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1807: The trial of Aaron Burr, former Vice President, for treason ends in Burr's acquittal. Article 3, Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the United States Constitution, wherein Article 3, Section 3 states, "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted." When no witnesses come forward against Burr, he is acquitted.
1903: Massachusetts becomes the first state to issue license plates.
1939: German troops surge over the Polish border, triggering World War II. The reasons given by Adolf Hitler, Germany's dictator and leader of the Nazi Party, are the supposed oppression of "German nationals" by the Poles, the wish of the people of the city of Danzig and of the "Polish Corridor" (a strip of land ceded from Germany to Poland at the end of the preceding World War) to be reunited with Germany, and the contrived Polish attack on a German radio station in Gleiwitz, near the Polish border (in reality, a staged event where Germans murdered prisoners from German concentration camps who were dressed in Polish uniforms). Great Britain and France, finally awakening to the fact that appeasement will not turn the Nazis from their monstrous plans, give Germany 48 hours in which to withdraw from Poland.
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1949: A United Nations report concludes that civil war in Korea is a very real possibility. The report alludes to continued tensions between North and South Korea and warns of not only civil insurrection but all-out war instigated by the Communists based in Pyongyang. In retrospect, it proves to be a chilling forecast of the outbreak of the Korean War.
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1939: Britain and France declare war on Germany in response to the latter nation's unwarranted military aggression against Poland. Before World War II ends in 1945, more than 30,000,000 people will have died, most of western Europe will lie in ruins, millions of people will have been rendered homeless, and three of the five leaders of the major powers (Franklin Roosevelt, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler) will have died (Roosevelt of a brain hemorrhage, Mussolini at the hands of Communist partisans in Northern Italy, and Hitler by his own hand).
1939: Nelson and Eleanor Burnett are married, leading eventually to the birth of your humble author. Hi, Mom! Hi, Dad!
1939: Washington transfers fifty older U.S. destroyers to Great Britain to augment its fleet in the Atlantic Ocean, as Britain, remembering the damage German U-Boats did to its shipping lines in World War I and expecting the same attempt by the Nazis now, institutes convoy sailing orders for its merchant fleet.
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1886: United States Army troops under the command of General Henry Ware Lawton capture Geronimo, the famous Chiracahua Apache chief, who escaped from federal custody four years earlier and has been conducting guerrilla warfare on the Mexican border. Geronimo's capture ends resistance among his shrinking band of followers and effectively closes the last major Indian war in the American West.
1951: The first transcontinental television broadcast takes place in the United States, using coaxial cable.
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1774: The first Continental Congress convenes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Twelve of the thirteen colonies are represented, Georgia being the only member not attending.
1781: French warships under the command of Comte Francois Paul Joseph de Grasse-Tilly engage and cripple British warships, thus enabling General George Washington, Lafayette, and Rochambeau with over 16,000 troops to lay siege to the beleaguered British forces at Yorktown, Virginia free from interference by British ships.
1926: Henry Ford introduces the first eight-hour work day and five-day work week in his Ford Motor Company factories.
1986: Arabic-speaking gunmen seize a Pan American Airways jet in Karachi and kill fifteen passengers. Pan Am suffers revenue losses as terrorist incidents continue to involve its aircraft and personnel. Ultimately, the loss of a Pan Am jet over Lockerbe, Scotland, will be one of the final nails in the airline's coffin.
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1776: David Bushnell launches his "Connecticut Turtle" in New York Harbor. Bushnell, a graduate of Yale University, has developed the world's first military submarine. The Turtle is seven feet long, constructed of oak held together with pitch and iron hoops. It is fully submersible, having foot-pump-operated ballast tanks and separate air tubes for intake and exhaustion of oxygen, each tube having a valve to seal it when the submarine dives. Hand-cranked propellers and a rudder give the unique craft mobility and maneuverability. It also mounts an auger on its top to bore a hole into the hull of enemy (read: British) warships and then plant a powder magazine armed by a timer. Bushnell's craft performs flawlessly, but several attempts to implant the charge are unsuccessful because so many of the British vessels in the harbor have copper-bottomed hulls. Nevertheless, from this bold if tiny beginning will someday emerge the gray wolves that will play such important roles in two world wars and whose existence and capabilities, will shape modern naval strategy.
