September 12
Six months after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev succeeds him with his election as first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Khrushchev, in 1961, authorized construction of the Berlin Wall in East Germany. – 1960.
Hurricane Gilbert slams into Jamaica. Approximately 80% of the island’s homes were either seriously damaged or destroyed and approximately 500,000 of the country’s two million residents were left homeless and more than 200 persons lost their lives. – 1988.
Representatives from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union sign an agreement to give up all occupation rights in Germany. The largely symbolic action cleared the way for East Germany and West Germany to reunite after being separated by the Berlin Wall during the Cold War. – 1990.
September 13
Francis Scott Key writes a poem which is later set to music and in 1931 becomes the U.S. National Anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” – 1814.
Eleven prison employees and 29 inmates die in four days of rioting at New York State’s Attica Prison and the retaking of the prison. The riot caused the Nation to take a closer look at prison conditions, for inmates and their guards alike. – 1971.
September 14
U.S. president William McKinley dies after being shot by a deranged anarchist during the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, N.Y.. – 1901.
September 15
The Battle of Britain reaches its climax when the Royal Air Force (RAF) shoots down 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. – 1940.
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 brilliant landing cut the North Korean forces in two, and the U.S.-led U.N. force push inland to recapture Seoul, the South Korean capital that had fallen to the communists in June. Allied forces converged from the north and the south to devastate the North Korean army and take 125,000 enemy troops prisoner. – 1950.
U.S. president John F. Kennedy signs on to a $900 million public-works bill for projects in economically depressed areas of the U.S.. – 1962.
A bomb explodes during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. to kill four young girls. A well-known Ku Klux Klan member, Robert Chambliss, was charged with murder and with buying 122 sticks of dynamite. In October 1963, Chambliss was cleared of the murder charge and received a six-month jail sentence and a $100. fine for the dynamite. After Alabama attorney general Bill Baxley reopened the case, Chambliss was convicted in 1977 and sentenced to life in prison. – 1963.
Boxer Muhammad Ali defeats Leon Spinks at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans to win the world heavyweight boxing title for the third time in his career, the first fighter to do so. – 1978.
September 16
In his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste. – 1932.
U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Selective Service and Training Act, which requires all male citizens between the ages of 26 and 35 to register for the military draft. – 1940.
A 34-year-old man goes on a rampage at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. and kills 12 individuals and wounds several others over the course of an hour before he is fatally shot by police. Investigators later determined that the gunman was a computer contractor for a private information technology firm and had acted alone. – 2013.
September 17
At a New York convention of the National Labor Congress, Susan B. Anthony calls for the formation of a Working Women’s Association. As a delegate to the Congress, she persuades the committee on female labor to call for votes for women and equal pay for equal work. But male delegates delete the reference to the vote – 1868.
NASA publicly unveils its first space shuttle, the Enterprise, during a ceremony in Palmdale, Calif.. Development of the aircraft-like spacecraft cost almost $10 billion and took nearly a decade. – 1976.
September 18
George Washington lays the cornerstone to the United States Capitol building, the home of the legislative branch of American government. The building took nearly 70 years to complete, because architects came and went, the British set fire to it, and it was called into use during the Civil War. – 1793.