Also on this day
Lead Story
1969
On this day in 1969, America’s first automatic teller machine (ATM) makes its public debut, dispensing cash to customers at Chemical Bank in Rockville Center, New York. ATMs went on to revolutionize the banking industry, eliminating the need to visit a bank to conduct basic financial transactions. By the 1980s,...
American Revolution
1789
On this day in 1789, the United States Treasury Department is founded.
The institution’s roots can be traced to 1775, when America’s leaders were looking for ways to fund the Revolutionary War. Their solution–issuing cash that doubled as redeemable “bills of credit”–raised enough capital to fuel the revolution. but also led...
Civil War
1862
President Abraham Lincoln reluctantly restores Union General George B. McClellan to full command after General John Pope’s disaster at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Virginia, on August 29 and 30. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac, saw much of his army transferred to Pope’s Army of Virginia...
Cold War
1987
The trial of Mathias Rust, the 19-year-old pilot who flew his Cessna plane into Red Square in May 1987, begins in Moscow. Rust had become an international celebrity following his daring intrusion into Soviet airspace and landing in the center of Moscow, but the Soviet government condemned his actions. Rust,...
Crime
1998
A United Nations court finds Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide, marking the first time that the 1948 law banning genocide is enforced. Because mass killings had occurred in several countries since the law went into effect, the UN...
Disaster
1923
On this day in 1923, aftershocks and out-of-control fires continue to rock Tokyo, Japan, and the surrounding area following a massive earthquake. In total, 143,000 people died in the disaster, which is known both as the Great Kwanto Earthquake and the Great Tokyo Fire, as the fire caused by the...
General Interest
31 B.C.
At the Battle of Actium, off the western coast of Greece, Roman leader Octavian wins a decisive victory against the forces of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Before their forces suffered final defeat, Antony and Cleopatra broke though the enemy lines and fled to Egypt, where they...
1666
In the early morning hours, the Great Fire of London breaks out in the house of King Charles II’s baker on Pudding Lane near London Bridge. It soon spread to Thames Street, where warehouses filled with combustibles and a strong easterly wind transformed the blaze into an inferno. When the...
1945
Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Japan formally surrenders to the Allies, bringing an end to World War II. By the summer of 1945, the defeat of Japan was a foregone conclusion. The Japanese navy and air force were destroyed. The Allied naval blockade of Japan and intensive bombing...
1945
Hours after Japan’s surrender in World War II, Vietnamese communist Ho Chi Minh declares the independence of Vietnam from France. The proclamation paraphrased the U.S. Declaration of Independence in declaring, “All men are born equal: the Creator has given us inviolable rights, life, liberty, and happiness!” and was cheered by...
Hollywood
1973
On this day in 1973, J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the best-selling fantasy novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings–the source of the award-winning blockbuster movie trilogy directed, co-produced and co-written by Peter Jackson–dies at the age of 81 in Bournemouth, England. With legions of fans worldwide, The...
Literary
1946
Hailed by many critics as Eugene O’Neill’s finest work, The Iceman Cometh opens at the Martin Beck Theater on this day in 1956. The play, about desperate tavern bums clinging to illusion as a remedy for despair, was the last O’Neill play to be produced on Broadway before the author’s...
Music
1996
Billboard Hot 100.
Jackson’s incredible run of chart-topping hits began in 1972 with the release of his fifth single, “Ben,” from the motion picture of the same name. A touching ballad about a sensitive boy’s devotion to a rat, “Ben” may seem a strange pop-cultural artifact in retrospect, but it raised...
Old West
1885
On this day in 1885, 150 white miners in Rock Springs, Wyoming, brutally attack their Chinese coworkers, killing 28, wounding 15 others, and driving several hundred more out of town.
The miners working in the Union Pacific coal mine had been struggling to unionize and strike for better working conditions for...
Presidential
1944
On this day in 1944, future President George Herbert Walker Bush is serving as a torpedo bomber pilot in the Pacific theater of World War II when his squadron is attacked by Japanese anti-aircraft guns. Bush was forced to bail out of the plane over the ocean. According to...
Sports
1991
On September 2, 1991, tennis star Jimmy Connors celebrates his 39th birthday with a fourth round win over Aaron Krickstein, 24, at the U.S. Open. The match was finally decided in a fifth-set tiebreak after a marathon four hours and 49 minutes of play.
Connors was playing with a surgically rebuilt...
2013
On this day in 2013, 64-year-old Diana Nyad becomes the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage for protection. Nyad completed the 110-mile swim from Havana to Key West, through the jellyfish-and shark-infested waters of the Straits of Florida, in approximately 53...
Vietnam War
1969
President Ho Chi Minh of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam dies of a heart attack in Hanoi. North Vietnamese officials announced his death the next day.
Ho Chi Minh had been the heart and soul of Vietnamese communism since the earliest days of the movement. Born in 1890, he...
1972
Phuc Yen, 10 miles north of Hanoi, and one of the largest air bases in North Vietnam, is smashed by U.S. fighter-bombers. During the attack, a MiG was shot down, bringing the total to 47 enemy aircraft shot down since the beginning of the North Vietnamese offensive. At...
World War I
1917
On September 2, 1917, militarist conservatives within Germany formally launch a new political party, the Vaterlandspartei or Fatherland Party, a move that reflects the growing hold of the army over all aspects of German society during the First World War.
By 1917, with mutinies flaring within the German navy and hungry...
World War II
1945
On this day in 1945, the USS Missouri hosts the formal surrender of the Japanese government to the Allies. Victory over Japan was celebrated back in the States.
As Japanese troops finally surrendered to Americans on the Caroline, Mariana, and Palau islands, representatives of their emperor and prime minister were preparing...