Let's try this one more goddamn time, nothing like killing a fucking hour and a half twice.
September 1
Today is
Random Acts of Kindness Day.
Today is
Wattle Day in Australia, marking the first day of Spring.
717 –
Siege of Constantinople: The Muslim armada with 1,800 ships, is defeated by the Byzantine navy through the use of Greek fire.
1532 – Lady
Anne Boleyn is made Marquess of Pembroke by her fiancé,
King Henry VIII of England.
1804 – Juno, one of the largest asteroids in the Main Belt, is discovered by the German astronomer
Karl Ludwig Harding.
1836 –
Narcissa Whitman, one of the first English-speaking white women to settle west of the Rocky Mountains, arrives at Walla Walla, Washington.
1878 –
Emma Nutt becomes the world's first female telephone operator when she is recruited by
Alexander Graham Bell to the Boston Telephone Dispatch Company.
1894 – Over 400 people die in the
Great Hinckley Fire, a forest fire in Hinckley, Minnesota.
1914 – The last known
passenger pigeon, a female named
Martha, dies in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo.
1952 –
The Old Man and the Sea, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Ernest Hemingway, is first published.
1969 –
A coup in Libya brings Muammar Gaddafi to power.
1972 – In Reykjavík, Iceland, American
Bobby Fischer beats Russian
Boris Spassky to become the world chess champion.
1974 – The
SR-71 Blackbird sets (and holds) the record for flying from New York to London in the time of 1 hour, 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds at a speed of 1,435.587 miles per hour (2,310.353 km/h).
1983 – Cold War:
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by a Soviet Union jet fighter when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board die, including Congressman
Lawrence McDonald.
1985 – A joint American–French expedition locates the wreckage of the
RMS Titanic.
2004 – The
Beslan school hostage crisis commences when armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in Beslan in North Ossetia, Russia.
Births
1653 – Johann Pachelbel; 1854 – Engelbert Humperdinck; 1866 – James J. Corbett; 1875 – Edgar Rice Burroughs; 1920 – Richard Farnsworth; 1922 – Yvonne De Carlol; 1923 – Rocky Marciano; 1928 – George Maharis; 1931 – Boxcar Willie; 1933 – Ann Richards; 1933 – Conway Twitty; 1937 – Al Geiberger; 1938 – Alan Dershowitz; 1939 – Lily Tomlin; 1946 – Barry Gibb; 1950 – Phil McGraw; 1970 – Padma Lakshmi
Deaths
1557 – Jacques Cartier; 1838 – William Clark; 1989 – A. Bartlett Giamatti; 2005 – R. L. Burnside; 2008 – Jerry Reed; 2012 – Hal David