September 26 is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years). There are 96 days remaining until the end of the year. (Illustration: The Parthenon is partially destroyed, 9/26/1687.)

Today in History

• Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hind returns to England from its circumnavigation of the globe (1580)
• The Parthenon is partially destroyed when a mortar round detonates gunpowder being stored in the ancient building (1687)
• Ed Reulbach becomes the first (and only) baseball player to throw two shutouts in one day (1908)
• The Battle of Meuse-Argonne results in the largest number of US dead in a single battle (1918)
• Machine Gun Kelly gives FBI agents the nickname “G-Men” (1933)
• The first Kennedy-Nixon debate takes place (1960)
• Станисла́в Петро́в (Stanislav Petrov) prevents a retaliatory nuclear strike against the US by judging a missile-launch warning as false (1983)
• The UK agrees to hand over Hong Kong to the Chinese (1984)
• Yves Rossy crosses the English Channel using a winged jet pack (2008)

Birthdays

• Johnny Appleseed, nurseryman (1774)
• Ива́н Па́вло (Ivan Pavlov), bell ringer (1849 — O.S. September 14)
• Winsor McCay, rarebit fiend (1867)
• T.S. Eliot, old possum (1888)
• Martin Heidegger, philosopher (1889)
• George Gershwin, blue rhapsodist (1898)
• George Raft, movie gangster (1901)
• Anthony Blunt, Cambridge Five spy (1907)
• Jack LaLanne, godfather of fitness (1914)
• Manmohan Singh, Indian prime minister (1932)
• Donna Douglas, Beverly hillbilly (1933)
• Kent McCord, TV cop (1942)
• Bryan Ferry, Roxy musician (1945)
• Andrea Dworkin, feminist (1946)
• Louise Simonson, comic book writer (1946)
• Christine Todd Whitman, politician (1946)
• Olivia Newton-John, Grease queen (1948)
• Linda Hamilton, Terminator mom (1956)
• Melissa Sue Anderson, Little House resident (1962)
• Sheri Moon Zombie, aptly named scream queen (1970)
• Serena Williams, tennis player (1981)

Deaths

• Daniel Boone, frontiersman (1820)
• August Ferdinand Möbius, stripper (1868)
• Levi Strauss, blue jean maker (1902)
• Lafcadio Hearn, writer (1904)
• Bessie Smith, empress of the blues (1937)
• Béla Bartók, composer (1945)
• William Strunk, Jr., style guider (1946)
• Hugh Lofting, Doctor Doolittle chronicler (1947)
• George Santayana, philosopher (1952)
• Billy Vaughn, big band leader (1991)
• Betty Carter, jazz singer (1998)
• Richard Mulligan, Soap star (2000)
• Robert Palmer, simply irresistible (2003)
• Byron Nelson, golfer (2006)
• Paul Newman, food manufacturer (2008)
• Gloria Stuart, actress (2010)

Holidays and Celebrations

• Feast of Cosmas and Damian
• Ecuadorian Day of the National Flag
• European Day of Languages
• Yemen Revolution Day
• National Corned Beef Hash Day

(*O.S., or Old Style, when used, refers to the fact that Russia did not convert from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar until 1918.)