1780: Benedict Arnold, previously a well-known and well-respected leader of American forces in the War for Independence, helps British forces loot and burn New London, Connecticut. Arnold's turnabout of loyalties will earn him that notorious honor of having his name associated with treason, putting him in the company of such luminaries as Norway's Vidkun Quisling almost two centuries later.
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1813: "Uncle Sam" first appears as a symbol of the United States in an editorial in the New York newspaper, the Troy Post.
1876: Frank and Jesse James and the Younger brothers ride into Northfield, Minnesota, intent upon robbing the bank there. What they do not know is that the town has been alerted to their approach and hastily deputized citizens are armed and waiting throughout the town. The desperadoes ride into an ambush and their planned robbery falls apart under a hail of bullets. Two of the gang die in the ambush; Cole, James, and Robert Younger are captured. The James brothers escape. Robert Younger will die in prison in 1889, and his brothers will be paroled in 1901. Jesse James will live quietly in St. Joseph, Missouri, under the alias Thomas Howard until 1882, when a cousin and former gang member will kill him with a gunshot to the back of the head.
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1944: V-1 "buzz bombs" begin landing in England, fired from German positions in France and the Low Countries. The V-1 is a pilotless, subsonic drone aircraft carrying a one-ton warhead. Allied antiaircraft gunners and pilots are quickly trained to deal with the threat. German scientists will soon follow the V-1 with the V-2, a ballistic missile whose supersonic flight makes interception of the missile impossible. These are two of the many "Vergeltungswaffen," "vengeance weapons" the Nazis hope will turn the tide of the war. Although the V-1 and V-2 are remarkable technological achievements, their military value is very low owing to limited accuracy, unreliability, and the inability of the German industrial facilities to produce them in sufficient numbers. Their psychological and political effect is much greater than their tactical and strategic worth, however, and the desire to seize the coastal launching sites and thus end the sporadic rain of these weapons on southern England will be a key factor in the Allies' ground strategy in Autumn, 1944.
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1850: California becomes the thirty-first state of the Union.
1919: 1,177 of Boston's 1,500-man police force go on strike, protesting pay scales that range from 25¢ per hour to 21¢ per hour for work weeks ranging from more than 80 to nearly 100 hours. Gangs of thugs rob, assault, and rape in what more than one contemporary observer can only describe as an "orgy of lawlessness." Governor Calvin Coolidge sends in the state militia three days later to restore order. He also fires the 1,177 strikers while praising the 427 men who remained on duty. Union leader Samuel Gompers feels the firing is too harsh a punishment for the officers' having jeopardized the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens, and demands that Coolidge reinstate the miscreants. Coolidge replies, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, at any time." Sixty-two years later, President Ronald Reagan will remind the unions of this vital truth when federal air traffic controllers jeopardize the nation's airways by attempting an illegal strike.
1965: The United States Housing and Urban Development Department is inaugurated, another triumphal step in the growth of the federal bureaucracy.
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1781: A new French naval squadron, commanded by Paul Francois Jean Nicolas de Barras, arrives in Chesapeake Bay. The growing French naval strength off American waters further cripples British naval efforts to support their beleaguered ground troops in Yorktown.
1932: The New York Independent subway system begins operations, serving areas of New York City that are not already served by the other two subway systems, the IRT or the BMT.
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1777: General George Washington, occupying a good position at Brandywine, Pennsylvania, encounters British general Howe with 15,000 British regulars. Howe's superior generalship forces Washington and his 11,000 troops from the field, and permits Howe to occupy Philadelphia on 26 September.
1941: President Franklin Roosevelt signs an order directing American naval and air forces to attack immediately any German or Italian vessel sighted in American waters. The order draws a storm of protest from the Fascist powers and praise from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in London. Roosevelt explains his action to Congress and the American people as necessary to prevent belligerents in the European conflict from conducting warlike acts in sovereign American space, as the United States is still, technically, neutral in the conflict.
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1918: American troops under General John Pershing assault German fortified positions at St. Mihiel in France. They clear the positions and seize the town despite fierce resistance by the enemy. This major engagement involving American military forces at the divisional level teaches the "Yanks" important lessons that they apply to good measure later in the month when they begin their attack in the Argonne Offensive.
