September 26

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 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 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 – Johnny Appleseed, environmentalist (d. 1847)
• 1791 – Théodore Géricault, French writer (d. 1824)
• 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 and social activist (d. 1940)
• 1875 – Edmund Gwenn, actor (d. 1959)
• 1876 – Edith Abbott, social worker, educator, and author (d. 1957)
• 1888 – J. Frank Dobie, American folklorist and newspaper columnist
• 1888 – T. S. Eliot, American poet and editor (d. 1965)
• 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
• 1933 – Donna Douglas, American actress
• 1936 – Winnie Mandela, South African anti-apartheid activist
• 1944 – Anne Robinson, British television host
• 1945 – Bryan Ferry, singer
• 1946 – Christine Todd Whitman, American politician
• 1947 – Lynn Anderson, country singer
• 1948 – Olivia Newton-John, Australian singer
• 1954 – Kevin Kennedy, baseball manager and television host
• 1955 – Carlene Carter country singer
• 1956 – Linda Hamilton, American actress
• 1956 – Clip Payne, musician (P Funk)
• 1962 – Melissa Sue Anderson, American actress
• 1964 – Les Claypool, American musician
• 1967 – Shannon Hoon, singer (Blind Melon) (d. 1995)
• 1968 – James Caviezel, actor
• 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:
  • Nawabzada Narullah Khan, Pakistani politician and democrat
  • Robert Palmer, British singer (b. 1949)

Holidays and observations

• Bureflux (Discordianism)
• European Day of Languages