9 September

9          Arminius’ alliance of six Germanic tribes ambushes and annihilates three Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.

214      Aurelian (born), Roman emperor (died 275)

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

384     Honorius (born), Roman emperor (died 423)

533      A Byzantine army of 15,000 men under Belisarius lands at Caput Vada (modern Tunisia) and marches to Carthage.

1087   William II becomes King of England, taking the title King William II, (reigned until 1100).

1087   William the Conqueror (died), English king (born 1028)

1543    Mary Stuart, at nine months old, is crowned “Queen of Scots” in the central Scottish town of Stirling.

1569    Pieter Bruegel the Elder (died), Flemish painter (born 1525)

1583    Humphrey Gilbert (died), English explorer (born 1539)

1585    Cardinal Richelieu (born), French clergyman (died 1642)

1656    Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (born), German composer (died 1746)

1676    Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve (died), French army officer, founded Montreal (born 1612)

1731    Francisco Javier Clavijero (born), Mexican priest, historian, and scholar (died 1787)

1737    Luigi Galvani (born), Italian physician and physicist (died 1798)

1739    Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in Britain’s mainland North American colonies prior to the American Revolution, erupts near Charleston, South Carolina.

1754    William Bligh (born), English admiral and politician, 4th Governor of New South Wales (died 1817)

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

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

1807   Richard Chenevix Trench (born), Irish-English archbishop and philologist (died 1886)

1815    John Singleton Copley (died), American-English colonial and painter (born 1738)

1823   Joseph Leidy (born), American paleontologist (died 1891)

1828   Leo Tolstoy (born), Russian author and playwright (died 1910)

1834   James Weddell (died), Belgian-English sailor and navigator (born 1787)

1834   Joseph Henry Shorthouse (born), English author (died 1903)

1839   Devil Anse Hatfield (born), American guerrilla leader (died 1921)

1839   John Herschel takes the first glass plate photograph.

1850   California is admitted as the thirty-first U.S. state.

1850   The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas’s claimed territory (now parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) to federal control in return for the U.S. federal government assuming $10 million of Texas’s pre-annexation debt.

1855    Anthony Francis Lucas (born), Croatian-American engineer and explorer (died 1921)

1855    Crimean War: The Siege of Sevastopol comes to an end when Russian forces abandon the city.

1863   American Civil War: The Union Army enters Chattanooga, Tennessee.

1868   Mary Hunter Austin (born), American author (died 1934)

1886   The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is finalized.

1887   Alf Landon (born), American lieutenant, banker, and politician, 26th Governor of Kansas (died 1987)

1890   Colonel Harland D. Sanders (born), American businessman, founded KFC (died 1980)

1892   Tsuru Aoki (born), Japanese-American actress (died 1961)

1894   Arthur Freed (born), American composer and producer (died 1973)

1899   Bruno E. Jacob (born), American academic, founded the National Forensic League (died 1979)

1901    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (died), French painter and illustrator (born 1864)

1905    Joseph E. Levine (born), American film producer, founded Embassy Pictures (died 1987)

1907    Ernest Wilberforce (died), English bishop (born 1840)

1914    John Passmore (born), Australian philosopher (died 2004)

1914    World War I: The creation of the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, the first fully mechanized unit in the British Army.

