Confederates capture Harpers Ferry

William Howard Taft is born in Cincinnati, Ohio on September 15, 1857. Taft was born into a politically active family; his father had served as President Ulysses S. Grant’s secretary of war. He attended college at Yale University, graduating second in his class. He then attended Cincinnati Law School earning his law degree in 1880. […]

Mary Clarissa Agatha Miller, later known as Agatha Christie, is born on September 15, 1890 in Torquay, Devon, England. Raised and educated at Ashfield, her parents’ comfortable home, Christie began making up stories as a child. Her mother and her older sister Madge also made up stories: Madge told especially thrilling tales about a fictional, […]

During the Battle of the Somme, the British launch a major offensive against the Germans, employing tanks for the first time in history. At Flers Courcelette, some of the 40 or so primitive tanks advanced over a mile into enemy lines but were too slow to hold their positions during the German counterattack and subject […]

The Battle of Britain reaches its climax when the Royal Air Force (RAF) downs 56 invading German aircraft in two dogfights lasting less than an hour. The costly raid convinced the German high command that the Luftwaffe could not achieve air supremacy over Britain, and the next day daylight attacks were replaced with nighttime sorties […]

During the Korean War, U.S. Marines land at Inchon on the west coast of Korea, 100 miles south of the 38th parallel and just 25 miles from Seoul. The location had been criticized as too risky, but U.N. Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur insisted on carrying out the landing. By the early evening, the Marines had […]

Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel Lolita is published in Paris on September 15, 1955. The novel, about a man’s obsession with a 12-year-old girl, had been rejected by four publishers before G.P. Putnam’s Sons accepted it. The novel became a bestseller that allowed Nabokov to retire from his career as college professor. Nabokov was born in […]

On September 15, 1962, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “Sherry” hits the top of the pop music charts. It was the start of a remarkable run of hits. Valli (born Francis Casteluccio) had been hard at work trying to become a star for the better part of a decade before the Four Seasons achieved […]

On September 15, 1971, a group of activists sets sail from Vancouver aboard a repurposed fishing boat that they have named the Greenpeace. Their mission is to stop the United States from testing a nuclear bomb beneath the Alaskan island of Amchitka. Though they will eventually lose the fight, the environmentalist organization Greenpeace will emerge […]

Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter ever to do so.

On September 15, 2008, the venerable Wall Street brokerage firm Lehman Brothers seeks Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the largest victim of the subprime mortgage crisis that would devastate financial markets and contribute to the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Lehman Brothers History At the time of its collapse, Lehman Brothers was the […]