This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“History is a vast early warning system.” Norman Cousins
Sept. 4-10, 2023
September 4
1813 – The “Religious Remembrancer Christian Observer” is the first religious newspaper published in the U.S. It was started at the Presbyterian Publishing Center of Philadelphia.
1886 – Apache Chief Geronimo surrenders, ending last major U.S.-Indian war. He died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909 at the age of 79.
1950 – For the first time a helicopter is used to rescue an American soldier behind enemy lines. Captain Robert E. Wayne was rescued after his aircraft was shot down over Korea. H-5 helicopter pilot First Lieutenant Paul van Boven was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action. Wayne, a West Point graduate, died in 1998 at age 72 and van Boven, a former WWII POW, died in 2003 at age 80.
1951 – The first live, coast-to-coast TV broadcast in the U.S. takes place in San Francisco, California, from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. It was seen also seen in New York City.
1957 – The Arkansas National Guard is ordered by Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to keep nine black students from going into Little Rock’s Central High School. President Eisenhower subsequently issued an executive order federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and ordering them to protect the students.
1966 – The first Muscular Dystrophy telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis is held over this Labor Day weekend. Jerry Lewis started local and regional MD events in 1952. The first telethon raised $15,000. The telethons have raised over $2 billion in 50 years. Lewis last hosted the telethon in 2011 and died in 2017 at age 91. The last telethon aired in 2014. Watch an early telethon clip.
1967 – Michigan Gov. George Romney, who was a presidential candidate for the 1968 republican nomination, said during a TV interview that he had undergone “brainwashing” by U.S. officials while visiting Vietnam in 1965. Romney dropped out of the presidential race in February 1968.
1998 – Google is incorporated by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, students at Stanford University in California. The domain name was registered on September 15, 1997.
2018 – Nike announces that Colin Kaepernick will be the face of their 30th anniversary “Just Do It” advertising campaign. Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem before football games. He announced his free agency in March 2017, but still has not been picked up by any football team. He is currently working out the Las Vegas Raiders.
2019 – YouTube is fined $170 million by the Federal Trade Commission for illegally collecting data on the viewing habits of children.
September 5
1774- The Continental Congress assembles for the first time in Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia with 56 delegates from 12 colonies (Georgia is not represented).
1906 – Saint Louis University football player Bradbury Robinson makes the first legal forward pass in football to teammate Jack Schneider.
1939 – President FDR declares U.S. neutrality at the start of World War II in Europe.
1945 – Iva Toguri D’Aquino is arrested for being the wartime radio propagandist “Tokyo Rose.” She served six years in prison and is later pardoned by President Gerald Ford. D’Aquino died in 2006 at age 90.
1960 – Wilma Rudolph, called the world’s fastest woman, wins her second of three gold medals in track and field at the Olympic Games in Rome, Italy. Wilma suffered from polio as a child and overcame numerous childhood health issues and racial barriers to compete in the Olympics. After the 1960 Olympics, she became a teacher and track coach. Wilma died of brain cancer in November 1994 at age 54. Watch her run.
1975 – Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempts to assassinate President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, but was released on parole in 2009. She is now 73 years old.
1978 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter start a peace conference at Camp David, Maryland. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
2018 – An anonymous senior White House official published the opinion article in the New York Times “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration.”
September 6
1716 – The first lighthouse in the U.S., The Boston Light, is built in Boston, Massachusetts.
1899 – Carnation evaporated milk (called Carnation Sterilized Cream) is processed for the first time at a plant in Kent, Washington. The company later changed its name to Carnation Milk Company.
1901 – President William McKinley is shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. When he died 8 days later, Vice President Teddy Roosevelt became president.
1909 – Word reaches civilization that Admiral Robert Peary successfully traveled to the North Pole 5 months earlier. The New York Times printed the story on the 7th, but Dr. Frederick A. Cook claimed to have reached the pole in April 1908, one year before Peary.
1954 – The Alan Freed Show premiers at WINS radio in New York City and he begins playing what he calls “Rock ‘n Roll” music. In 1962, Freed plead guilty during the “payola” scandal to two charges of commercial bribery, was fined, and received a suspended sentence. Freed, who died in 1965 at the age of 43, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. In 2014, Freed’s ashes were removed from the Hall of Fame and placed in a Cleveland cemetery.
1995 – Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles breaks Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game record when he plays in 2,131 consecutive baseball games. Ripken stretches the record to 2,632 consecutive games over his 16-year career. Watch him homer in the game.
2000 – The U.N. Millennium Summit begins in New York. It was the largest gathering of world leaders in history with more than 150 dignitaries attending.
2002 – Congress convenes at Federal Hall in New York City for a rare special session to express the nation’s mourning for the loss on September 11, 2001, and express unity in the war against terrorism.
September 7
1813 – “Uncle Sam” is first used to refer to the United States. The nickname is attributed to meatpacker Samuel Wilson of Troy, New York, who supplies barrels of meat to American troops during the War of 1812. The barrels are stamped with “U.S.” and the meat is soon referred to as Uncle Sam’s.
1876 – An attempted robbery by the James/ Younger gang of the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota, fails and a resident is killed as the gang escapes. Frank and Jesse James get away, but Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger are arrested weeks later, tried, convicted of murder, and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Bob dies in prison in 1889. Jim is pardoned in 1901 but commits suicide the next year. Cole is also pardoned in 1901 and dies in 1916. Jesse James is murdered in 1882 and Frank James dies in 1915 at the age of 72.