1915    Albert Spalding (died), American baseball player, manager, and businessman, co-founded Spalding (born 1850)

1920   Robert Wood Johnson III (born), American businessman and philanthropist (died 1970)

1922    Warwick Estevam Kerr (born), Brazilian geneticist, entomologist, and engineer

1923    Cliff Robertson (born), American actor, director, and screenwriter (died 2011)

1923    Daniel Carleton Gajdusek (born), American physician, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2008)

1924    Hanapepe Massacre occurs on Kauai, Hawaii.

1924    Jane Greer (born), American actress and singer (died 2001)

1924    Russell M. Nelson (born), American captain, surgeon, and religious leader

1926    In the United States the National Broadcasting Company is formed.

1926    Yusuf al-Qaradawi (born), Egyptian theologian and author

1927    Elvin Jones (born), American drummer (died 2004)

1927    Tatyana Zaslavskaya (born), Russian sociologist (died 2013)

1930   Frank Lucas (born), American drug trafficker

1935    Chaim Topol (born), Israeli actor, singer, and producer

1939    Burmese national hero U Ottama dies in prison after a hunger strike to protest Britain’s colonial government.

1940   George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer.

1941    Dennis Ritchie (born), American computer scientist, created the C programming language (died 2011)

1941    Hans Spemann (died), German embryologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1869)

1941    Otis Redding (born), American singer-songwriter and producer (died 1967)

1942    Danny Kalb (born), American singer and guitarist (Blues Project)

1942    World War II: A Japanese floatplane drops incendiary bombs on Oregon.

1943    Charles McLean Andrews (died), American historian (born 1863)

1943    World War II: The Allies land at Salerno and Taranto, Italy.

1945    Dee Dee Sharp (born), American singer

1946    Bruce Palmer (born), Canadian bass player (Buffalo Springfield and The Mynah Birds) (died 2004)

1946    Doug Ingle (born), American singer-songwriter and keyboard player (Iron Butterfly)

1947    First case of a computer bug being found: a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University.

1947    Freddy Weller (born), American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Paul Revere & the Raiders)

1948   Kim Il-sung declares the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

1948   Pamela Des Barres (born), American actress, singer, and author (The GTOs)

1949    Daniel Pipes (born), American historian and author

1949    John Curry (born), English figure skater (died 1994)

1950    John McFee (born), American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (The Doobie Brothers and Southern Pacific)

1951    Tom Wopat (born), American actor, singer, and director

1952    Angela Cartwright (born), English-American actress and singer

1952    David A. Stewart (born), English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Eurythmics, The Tourists, Vegas, Platinum Weird, and SuperHeavy)

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

1960   Hugh Grant (born), English actor and producer

1965    The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is established.

1966    Adam Sandler (born), American actor, singer, screenwriter, and producer

1966    The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1969    In Canada, the Official Languages Act comes into force, making the French language equal to the English language throughout the Federal government.

1970    A British airliner is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to Dawson’s Field in Jordan.

1971    The four-day Attica Prison riot begins, which eventually results 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.

1975    John McGiver (died), American actor (born 1913)

1975    Michael Bublé (born), Canadian singer-songwriter and actor

1976    Mao Zedong (died), Chinese politician (born 1893)

1978    Jack Warner (died), Canadian-American film producer, co-founded Warner Bros. (born 1892)

1981    Jacques Lacan (died), French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist (born 1901)

1991    Tajikstan declares independence from the Soviet Union.

1993    Helen O’Connell (died), American singer, actress, and dancer (born 1920)

1993    The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state.

1994    Patrick O’Neal (died), American actor (born 1927)

1997    Burgess Meredith (died), American actor, singer, director, and producer (born 1907)

1999    Sega releases the first 128 bit video game console the Dreamcast.

2001   Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al Qaeda assassins who claimed to be Arab journalists wanting an interview.

2001   At exactly 01:46:40 UTC, the Unix billenium is reached, marking the beginning of the use of 10-digit decimal Unix timestamps.

2003   Edward Teller (died), Hungarian-American physicist (born 1908)

2004   2004 Australian embassy bombing: A bomb explodes outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, killing 10 people.

2006   William Bernard Ziff, Jr. (died), American businessman (born 1930)

2007   Hughie Thomasson (died), American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Lynyrd Skynyrd and Outlaws) (born 1952)

2009   At exactly 9:09:09 PM, the Dubai Metro, the first urban train network in the Arabian Peninsula, is ceremonially inaugurated.

2010   A natural gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, California, creates a “wall of fire” more than 1,000 feet (300 m) high.

2012   Larry Gibson (died), American environmentalist (born 1946)

2013   Patricia Blair (died), American actress (born 1933)

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EO Smith

Interests include biological anthropology, evolution, social behavior, and human behavior. Conducted field research in the Tana River National Primate Reserve, Kenya and on Angaur, Palau, Micronesia, as well as research with captive nonhuman primates at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center and the Institute for Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya.
EO Smith
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