This Day in History

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September 14

1741 – George Frideric Handel completes his oratorio Messiah.

1752 – The British Empire adopts the Gregorian calendar, skipping eleven days (the previous day was September 2).

1901 – U.S. President William McKinley dies eight days after an assassination attempt (If he died, wasn't that an actual assassination?) on September 6. Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States at age 42, the youngest person ever to do so.

1960 – The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is founded.

1968 - Roy Orbison's house in Nashville burned down. His two eldest sons both died in the blaze. Orbison was on tour in the UK at the time of the accident.

1969 – The US Selective Service selects September 14 as the first Draft Lottery date.

1974 - Eric Clapton scored a US No.1 with his version of the Bob Marley song 'I Shot The Sheriff'. Clapton's version of the song was included on his 1974 album 461 Ocean Boulevard.

1979 - The film Quadrophenia was released. Based on The Who's 1973 rock opera the film featured Phil Daniels, Toyah Willcox, Ray Winstone, Michael Elphick and Sting.

1994 – The Major League Baseball season is canceled because of a strike.

US singer Steve Earle was sentenced to 1 year in jail after being found guilty of possession of crack cocaine.

1998 – Telecommunications companies MCI Communications and WorldCom complete their $37 billion merger to form MCI WorldCom.

2000 – Microsoft releases Windows ME.

2001 – Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital.

2008 - Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson was one of the pilots who flew specially chartered flights after 85,000 tourists were stranded in the US, the Caribbean, Africa and Europe after Britain's third-largest tour operator went into administration. The singer, who had worked for the airline Astraeus for nine years, took up flying during a low point in his solo career after he quit the band in 1993.

Births

1879 – Margaret Sanger; 1898 – Hal B. Wallis; 1914 – Clayton Moore, Mae Boren Axton 'The Queen Mother of Nashville' (songwriter); 1936 – Walter Koenig; 1944 – Joey Heatherton; 1946 - Pete Agnew(Nazareth); 1947 – Sam Neill; 1949 – Steve Gaines(Lynyrd Skynyrd), Ed King(Lynyrd Skynyrd); 1954 – Barry Cowsill; 1961 – Wendy Thomas (Wendy's); 1962 – Robert Herjavec; 1964 – Faith Ford; 1965 – Dmitry Medvedev; 1972 – Notah Begay III; 1973 – Andrew Lincoln; 1983 – Amy Winehouse (British skank)

Deaths

1638 – John Harvard (yeah, that one); 1715 – Dom Pérignon (yeah, that one); 1836 – Aaron Burr (3rd VPOTUS); 1851 – James Fenimore Cooper; 1901 – William McKinley (25th POTUS); 1927 – Isadora Duncan; 1936 – Irving Thalberg; 1982 – Grace Kelly; 1984 – Janet Gaynor; 2001 – Dorothy McGuire; 2002 – LaWanda Page (The Bronze Goddess of Fire, 'Aunt Esther' on Sanford & Son); 2009 – Henry Gibson; 2009 – Patrick Swayze