This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“In the summer of 1776 our Founding Fathers sought to secure our independence and our liberties
that remain the foundation of our nation today.” Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA)
August 31-Sept 6, 2026
August 31
1910 – President Theodore Roosevelt made a speech in Kansas advocating a “square deal” in which property shall be “the servant and not the master of the commonwealth.”
1920 – John Lloyd Wright (1892-1972) was issued a patent for “Toy-Cabin Construction,” which are better known as Lincoln Logs. His father was renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Watch the history of Lincoln Logs and John Lloyd Wright (1867-1959).
1964 – California officially became (and remains) the most populous state in America. California has a current population of about 40 million people, while Wyoming has the least with less than 600,000 people.
1985 – The California “Night Stalker” was arrested in Los Angeles. Richard Ramirez was accused of murdering at least 15 people. In 1989, he was convicted of 13 murders, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries. Ramirez was sentenced to death but died of cancer in 2013 while awaiting execution.
1990 – The Seattle Mariners became the first baseball team to have father-son teammates when Ken Griffey, Sr. (age 40) and son Ken Griffey, Jr. (age 20) play a game together.
2012 – Apple Computers lost its patent dispute with Samsung of Tokyo, Japan. It was one of many patent infringement rulings from cases filed in courts around the world starting in 2011. It wasn’t until the middle of 2018 that the patent dispute trials were resolved in favor of Apple.
2015 – President Obama officially renamed Alaska’s Mt. McKinley as Denali, its native American name. In January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order returning the name to Mt. McKinley.
September 1
1752 – The Liberty Bell arrived in Philadelphia from France. The Pennsylvania Assembly ordered the Bell in 1751 to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges, Pennsylvania’s original Constitution. The cause of the bell’s famous crack is unknown.
1807 – Former Vice President Aaron Burr was found innocent of treason. He was accused of leading a cabal whose goal was to create an independent country in present day Texas. President Thomas Jefferson, then in his second term, ordered Burr arrested. In the election of 1800, Jefferson and Burr tied in the number of electoral votes. The tie was broken by a vote in the House of Representatives due to the influence of Alexander Hamilton. Burr served as Jefferson’s vice president. Vice President Burr killed Hamilton in a duel in 1804.
1942 – A Federal judge upheld the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
1985 – A U.S.-French expedition led by Robert Ballard located the wreckage of the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland. On this date in 1998, the movie “Titanic” went on sale in the U.S.
1995 – The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame building, designed by I. M. Pei, opened in Cleveland, Ohio. The foundation was established in 1983. Cleveland is the home of Alan Freed, the disc jockey credited with coining the term “rock and roll.” Take a virtual tour of the museum.
2005 – Seven members and former members of the AFL-CIO formed a new trade unions organization called the Change to Win Federation as an alternative to the AFL-CIO. Its first president was James P. Hoffa, son of the late Jimmy Hoffa.
September 2
1789 – Congress established the U.S. Treasury Department.
1919 – The Communist Party of America organized in Chicago, Illinois, as a result of a split in the Socialist Party of America. In 1954, President Eisenhower signed legislation outlawing the Communist Party in the U.S. Its current membership is estimated to be around 11,000 people.
1945 – V-J Day (Victory in Japan) was when World War II ends after the formal surrender of Japan aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
1963 – Gov. George C. Wallace (D-AL) prevented the integration of Tuskegee High School by shutting down the school. In June 1963, Governor Wallace blocked the entrance to the University of Alabama as a symbolic attempt to keep his campaign promise, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Watch his speech.
1969 – The first automatic teller machine (ATM) in the U.S. was installed in Rockville Center, New York.
1987 – Donald Trump spent almost $100,000 on a full-page New York Times ad criticizing the U.S. trade policies with countries like Japan.
1992 – The U.S. and Russia agreed to a joint venture to build a space station. The first module was launched in 1998. The first crew arrived in 2000. By 2011, 159 components had been added. The ISS has an estimated cost of $150 billion.
September 3
1752 – The United Kingdom and its American colonies (now the U.S.) adopted the Gregorian calendar and September 3rd becomes September 14th. Pope Gregory XIII replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar in 1582 and the change took effect in most Catholic states.
1783 – The Treaty of Paris was signed, ending the U.S. Revolutionary War of Independence.
1895 – The first professional football game was played. Quarterback John Brallier was paid $10 per game plus expenses. His team Latrobe won that first game 12-0 over Jeannette in Indiana.
1925 – The dirigible “USS Shenandoah” crashed during a storm near Caldwell Ohio, killing all 14 passengers and crew on board. It was its 57th flight. Watch a report on the crash.
1929 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached its all-time high of 381.17 shortly before the Crash of 1929.
1995 – eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar, the French-born, American-educated son of Iranian immigrants. eBay was originally called “Auction Web.”
