This Day in History

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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