September 26th in History
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.)