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1847: General Winfield Scott, leading 7,180 American troops, engages Mexican forces under Santa Anna near Mexico City. The Mexican troops outnumber Scott's command by nearly two to one but the Americans, despite supply problems and casualties from heat exhaustion and yellow fever (which far outnumber battle casualties) have won a consistent string of victories at Contreras, Churubusco, and Molino del Rey. Scott's soldiers seize the high ground and defeat the Mexican forces here, at the Battle of Chapultepec. Santa Anna abandons Mexico City and the capital falls to General Scott. When the war with Mexico began, almost all observers expected a quick, resounding victory; after all, the Mexican army had been trained by the Duke of Wellington. The victory is quick and resounding for the United States, and foreign powers quickly rethink their assessment of American arms.
1982: The Interstate Commerce Commission approves Union Pacific Railroad's application to merge with Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific. The merger creates a unified, 23,000-mile railway system across the United States.
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1901: President William McKinley dies of gangrene from a gunshot wound he suffered on 6 September. McKinley was shot at point-blank range by Leon Czolgosz during the President's visit to the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, New York. Upon McKinley's death, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt becomes President of the United States.
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1776: British general Howe lands at Kip's Bay and quickly seizes New York City. His invasion almost traps General George Washington and his Continental Army troops, but Washington manages to withdraw to Harlem Heights.
1829: Mexico abolishes slavery, but its president, Vincente Guerrero, exempts Texas (which is still a Mexican possession) from the provisions of this law. Texas will win its independence from Mexico in 1835 and eventually the Republic of Texas will agree to join the United States. It will be a slave state when it does, and will secede from the union and be one of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War.
1950: In a bold move, all the more daring because of the the thinness of the forces defending of the Pusan perimeter, General Douglas MacArthur lands the Fifth Marine Division in a surprise amphibious assault on the port of Inchon, near Seoul, South Korea. The invasion, which many pessimists have predicted will be a bloody failure, is a total success, and so unhinges North Korea's supply chain that within days the Communists are in full retreat throughout South Korea. This rapid and unexpected success will lead to approval of MacArthur's request to carry the war to the North Koreans.
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1776: George Washington repulses an attack by British troops under General Howe at the Battle of Harlem Heights. Many of the American troops carry Pennsylvania long rifles, which enable them to shoot accurately at ranges of 200 to 400 yards. The British, armed with muskets, have an effective range of only approximately 80 yards, and casualties among the British are, accordingly, unpleasantly high. The American sharpshooters concentrate their fire especially upon the enemy officers, and after the battle, surviving British officers will complain loudly that this practice was most unsportsmanlike.
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1939: Soviet troops enter Poland, which the Germans invaded on 1 September. This invasion is part of a secret agreement in the Nazi-Soviet Anti-Aggression Pact between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. The Soviets accompany their invasion with a brutality that matches the Nazis overrunning the hapless country from the west. Two years later, in 1941, when Germany attacks the Soviet Union, they will find the bodies of tens of thousands of Poles massacred by the Soviets in the Katyn Forest.
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1891: A Presidential decree opens 900,000 acres in the Oklahoma Territory to white settlement, following agreements by the Sac, Fox, and Potawotamie Indians ceding those acres to the United States.
1851: The New York Times begins publication as a new daily newspaper. Henry J. Raymond is its first editor.
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1777: British general John Burgoyne, advancing south from Canadia along Lake Champlain and the Hudson River with approximately 8,000 troops, encounters Continental Army forces under General Horatio Gates entrenched on Bemis Heights. Burgoyne launches an attack to clear the high ground dominating the American left flank, winning a costly and very limited victory at the Battle of Freeman's Farm. Weakened by his losses and by the disruption of his supplies (the Americans having wrecked the roads behind him), Burgoyne will make one final effort to clear Bemis Heights. After its failure, he will withdraw to Saratoga where he will surrender on 17 October.
1931: Japanese militarists use incidents of violence in Mukden, China to justify military aggression against that nation. In reality, the invasion is largely a reprisal for China's boycott of Japanese textiles. They quickly occupy Manchuria, an act that eventually triggers Japanese military action against the rest of China and is a stepping stone toward embroiling the Pacific states and the United States in the Second World War ten years later.
1949: The United Mine Workers call a strike among the nation's coal workers. President Truman will invoke the Taft-Hartley Act to order them back to work at the end of the month.
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1995: American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) announces it will split into three separate companies, handling communications services, communications equipment, and computers, respectively.
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1776: British troops capture Captain Nathan Hale when he returns to Manhattan after an espionage mission on Long Island in New York. During his mission, Hale set numerous fires to harass the British, and moved through the area disguised as a Dutch schoolmaster (please see entry for 22 September 1776).
