Also on this day
Lead Story
1901
On this day in 1901, U.S. President William McKinley dies after being shot by a deranged anarchist during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.
McKinley won his first Congressional seat at the age of 34 and spent 14 years in the House, becoming known as the leading Republican expert on...
American Revolution
1779
On this day in 1779, American Colonel Daniel Brodhead concludes an ambitious assault against the Seneca Indians throughout the Allegheny Valley of Pennsylvania. Simultaneously, Major General John Sullivan had attacked the Iroquois of New York.
Brodhead had left Pittsburgh in August at the head of 600 men. Over the course of...
Automotive
1927
On September 14, 1927, dancer Isadora Duncan is strangled in Nice, France, when the enormous silk scarf she is wearing gets tangled in the rear hubcaps of her open car. (“Affectations,” said Gertrude Stein when she heard the news of Duncan’s death, “can be dangerous.”)
Isadora Duncan was born in 1877...
Civil War
1862
General Robert E. Lee’s exhausted Confederate forces hold off the pursuing Yankees by closing two passes through Maryland’s South Mountain, allowing Lee time to gather his forces further west along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg.
After the Second Battle of Bull Run, Virginia, in late August 1982, Lee decided to invade Maryland...
Cold War
1959
A Soviet rocket crashes into the moon’s surface, becoming the first man-made object sent from earth to reach the lunar surface. The event gave the Soviets a short-lived advantage in the “space race” and prompted even greater effort by the United States to develop its own space program. In 1957,...
Crime
1974
“I Shot the Sheriff” hits No. 1 on the music charts. While the song had been written by reggae legend Bob Marley the previous year, it was Eric Clapton’s version that ascended to the top of the charts.
Crime and murder have been the subject of popular recorded music since the...
General Interest
1812
One week after winning a bloody victory over the Russian army at the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armée enters the city of Moscow, only to find the population evacuated and the Russian army retreated again. Moscow was the goal of the invasion, but the deserted city held no...
1847
During the Mexican-American War, U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott enter Mexico City and raise the American flag over the Hall of Montezuma, concluding a devastating advance that began with an amphibious landing at Vera Cruz six months earlier.The Mexican-American War began with a dispute over the U.S. government’s 1845...
1975
Elizabeth Ann Seton is canonized by Pope Paul VI at the Vatican in Rome, becoming the first American-born Catholic saint.Born in New York City in 1774, Elizabeth Bayley was the daughter of an Episcopalian physician. She devoted much of her time to charity work with the poor and in 1797...
Hollywood
1982
On this day in 1982, Princess Grace of Monaco–the American-born former film star Grace Kelly, whose movie credits include The Country Girl and Rear Window–dies at the age of 52 from injuries suffered after her car plunged off a mountain road near Monte Carlo. During the height of her Hollywood...
Literary
1914
On this day in 1914, children’s author and illustrator Robert McCloskey, whose books include such classics as “Make Way for Ducklings” and “Blueberries for Sal,” is born in Hamilton, Ohio.
McCloskey, who studied art in Boston and New York in the 1930s, published his first children’s book, “Lentil,” about a small-town...
1964
On this day, writer John Steinbeck was presented the U.S. Medal of Freedom. Steinbeck had already received numerous other honors and awards for his writing, including the 1962 Nobel Prize and a 1939 Pulitzer Prize for Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck, a native Californian, studied writing intermittently at Stanford between 1920 and...
Music
1955
The question of who invented rock and roll will be never be answered authoritatively, but one of the handful of names that belongs in any discussion of the topic is Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as Little Richard. He has called himself “The Architect of Rock and Roll”—a title he...
Old West
1901
On this day in 1901, the 42-year-old Theodore Roosevelt is suddenly elevated to the White House when President McKinley dies from an assassin’s bullet. But while McKinley’s untimely death brought Roosevelt the presidency, 17 years earlier two other deaths had sent the young Roosevelt fleeing to the far West...
Presidential
1901
On this day in 1901, President William McKinley succumbs to gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin on September 6. According to witnesses, McKinley’s last words were those of the hymn “Nearer My God to Thee.”
McKinley was shaking hands in a long reception line at the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New...
Sports
1968
On this day in 1968, Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain wins his 30th game of the season, becoming the first 30-game winner in the major leagues since 1938. The Tigers scored two runs in the bottom of the ninth to come from behind in a 5-4 decision over the Oakland...
Vietnam War
1965
ARVN paratroopers and several U.S. advisers parachute into the Ben Cat area, 20 miles north of Saigon. This was the first major parachute assault of the war by the South Vietnamese. Although they failed to make contact with the enemy, they achieved their goal of driving the Viet...
1966
U.S. II Field Force initiates Operation Attleboro with an attack by the 196th Light Infantry Brigade against Viet Cong forces near the Cambodian Border in War Zone C (near Tay Ninh, 50 miles northwest of Saigon in III Corps Tactical Zone).
When the communists appeared to want to make a fight...
World War I
1916
On September 14, 1916, Italian troops during World War I launch a short, concentrated attack on Austro-Hungarian positions on the Italian Front, near the Isonzo River.
Italy’s entrance into the Great War on May 23, 1915, had opened up a new front stretching 600 kilometers—most of them mountainous—along Italy’s much-contested border...
World War II
1944
On this day in 1944, the U.S. 1st Marine Division lands on the island of Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands in the Pacific, as part of a larger operation to provide support for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who was preparing to invade the Philippines. The cost in American lives would...