September 12 is the 255th day of the year (256th in leap years). There are 110 days remaining until the end of the year. (Photo: Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games. (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R96374 / CC-BY-SA 3.0))

Today in History

• The Greeks defeat the Persians at the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE)
• Henry Hudson’s Half Moon starts up the Hudson River (1609 CE)
• The largest cavalry charge in history takes place at the Battle of Vienna (1683 CE)
• Elizabeth Barrett elopes with Robert Browning (1846 CE)
• The “Ship of Gold” sinks (1857 CE)
• Adolf Hitler joins the Nazi Party (1919 CE)
• Leó Szilárd conceives the idea of a nuclear chain reaction (1933 CE)
• The Lascaux Cave Paintings are discovered (1940 CE)
• The Battle of Edson’s Ridge begins (1942 CE)
• Otto Skorzeny rescues Benito Mussolini at Gran Sasso (1943 CE)
• The Phantom of Flatwoods appears in West Virginia (1952 CE)
• JFK and Jackie marry (1953 CE)
• Bonanza, the first regularly scheduled TV show in color, premiers (1959 CE)
• Luna 2 reaches the Moon (1959 CE)
• Gemini 11 is launched (1966 CE)
• Haile Selassie is deposed (1974 CE)
• A plane crashes on the White House lawn (1994 CE)
• Hong Kong Disneyland opens (2005 CE)

Birthdays

• Yao Ming, basketball player (1980)
• Angel Cabrera, golfer (1969)
• Louis C. K., comic (1967)
• Vernon Maxwell, basketball player (1965)
• Michael Dobson, author (1952)
• Irina Rodnina, figure skater (1949)
• Barry White, singer (1944)
• Leonard Peltier, convicted activist (1944)
• Linda Gray, actress (1940)
• Ian Holm, actor (1931)
• George Jones, singer (1931)
• Stanislaw Lem, author (1921)
• Desmond Llewellyn, “Q” (1914)
• Jesse Owens, Olympic athlete (1913)
• Irene Joliot-Curie, scientist (1897)
• Alfred A. Knopf, publisher (1892)
• Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher (1891)
• Maurice Chevalier, actor and singer (1888)
• H.L. Mencken, sage of Baltimore (1880)
• Richard Gatling, machine gun inventor (1818)

Deaths

• David Foster Wallace, writer (2008)
• Johnny Cash, musician (2003)
• Tom Ewell, actor (1994)
• Raymond Burr, actor (1993)
• Anthony Perkins, actor (1992)
• Robert Lowell, poet laureate (1977)
• Steve Biko, activist (1977)
• Tommy Armour, golfer (1968)
• Hugo Schmeisser, weapons designer (1953)
• Hajime Sugiyama, Japanese minister of war (1945)
• Peter Mark Roget, thesaurus lexicographer (1869)
• Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, field marshal (1819)

Holidays and Celebrations

• Defenders Day (Maryland)
• National Day (Cape Verde)
• Day of Conception (Russia)
• Programmer’s Day (International)
• Saint Patrick’s Battalion Commemoration (Mexico)

(*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.)