1977: Fifteen nations, including the United States of America and the U.S.S.R., sign a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to attempt to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and nuclear materials.
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1776: General Howe orders the execution by hanging of Captain Nathan Hale. Hale's last words are, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
1980: Iraqi war planes strike ten Iranian airfields in the opening moves of the Iran-Iraq war.
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1950: Congress passes the Revenue Act of 1950, increasing income and corporation taxes.
1980: Iraqi ground troops attack Iranian positions and besiege Iran's enormous oil refinery at Abadan, on the Persian Gulf. The Iran-Iraq war will last eight years, featuring such enlightened generalship as mass-wave attacks reminiscent of World War I and the use of herding people across mine fields to clear a path for soldiers to follow. In the end, both sides exhausted and nearly bankrupt, the fighting will end with almost nothing to show for it on either side. Some analysts conclude that this expensive stalemate is a driving factor behind Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
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1493: Christopher Columbus sets sail a second time from Spain for the New World, this time as governor of Spain's new colonies there. Columbus' first voyage the year before was with only three ships and, truth to tell, he was not seeking North America but rather a more convenient route to the markets of Asia. This time, he embarks for the New World with seventeen ships, more than 1,500 men under his command, enormous privileges, and the reward for first sighting land that probably belonged to the sailor actually on duty.
1869: "Black Friday" on Wall Street, as a group of financiers try to corner the gold market. Their ploys drive the price of gold up to $162.00 an ounce by noon, and many small speculators are ruined and even banks are in serious trouble before Secretary of the Treasury George Boutwell steps in, selling government gold to bring the price down more than $30.00 in fifteen minutes.
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1804: The Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution becomes law. This amendment provides for separate electoral ballots for President and Vice-President. This amendment is in response to the confusion that took place four years earlier when Aaron Burr was nearly elected President.
1951: President Harry Truman orders government agencies to adopt more stringent methods for classifying and protecting information relative to national security.
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1777: British general Howe occupies Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, after defeating George Washington's troops at the Battle of Brandywine. Howe's victory is a hollow one, however; although he easily captures the city, he finds that the Continental Congress moved to York, Pennsylvania the previous week.
1789: President George Washington appoints Edmund Jennings Randolph the first Attorney General of the United States. Congress has only recently created the office to oversee the establishment of a judiciary for the new Republic. Over the next two centuries, Randolph's office will grow to a bureaucracy within a bureaucracy, charged with enforcing the laws of the United States, intimately involved in civil and criminal matters.
1789: Samuel Oswood becomes the first Postmaster General of the United States, following his approval by Congress.
1918: General John Pershing continues his successes in the Battle of St. Mihiel with the beginning of his offensive in the Argonne Forest in France. This assault, part of a major offensive involving American, French, British, and other Allied forces, results in the elimination of the St. Mihiel-Argonne salient, an area the Germans have held since they began World War I by invading France in 1914.
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1889: New York City's first skyscraper opens. It is thirteen stories tall. Crowds gather, expecting the building to collapse because it is so tall and thus must be structurally unsound. Its architect, Bradford Gilbert, ultimately climbs to the top of the building and lets down a plumb line to show the crowd that the building is steady.
1939: Warsaw, surrounded by German armies and under constant air and ground attack, surrenders to the Nazi invaders, effectively ending organized resistance in Poland.
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1781: General George Washington lays siege to the British forces at Yorktown, Virginia. The success of this siege will effectively end British efforts to oppose the American Revolution and secure the independence of the United States.
1939: Germany and the Soviet Union partition Poland in accordance with Hitler's and Stalin's secret agreements contained in the Nazi-Soviet Anti-Aggression Pact.
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1982: On President Reagan's orders, more than 1,200 United States Marines land in Lebanon as part of an international peace-keeping force. They take up positions around Beirut International Airport and almost immediately come under harassing fire from a variety of Arabic gangs. The continued sniping and harassment will eventually provoke Marine commanders to relax the initially very tight restrictions on their troops, and air strikes, offshore bombardment by U.S. battleships, and the devastatingly accurate fire of Marine snipers will persuade most of the local thugs to leave the Marines alone. One group will not be deterred, however, and a truck bomb will destroy a Marine barracks, killing or injuring several hundred of our men.
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1949: President Truman invokes the Taft-Hartley Act and orders striking coal workers to resume work. They refuse, and federal authorities cite twenty of their leaders for contempt. Eventually, the leaders are acquitted and a settlement is reached in the strike.
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