2019 – Walmart announced it will stop selling handguns and certain kinds of ammunition in response to the shooting in El Paso, Texas, that killed 23 people and wounded 23 others. They also asked customers not to carry weapons into their stores. Walmart now sells guns and ammunition in about half of 4,700 stores.
September 4
1813 – The “Religious Remembrancer Christian Observer” was the first religious newspaper published in the U.S. It was started at the Presbyterian Publishing Center of Philadelphia.
1886 – Apache Chief Geronimo surrendered, ending last major U.S.-Indian war. He died at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909 at the age of 79.
1950 – For the first time a helicopter was used to rescue an American soldier behind enemy lines. Captain Robert E. Wayne was rescued after his aircraft was shot down over Korea. H-5 helicopter pilot First Lieutenant Paul van Boven was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action. Wayne, a West Point graduate, died in 1998 at age 72 and van Boven, a former WWII POW, died in 2003 at age 80.
1957 – The Arkansas National Guard was ordered by Democrat Governor Orval Faubus to keep nine black students from going into Little Rock’s Central High School. President Eisenhower subsequently issued an executive order federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and ordering them to protect the students.
1966 – The first Muscular Dystrophy telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis was held over this Labor Day weekend. Jerry Lewis started local and regional MD events in 1952. The first telethon raises $15,000. The telethons raised over $2 billion in 50 years. Lewis last hosted the telethon in 2011 and died in 2017 at age 91. The last telethon aired in 2014. Watch an early telethon clip.
1967 – Michigan Gov. George Romney, who was a presidential candidate for the 1968 republican nomination, said during a TV interview that he had undergone “brainwashing” by U.S. officials while visiting Vietnam in 1965. Romney dropped out of the presidential race in February 1968.
1998 – Google was incorporated by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, students at Stanford University in California. The domain name was registered on September 15, 1997.
2018 – Nike announced that Colin Kaepernick will be the face of their 30th anniversary “Just Do It” advertising campaign. Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem before football games. He announced his free agency in March 2017, but still has not been picked up by any football team. He has worked out for football teams, but he is currently unemployed.
2019 – YouTube was fined $170 million by the Federal Trade Commission for illegally collecting data on the viewing habits of children.
September 5
1774 – The Continental Congress assembled for the first time in Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia with 56 delegates from 12 colonies (Georgia was not represented).
1906 – Saint Louis University football player Bradbury Robinson made the first legal forward pass in football to teammate Jack Schneider.
1945 – Iva Toguri D’Aquino was arrested for being the wartime radio propagandist “Tokyo Rose.” She served six years in prison and is later pardoned by President Gerald Ford. D’Aquino died in 2006 at age 90.
1960 – Wilma Rudolph, called the world’s fastest woman, won her second of three gold medals in track and field at the Olympic Games in Rome, Italy. Wilma suffered from polio as a child and overcame numerous childhood health issues and racial barriers to compete in the Olympics. After the 1960 Olympics, she became a teacher and track coach. Wilma died of brain cancer in November 1994 at age 54. Watch her run.
1975 – Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison, but was released on parole in 2009. She is now 77 years old.
1978 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and U.S. President Jimmy Carter started a peace conference at Camp David, Maryland. Sadat and Begin shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize.
2018 – An anonymous senior White House official published the opinion article in the New York Times “I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration.”
September 6
1716 – The first lighthouse in the U.S., The Boston Light, was built in Boston, Massachusetts. The lighthouse is still operational and staffed full time.
1899 – Carnation evaporated milk (called Carnation Sterilized Cream) was processed for the first time at a plant in Kent, Washington. The company later changed its name to Carnation Milk Company.
1901 – President William McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. When he died 8 days later, Vice President Teddy Roosevelt became president.
1909 – Word reached civilization that Admiral Robert Peary successfully traveled to the North Pole 5 months earlier. The New York Times printed the story on the 7th, but Dr. Frederick A. Cook claimed to have reached the pole in April 1908, one year before Peary.
1954 – The Alan Freed Show premiered at WINS radio in New York City and he began playing what he called “Rock ‘n Roll” music. In 1962, Freed plead guilty during the “payola” scandal to two charges of commercial bribery, was fined, and received a suspended sentence. Freed, who died in 1965 at the age of 43, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1986. In 2014, Freed’s ashes were removed from the Hall of Fame and placed in a Cleveland cemetery.
1995 – Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game record when he plays in 2,131 consecutive baseball games. Ripken stretched the record to 2,632 consecutive games over his 16-year career. Watch him homer in the game.
2000 – The U.N. Millennium Summit began in New York. It was the largest gathering of world leaders in history with more than 150 dignitaries attending.
2002 – Congress convened at Federal Hall in New York City for a rare special session to express the nation’s mourning for the loss on September 11, 2001, and express unity in the war against terrorism.
Image from: www.forbes.com