Aug 31, 1886. Charleston, SC. The first major earthquake in the recorded history of the eastern US occurred on this date. It is believed that about 100 persons perished in the quake, centered near Charleston but felt up to 800 miles away. Though a number of smaller eastern US quakes had been described and recorded since 1638, this affected people living in an area of about two million square miles.
Image: – US Geological Survey Photographic Library, Public Domain
Aug 31, 1888. At 3: 40 AM, the body of Mary Ann Nichols was found in the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England. This was( debatably) the first in a series of brutal murders that autumn that claimed the lives of at least five women, perhaps more, by a serial killer who has come to be known as Jack the Ripper because of the mutilations he inflicted on his victims. The ferocity of the Whitechapel killings created an Autumn of Terror in which the entire populace of London was terrified and where mobs frequently tried to mete out justice to suspects they picked. Mary Kelly, found Nov 9, is considered the last victim. No suspect was ever tried for the murders.
Image: Public Domain. Located at wikipedia.org, “One of a series of images from the Illustrated London News for October 13, 1888 carrying the overall caption, “With the Vigilance Committee in the East End”. This specific image is entitled ‘A Suspicious Character’.”
A time for editors and writers to show uncommon courtesy toward each other.
Image: Public Domain, Pixabay.com
On the first day of each month, the genealogy community is urged to back up their genealogy data and all computer data.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com, CC0.
A day to honor the first woman telephone operator, Emma M. Nutt, who reportedly began her professional career at Boston, MA, Sept 1, 1878, and continued working as a telephone operator for 33 years.
A month when the American Library Association and libraries across the country remind parents that a library card is the most important school supply of all. This observance was launched in 1987 to meet the challenge of then Secretary of Education William J. Bennett, who said, Lets have a national campaign… every child should obtain a library card and use it. Since then, thousands of public and school libraries join each fall in a national effort to ensure every child does just that. Read more at http://www.ala.org/librarycardsignup.
Image: freestockphotos.biz
American consumers save nearly $4.6 billion each year using coupons. Celebrate during National Coupon Month each September. Read more at http://www.nationalcouponmonth.org.
National Preparedness Month each September stresses preparing your home and family for a variety of disasters.
Wieluń, the first Polish city destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing, on 1 September 1939. Seventy-five percent of all buildings, including a clearly marked hospital and Gothic church, were destroyed. Approximately 1,200 civilians were killed.
Sept 1, 1939. After securing a non-agression pact with the USSR (that secretly allowed for the partition of Poland by the Soviet Union and Germany) on Aug 23, Germany invaded Poland without a declaration of war at 4: 45 AM. Two days later, Britain and France declared war, with Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa soon following with their own declarations. Poland, overwhelmed by German air and land power, was in German and Soviet hands before the month concluded.
Image: Public Domain, photographer unknown, via Wikipedia.org.
Pursuant to the British Calendar Act of 1751, England and the American Colonies made the correction” to the Gregorian Calendar in 1752.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
“The Great Fire of London by an unknown painter, depicting the fire as it would have appeared on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September 1666 from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf. The Tower of London is on the right and London Bridge on the left, with St Paul’s Cathedral in the distance, surrounded by the tallest flames.”
Sept 2 5, 1666. (Old Style date.) The fire generally credited with bringing about our system of fire insurance started Sept 2, 1666 (OS), in the wooden house of a baker named Farryner, at London’s Pudding Lane, near the Tower. During the ensuing three days more than 13,000 houses were destroyed, though it is believed that only six lives were lost in the fire.
Image and caption: wikimedia commons
Sept 2, 1766. James Forten was born of free black parents at Philadelphia, PA. As a powder boy on an American Revolutionary warship, heescaped being sold as a slave when his ship was captured due to the intervention of the son of the British commander. While in England he became involved with abolitionists. On his return to Philadelphia, he became an apprentice to a sailmaker and eventually purchased the company for which he worked. He was active in the abolition movement, and in 1816 his support was sought by the American Colonization Society for the plan to settle American blacks at Liberia. He rejected their ideas and their plans to make him the ruler of the colony. From the large profits of his successful sail-making company, he contributed heavily to the abolitionist movement and was a supporter of William Lloyd Garrisons antislavery journal, The Liberator. Diedat Philadelphia, PA, Mar 4, 1842.
Sept 2, 1838. Born Liliu Kamakhea in Honolulu, the island of Hawaii, Liliuokalani was the Kingdom of Hawaii’s only female sovereign and its last monarch. She was deposed in 1894 by a group led by Sanford Dole first president of the Republic of Hawaii. Despite US President Grover Cleveland’s insistence that Liliuokalani be restored to the throne, Dole refused. After a failed insurrection in 1895, she spent the remainder of her years leading the Oni paa movement, which opposed Hawaii’s annexation by the US, until her death on Nov 11, 1917, at Honolulu.
