a manual setting to calibrate the barometric pressure at the current sea-level. The invention played a major role in establishing routine scheduled air service in the U.S. and around the world.
1991 - Richard "Billy" Vaughn (b 1919) was an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, and orchestra leader.
1999 - Oseola McCarty (b 1908) local washerwoman in Hattiesburg, Mississippi who became The University of Southern Mississippi’s (USM) most famous benefactor. McCarty drew global attention after it was announced in July 1995 that she had established a trust through which, at her death, a portion of her life’s savings would be left to the university to provide scholarships for deserving students in need of financial assistance. The amount was estimated at $150,000, a surprising amount given her menial occupation.
2008 - Paul Leonard Newman (b 1925) American actor, film director, entrepreneur, humanitarian, and auto racing enthusiast. He won numerous awards, including an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in the 1986 Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money and eight other nominations, three Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Screen Actors Guild Award, a Cannes Film Festival Award, an Emmy award, and many honorary awards. He also won several national championships as a driver in Sports Car Club of America road racing, and his race teams won several championships in open wheel IndyCar racing. Newman was a co-founder of Newman's Own, a food company from which Newman donated all post-tax profits and royalties to charity. As of August 2010, these donations had exceeded US $300 million.
Christian Feast Days:
John of Meda
Cosmas and Damian
September 26 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Saints
Repose of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian (presumed author of the Gospel of John, 1, 2 and 3 John, and the Book of Revelation)
Righteous Gideon, Judge of Israel (1307 BC)
Saint Ephraim, abbot of Perekop, wonderworker of Novgorod (1492)
Saint Nilus of Rossano (Calabria) (1004)
Martyr Cyra
Other Commemorations
Glorification (1989) of New Hiero-confessor Tikhon, patriarch of Moscow and all Russia (1925)
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akaCG
www.amug.org/~jpaul/sep26.html
www.history.com/this-day-in-history
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_26
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.todayinsci.com/9/9_26.htm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_26_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)
www.christianity.com/HistoryByDay/0926/
www.hymntime.com/tch/index.htm
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih0926.htm