September 9
Today in America's Present Past
1739 | Civil Rights: Stone Rebellion begins.
1770 | Founder Robert Livingston weds Mary Stevens.
1776 | Congress: An act is passed that officially renamed the country from the United Colonies to the United States.
1806 | SCOTUS: Justice William Paterson died.
1809 | Admiral William Radford was born.
1815 | Painter John Singleton Copley died.
1817 | Civil Rights: Identified as the first known African American college graduate, Alexander Twilight graduated from Middlebury College.
1817 | Activist Paul Cuffe died.
1830 | Charles Durant becomes America’s first aeronaut, flying a balloon from Castle Garden, New York, to Perth Amboy, New Jersey.
1836 | Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes “Nature.”
1850 | Statehood: California joins the Union.
1850 | Statehood: New Mexico and Utah are created as “territories.”
1868 | Author and activist Mary Austin was born.
1872 | Author and journalist Delilah Beasley was born.
1872 | Composer Edward Burlingame Hill was born.
1878 | Poet Adelaide Crapsey was born.
1887 | Politician Alf Landon was born.
1890 | Colonel Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, was born.
1907 | Historian Leon Edel was born.
1908 | Orville Wright makes the first one-hour flight.
1919 | Alexander Graham Bell designed a hydrofoil watercraft that set a speed record.
1919 | Civil Rights: Boston Police Strike starts.
1924 | Civil Rights: A massacre at Hanapepe, Hawaii, occurs.
1941 | Musician Ottis Redding was born.
1942 | WWII: First bombing of the U.S. mainland (by Japanese bombers).
1956 | TV: Elvis Presley appears on the “Ed Sullivan Show” for the first time.
1957 | POTUS: Republican President Eisenhower signs the first Civil Rights legislation since Reconstruction.
1966 | POTUS: Democrat President Johnson signed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.
1966 | Actor Adam Sandler was born.
1971 | Civil Rights: Attica prison uprising starts in New York.
1985 | POTUS: Republican President Reagan orders sanctions against South Africa.
1991 | Physicist Edwin M. McMillan died.
1997 | Actor Burgess Meredith died.
2003 | Scientist Edward Teller died.
2024 | Actor James Earl Jones died.