26 September - Definition and Overview

September 26 is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 96 days remaining.

Events

• 1580 - Sir Francis Drake circumnavigates the globe
• 1687 - The Parthenon in Athens is partially destroyed after an explosion caused by the bombing from Venetian forces led by Morozini who were besieging the Ottoman Turks stationed in Athens.
• 1777 - British troops occupy Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the American Revolution.
• 1789 - Thomas Jefferson appointed first United States Secretary of State; John Jay appointed first Chief Justice of the United States; Samuel Osgood appointed first United States Postmaster General; Edmund Randolph appointed first United States Attorney General.
• 1810 - A new Act of Succession is adopted by the Riksdag of the Estates and Jean Baptiste Bernadotte becomes heir to the Swedish throne.
• 1907 - New Zealand becomes a dominion
• 1914 - The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is established by the Federal Trade Commission Act.
• 1918 - Battle of Meuse
• 1934 - Steamship RMS Queen Mary is launched
• 1944 - Operation Market Garden fails
• 1950 - United Nations troops recapture Seoul from the North Koreans.
• 1957 - Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story opens on Broadway
• 1960 - In Chicago, Illinois the first televised debate takes place between presidential candidates Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy.
• 1961 - Bob Dylan makes his public debut
• 1962 - Yemen Arab Republic is proclaimed
• 1962 - Premiere of "The Beverly Hillbillies" on CBS
• 1969 - Chicago Seven trial begins
• 1969 - The Beatles album Abbey Road is released in the UK
• 1970 - The Laguna Fire Fire starts in San Diego County burning 175,425 acres (710 km²).
• 1981 - Nolan Ryan sets a Major League Baseball record by throwing his fifth no-hitter.
• 1983 - Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov averts a worldwide nuclear war (because of time-zone differences, the date was Sept. 26 in the Soviet Union, and Sept. 25 in the West)
• 1983 - Australia II, first non-American winner, wins the Americas Cup
• 1988 - Ben Johnson is stripped of his Olympic gold medal in the 100 meter dash for failing a drug test
• 1991 - Biosphere 2 opens
• 1997 - A Garuda Indonesia Airbus A-300 crashes near Medan, Indonesia, airport, killing 234; an earthquake strikes the Italian regions of Umbria and the Marche, causing part of the basilica of St. Francis at Assisi to collapse.
• 2001 - Star Trek: Enterprise beings airing in the US.
• 2002 - The Joola, an overloaded Senegalese ferry capsizes in the ocean off the coast of The Gambia killing more than 950; 30 killed in gun attack at a temple in Gandhinagar, India; 5 people shot dead in a botched bank robbery in Nebraska.
• 2003 - Nupedia, an earlier form of Wikipedia, was shut down.
• 2004 - The Seattle Seahawks shutout the San Francisco 49ers 34-0. This marks the first time in a league record 27 years and 456 games that the San Francisco 49ers suffered a shutout. The last shutout occurred in 1977 when Atlanta won 7-0. Several of the players in this game were either not even born yet or very young children when the last shutout occurred.

Births

• 1774 - John Chapman ("Johnny Appleseed"), environmentalist (d. 1847)
• 1869 - Komitas, Armenian composer (d. 1935)
• 1870 - King Christian X of Denmark (d. 1947)
• 1871 - Winsor McCay, American cartoonist (d. 1934)
• 1874 - Lewis Hine, photographer, social activist (d. 1940)
• 1875 - Edmund Gwenn, actor (d. 1959)
• 1876 - Edith Abbott, social worker, educator, and author (d. 1957)
• 1888 - T. S. Eliot, American poet (d. 1965)
• 1888 - J. Frank Dobie, Texas folklorist and newspaper columnist.
• 1889 - Martin Heidegger, German philosopher (d. 1976)
• 1891 - Charles Munch, French conductor and violinist (d. 1968)
• 1895 - George Raft, actor (d. 1980)
• 1897 - Pope Paul VI (d. 1978)
• 1898 - George Gershwin, American composer (d. 1937)
• 1914 - Jack LaLanne, fitness advocate
• 1925 - Marty Robbins, country music singer (d. 1982)
• 1926 - John Coltrane, American musician (d. 1967)
• 1930 - Fritz Wunderlich, tenor (d. 1966)
• 1932 - Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India
• 1936 - Winnie Mandela, South African anti-apartheid activist
• 1944 - Anne Robinson, British television host
• 1945 - Bryan Ferry, singer
• 1948 - Olivia Newton-John, Australian singer
• 1954 - Kevin Kennedy, baseball manager, television host
• 1956 - Clip Payne, musician (P Funk)
• 1956 - Linda Hamilton, American actress
• 1962 - Melissa Sue Anderson, American actress
• 1964 - Les Claypool, American musician
• 1967 - Shannon Hoon, singer ("Blind Melon") (d. 1995)
• 1968 - James Caviezel, actor (The Passion of the Christ)
• 1973 - Chris Small, Scottish snooker player
• 1975 - Emma Härdelin, Swedish singer (Garmarna, Triakel)
• 1981 - Serena Williams, American tennis player

Deaths

• 1802 - Baron Jurij Vega, Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer (b. 1754)
• 1820 - Daniel Boone, American frontiersman (b. 1734)
• 1868 - August Ferdinand Möbius, German mathematician and astronomer (b. 1790)
• 1904 - John F. Stairs, Canadian businessman, statesman (b. 1848)
• 1937 - Bessie Smith, American blues singer (b. 1894)
• 1945 - Béla Bartók, Hungarian composer (b. 1881)
• 1947 - Hugh Lofting, British writer (b. 1886)
• 1952 - George Santayana, philosopher (b. 1863)
• 1998 - Betty Carter, jazz singer
• 2003 - Robert Palmer, British singer (b. 1949)
• 2003 - Nawabzada Narullah Khan, Pakistani politician and democrat

Holidays and observations

• Bureflux (Discordianism)
• European Day of Languages (http://www.ecml.at/edl/)