1888 – Edith Eleanor McLean is the first baby placed in an incubator, called a “hatching cradle.” She is born premature at State Emigrant Hospital on Ward’s Island, New York, weighing only 2 pounds 7 ounces.
1956 – Air Force Capt. Iven Kincheloe, Jr., sets an unofficial manned aircraft altitude record when he flies his Bell X-2 more than 126,000 feet above the earth. The U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense refused to confirm the record and have never changed their decision.
1979 – The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN) makes its television debut.
1981 – Judge Wapner and the People’s Court premiers on TV and aired until 1993. The judges for the second version were former NYC Mayor Ed Koch (1997-1999), Jerry Sheindlin, husband of Judge Judy (1999-2001), and currently Marilyn Milian. Judge Joseph Wapner died in 2017 at age 97. Watch the Judge Wapner discuss his most memorable case.
2008 – The U.S. Government takes control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two largest mortgage / financing companies in the U.S.
September 8
1565 – St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the U.S., is established.
1892 – The “Pledge of Allegiance” first appears in print in The Youth’s Companion. Baptist minister Francis Bellamy is the author.
1900 – Over 8,000 people are killed when a hurricane and tidal wave destroy Galveston, Texas. It is the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history.
1916 – President Woodrow Wilson signs the Emergency Revenue Act, doubling the rate of income tax and adding inheritance and munitions profits tax.
1921 – The first Miss America, 16-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C, is crowned in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Fall Frolic, held a year earlier as a way to keep tourists in Atlantic City, is the precursor to the pageant. The longest serving Miss America Pageant host was Bert Parks (1955-1979).
1951 – Japan signs a treaty of peace with 48 countries in San Francisco following the end of World War I.
1974 – President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon of all federal crimes related to the Watergate scandal.
1994 – The MTV awards feature newlyweds Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. They were secretly married four months earlier and filed for divorce in 1996. Watch the pair open the awards ceremonies.
2005 – Two EMERCOM Il-76 aircraft land at a disaster aid staging area at Little Rock Air Force Base, making it the first time Russia had flown such a mission to North America.
September 9
1675 – The New England colonies declare war on the Wampanoag Indians, who live in what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It is believed that Thanksgiving is based on the interaction between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians years earlier.
1776 – The Continental Congress renames the “United Colonies” the “United States.”
1830 – Charles Durant, the first U.S. aeronaut, flies a hot air balloon from Castle Garden in New York City to Perth Amboy, New Jersey. An estimated 20,000 people paid to watch the flight.
1861 – Sally Tompkins becomes the only female Confederate Army commissioned officer during the Civil War. Captain Tompkins, called “The Angel of the Confederacy,” founded and directed Robertson Hospital in Richmond, Virginia.
1945 – Grace Hopper discovers the first “bug” in a computer while working with her associates at Harvard. A moth was removed from a relay with tweezers.
1955 – Elvis Presley makes his first of three appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Actor Charles Laughton hosts for Ed, who is recovering from a serious car accident. Watch Elvis in a 1956 performance.
1963 – Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) is served with a federal injunction to stop his orders that state police bar black students from enrolling in white schools in Alabama.
2008 – The iTunes Music Store reaches 100 million applications downloaded.
2009 – The iTunes Music Store reaches 1.8 billion applications downloaded.
2014 – Apple unveils the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, and Apple Watch Edition.
September 10
1608 – John Smith is elected president of the Colony Council in Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British colony in North American.
1858 – John Holden hits the first recorded home run during a baseball game between the Brooklyn Eckfords and the New York Mutuals.
1913 – The Lincoln Highway opens as the first paved coast-to-coast highway. It measures 3,389 miles from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California. Over the years the Lincoln Highway was replaced with numbered highways.
1924 – Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb are found guilty of murdering Bobby Franks, a 14-year-old acquaintance. Their lawyer was Clarence Darrow. (The following year Darrow represented a teacher in the Scopes Monkey Trial.) Leopold and Loeb, teenagers at the time of the murder, were sentenced to life in prison. Loeb was killed in prison in 1936. In 1958, after thirty-four years of confinement, Leopold was released from prison. He moved to Puerto Rico, where he died in 1971 at the age of 65.
1948 – Mildred “Axis Sally” Gillars is indicted for treason in Washington, DC. She was convicted and spent 12 years in prison. Gillars was a Nazi radio propagandist during World War II.
1953 – Swanson sells its first “TV dinner.” It was a turkey dinner. Watch a 1955 commercial.
1979 – President Carter grants clemency to four Puerto Rican nationalists who had been imprisoned for an attack on the House of Representatives in 1954 and an attempted assassination of President Truman in 1950.
1984 – Alex Trebek hosts his first episode of daily syndicated version of the game show Jeopardy! Art Fleming was the first Jeopardy! host. Trebek died in 2020 at age 80. Just nine days after being named the new Jeopardy! host, Mike Richards quit. Guest hosts Ken Jennings ($2.5 million winner) and Mayin Bialik (from The Big Bang Theory) were tagged as the new hosts.
1992 – Lucy Van Pelt in the Peanuts comics raises her Psychiatric Help from 5 cents to 47 cents.
2012 – Teachers in Chicago go on strike, affecting 350,000 students. The strike by 29,000 teachers ended on September 18th.
Image from: farmersalmanac.com