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Sept 2, 1864. After a four-week siege, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman entered Atlanta, GA. The city had been evacuated on the previous day by Confederate troops under General John B. Hood. Hood had mistakenly assumed Sherman was ending the siege Aug 27, when actually Sherman was beginning the final stages of his attack. Hood then sent troops to attack the Union forces at Jonesboro. Hoods troops were defeated, opening the way for the capture of Atlanta.
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Lt. Victor Jorgensen – US archives “New York City celebrating the surrender of Japan. They threw anything and kissed anybody in Times Square.”
Sept 2, 1945. Official ratification of Japanese surrender to the Allies occurred aboard the USS Missouri at Tokyo Bay Sept 2 (Far Eastern time) in 1945, thus prompting President Truman’s declaration of this day as Victory-over-Japan Day. Japans initial, informal agreement of surrender was announced by Truman and celebrated in the US Aug 14.
Image: Public Domain, National archive number 80-G-377094 Naval Historical Center #520697
Sept 3, 1833. Benjamin H. Day launched the New York Sun, the first truly successful penny newspaper in the US, on this date. The Sun was sold on sidewalks by newspaper boys. By 1836 the paper was the largest seller in the country with a circulation of 30,000. It was possibly Days concentration on human interest stories and sensationalism that made his publication a success while efforts at penny papers at Philadelphia and Boston had failed.
Image: WIkimedia Commons
Sept 3, 1939. British ultimatum to Germany, demanding halt to the invasion of Poland (which had started at dawn on Sept 1), expired at 11 AM, GMT, Sept 3, 1939. At 11: 15 AM, in a radio broadcast, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced the declaration of war against Germany. France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa quickly issued separate declarations of war. Winston Churchill was named First Lord of the Admiralty. Read more at http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/britain-and-france-declare-war-on-germany.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Sept 3, 1856. An American architect responsible for the modern, steel-framed skyscraper, his designs are characterized by rich ornamentation, plain outer surfaces and cubic forms. His famous motto was form follows function. Frank Lloyd Wright was a student of Sullivan’s before the two quarreled. Born at Boston, MA, Sullivan died Apr 14, 1924, at Chicago, IL.
Image: Wikipedia.org, Public Domain
Sept 3, 1803. Born to a Quaker family at Hopkinton, RI, this American schoolteacher sparked controversy in the 1830s with her efforts to educate black girls. When her private academy for girls was boycotted because she admitted a black girl, she started a school for young ladies and misses of colour. Died Jan 28, 1890, at Elk Falls, KS.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Sept 3, 1783. Treaty between Britain and the US, ending the Revolutionary War, signed at Paris, France. American signatories: John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and John Jay.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Sept 4, 1882. Four hundred electric lights came on in offices on Spruce, Wall, Nassau and Pearl Streets in lower Manhattan as Thomas Edison hooked up light bulbs to an underground cable carrying direct-current electrical power. Edison had demonstrated his first incandescent light bulb in 1879.
Image: Wikipedia Commons
Sept 4 25, 1957. Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to turn away nine black students who had been trying to attend Central High School in Little Rock. President Eisenhower sent in the 101st Army Airborne to enforce the law allowing the students to integrate the school, and on Sept 25, national troops escorted the nine into the school.
Image: Creative Commons License by Sgerbic,
Anniversary of the hiring of the first newsboy in the US, 10-year-old Barney Flaherty, who is said to have answered the following classified advertisement, which appeared in the New York Sun in 1833: To the Unemployed a number of steady men can find employment by vending this paper. A liberal discount is allowed to those who buy to sell again.
Image: WIkimedia Commons
Sept 4, 1918. Legendary radio broadcaster and newsman, born at Tulsa, OK, he is best remembered for his syndicated features that ran twice per day on the ABC Radio Network. The Rest of the Story was a behind-the-scenes look at the rise to prominence of famous people from all walks of life, and his morning news program was opinionated, occasionally sarcastic and full of offbeat human interest stories. Harvey died at Phoenix, AZ, Feb 28, 2009.
Image: Public domain
Sept 5- 6, 1972. Eleven members of the Israeli Olympic Team were killed in an attack on the Olympic Village at Munich and attempted kidnapping of team members. Four of seven guerrillas, members of the Black September faction of the Palestinian Liberation Army, were also killed. In retaliation, Israeli jets bombed Palestinian positions at Lebanon and Syria on Sept 8, 1972. Read more at http://life.time.com/history/munich-massacre-1972-olympics-photos/.
Plaque in front of the Israeli athletes’ quarters commemorating the victims of the Munich massacre. The inscription, in German and en:Hebrew, reads: The team of the State of Israel lived in this building during the 20th Olympic Summer Games from 21 August to 5 September 1972. On 5 September, [list of victims] died a violent death. Honor to their memory.
