September 15 in history


921  At Tetin Saint Ludmila was murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law.

994 Major Fatimid victory over the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of the Orontes.

1254 Marco Polo, Italian explorer, was born (d. 1324).

1616 The first non-aristocratic, free public school in Europe was opened inFrascati, Italy.

1649 Titus Oates, English minister and plotter, was born (d. 1705).

1762 Seven Years War: Battle of Signal Hill.

1820 Constitutionalist revolution in Lisbon.

1821  Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica jointly declared independence from Spain.

1830  The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opened.

1831  The locomotive John Bull operated for the first time in New Jersey on the Camden and Amboy Railroad.

1835 HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reached the Galápagos Islands.

1851  Saint Joseph’s University was founded in Philadelphia.

1857 William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, was born (d. 1930).

1879 Joseph Lyons, 10th Prime Minister of Australia, was born (d. 1939).

1881 Ettore Bugatti, Italian automobile engineer and designer, was born (d. 1947).

1883 The Bombay Natural History Society was founded in Bombay (Mumbai).

1889  Robert Benchley, American author, was born (d. 1945).

1890  Agatha Christie, English writer, was born (d. 1976).

1894 First Sino-Japanese War: Japan defeated China in the Battle of Pyongyang.

1916  World War I: Tanks were used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somm

1928  Tich Freeman became the only bowler to take 300 wickets in an English cricket season.

1931 In Scotland, the two-day Invergordon Mutiny against Royal Navy pay cuts began.

1935 The Nuremberg Laws deprived German Jews of citizenship.

1935  Nazi Germany adopted a new national flag with the swastika.

1937 Fernando de la Rúa, 51st President of Argentina, was born.

1940 World War II: The climax of the Battle of Britain, when the Royal Air Force shot down large numbers of Luftwaffe aircraft.

1942  World War II: U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Wasp was torpedoed at Guadalcanal

1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met in Quebec as part of the Octagon Conference to discuss strategy.

1945 Hans-Gert Pöttering, German politician, President of the European Parliament, was born.

1945  A hurricane in southern Florida and the Bahamas destroyed 366 planes and 25 blimps at NAS Richmond.

1947  RCA released the 12AX7 vacuum tube.

1947  Typhoon Kathleen hit the Kanto Region in Japan killing 1,077.

1948  The F-86 Sabre set the world aircraft speed record at 671 miles per hour (1,080 km/h).

1952 United Nations gave Eritrea to Ethiopia.

1958 A Central Railroad of New Jersey commuter train ran through an open drawbridge at the Newark Bay, killing 58.

1959  Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to visit the United States.

1961  Hurricane Carla struck Texas with winds of 175 miles per hour.

1962  The Soviet ship Poltava headed toward Cuba, one of the events that sets into motion the Cuban Missile Crisis.

1963  The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing: Four children killed at an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama.

1966 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.

1968  The Soviet Zond 5 spaceship was launched, becoming the first spacecraft to fly around the Moon and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere.

1969 Iron and steel from local ironsand (titanomagnetite) was produced for the first time at New Zealand Steel’s mill at Glenbrook, south of Auckland.

First steel produced from local ironsand

1971 Nathan Astle, New Zealand cricketer, was born.

1972  A Scandinavian Airlines System domestic flight from Gothenburg to Stockholm was hijacked and flown to Malmö-BulltoftaAirport.

1974  Air Vietnam flight 727 was hijacked, then crashed while attempting to land with 75 on board.

1976 The Rangatira arrived in Wellington from Lyttelton for the last time, bringing to an end more than 80 years of regular passenger ferry services between the two ports.

Lyttelton–Wellington ferry service ends

1981 The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved Sandra Day O’Connor to become the first female justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

1981 – The John Bull became the oldest operable steam locomotive in the world when the Smithsonian Institution operated it under its own power outside Washington, D.C.

1983  Israeli premier Menachem Begin resigned.

1984 Prince Harry of Wales, was born.

1987  United States Secretary of State George Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze signed a treaty to establish centres to reduce the risk of nuclear war.

1993  Liechtenstein Prince Hans-Adam II disbanded Parliament.

2008 Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.

2012 – Muslim protesters shouting anti-American slogans clashed with police, injuring 19 people, outside the US embassy in Sydney, Australia.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia


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