This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“The secret to happiness is freedom.
The secret to freedom is courage.” Carrie Jones
Sept. 15-21, 2025
September 15
1620 – The Mayflower departs Plymouth, England, with 102 pilgrims on board. They arrived at Plymouth Rock on December 21st.
1789 – The Department of Foreign Affairs is renamed the Department of State.
1949 – “The Lone Ranger” premieres on TV and airs until 1957. The theme song is “March of the Swiss Soldiers,” Gioachino Rossini’s finale of the William Tell Overture. Watch the intro.
1966 – President Lyndon B. Johnson, responding to a sniper attack at the University of Texas at Austin, writes a letter to Congress urging the enactment of gun control legislation.
1982 – The Gannett Company publishes the first issue of the USA Today newspaper. It is now available in print or online.
1998 – Google.com is registered as a domain name.
2008 – Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 protection with $691 billion in assets. It is still the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.
September 16
1782 – The Great Seal of United States is used for first time. In June 1782 Congress commissioned Charles Thomson to create the final design after three different committees failed to agree on a design.
1908 – Carriage-maker William Durant becomes the founder of General Motors with $2,000 of his own money.
1940 – Samuel T. Rayburn of Texas is elected Speaker of House of Representatives, where he serves until his death in 1961. The Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, DC, completed in 1965, is named for him.
1968 – Presidential candidate Richard Nixon appears on the “Laugh-in” TV show. Watch the 6-second video.
1974 – President Gerald Ford announces conditional amnesty for U.S. Vietnam War deserters.
1994 – Exxon Corporation is ordered by a federal jury to pay $5 billion in punitive damages to the people harmed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.
1998 – Universal pays $9 million for the rights to the Dr. Seuss classics “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go.” The Grinch movie opened in November 2000 and was directed by Ron Howard. The musical film “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” is scheduled for release in 2028.
2008 – The failure of numerous U.S. financial institutions is a result of the subprime loans and credit defaults and led to the “Panic of 2008.”
September 17
1778 – The first treaty between the United States and an Indian tribe is signed at Fort Pitt, Pennsylvania, with the Lenape Indians.
1787 – The U.S. constitution is adopted by the Philadelphia Convention. The Constitution was ratified in June 1788 and became effective May 1789.
1849 – Harriet Tubman escapes slavery in Maryland with two of her brothers. Over a ten-year time span Tubman makes 19 trips to the South and escorts over 300 slaves to freedom.
1908 – Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge becomes the first person to die in a plane crash. He was a passenger on a flight with Orville Wright.
1911 – Pilot Calbraith Perry Rodgers completes the first transcontinental airplane flight from New York to California is in 82 hours and 4 minutes. He was killed in a plane crash the following April at age 33.
1920 – The National Football League organizes in Canton, Ohio. Twelve teams paid $100 each to join American Professional Football Association. The NFL Hall of Fame opened in Canton in 1963.
1934 – RCA Victor releases the first 33 1/3 rpm recording. It was Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
1947 – The U.S. Department of Defense is formed, with James Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense. Pete Hegseth is the current Secretary of Defense.
1997 – Dr. Sam Sheppard’s body is exhumed for DNA test, which proved he did not murder his pregnant wife in 1954. Sheppard served 10 years of a life sentence and was freed after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the conviction citing the “carnival atmosphere” of the trial. Sheppard was acquitted in a 1966 retrial. The case was the basis for the TV show “The Fugitive.” Sheppard died in 1970 at age 46.
2007 – AOL, once the largest Internet service provider in the U.S., officially announces plans to refocus the company as an advertising business and to relocate its corporate headquarters from Dulles, Virginia, to New York City, New York. Now, AOL doesn’t even crack the top 20 ISP list.
2011 – The Occupy Wall Street movement begins in Zuccotti Park, New York City. The idea was proposed by Adbusters, a Canadian group. Watch young people try to explain what they are doing.
2015 – The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the 2015 Northern Hemisphere summer was the hottest on record (based on only 150 years of records). NOAA since reported that July 2024 was the hottest month on record.
September 18
1793 – President George Washington lays the cornerstone of the Capitol building. It wasn’t completed until 1826 because of construction issues and the War of 1812.
1850 – Congress passes the Fugitive Slave Acts as part of the Compromise of 1850. It allowed for the capture and return of escaped slaves. Congress repealed the laws in 1864.
1932 – Actress Peg Entwistle commits suicide by jumping from the letter “H” in the Hollywoodland sign in California. She was 24 years old. The letters “land” were removed during renovations in 1949.
1947 – The United States Air Force becomes a separate branch of the military.
1955 – The “Ed Sullivan Show” premiers on TV and airs until 1971. The show had been called “The Toast of the Town” since 1948. Watch Bo Diddley from one of Ed’s earliest shows.
2001 – The first in a series of anthrax letters is mailed from Trenton, New Jersey, in the anthrax attacks. Five people died and 17 others were infected from anthrax exposure.
2009 – The soap opera “The Guiding Light” airs its final episode after 72 years (19 years on the radio before airing on TV in 1956).
September 19
1778 – The Continental Congress passes the first budget of the U.S.
1928 – Mickey Mouse makes his screen debut as Steamboat Willie at New York City’s Colony Theater. Watch the primitive animated movie. Steamboat Willie animated film
1934 – Bruno Hauptmann is arrested for the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. The body of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s baby was found two months after the kidnapping. Hauptmann was convicted and then executed in 1936.
1947 – Jackie Robinson is named baseball’s “Rookie of Year.” In 1949, he was named the most valuable player (MVP). Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. He died in 1972 at age 53.
1959 – Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev is denied access to Disneyland during his visit to the U.S. Watch Walt Disney describe what the tour would have included.
1961 – Betty and Barney Hill claim they saw a mysterious craft in the sky and that the UFO abducted them. The Hills were interviewed extensively by the Air Force and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. They were also hypnotized by Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon, who concluded their case was a singular psychological aberration. Barney died in 1969 at age 46, while Betty died in 2004 at age 85.
1988 – U.S. Olympic diver Greg Louganis cuts his head on diving board at the Seoul Summer Olympics, causing a concussion. Louganis did not reveal at the time that he was HIV positive. Louganis is now 65 years old. Watch the accident.
1995 – The Senate passes the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act welfare overhaul bill. President Clinton signed the bill in 1996 fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to “end welfare as we have come to know it.”
2017 – President Trump, in a speech at the United Nations, vows to “Totally destroy North Korea” if they threaten the U.S. The same day, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in his speech criticized comments Trump also made about Iran.
September 20
1797 – The U.S. frigate Constitution (Old Ironsides) is launched in Boston. The Constitution was retired from service in 1881 and designated a museum ship in 1907. It sailed under its own power in 1997 to commemorate its 200th anniversary and is berthed in Boston.
1814 – “The Star Spangled Banner” is published as a song. Francis Scott Key wrote the poem “The Defence of Fort McHenry” during the War of 1812. John Stafford Smith wrote the tune. It became our National Anthem in 1929.
1884 – The Equal Rights Party is the first political party to nominate female candidates for both President (Belva Ann Lockwood) and Vice President (Marieta Stow). Belva Ann Lockwood, a lawyer, was also the first woman to argue before the Supreme Court.
1924 – Carl Mays becomes the first pitcher to win 20 games in each season for 3 different teams. He also holds the dubious distinction of being the only player to cause the death of another player. In 1920, Mays hit batter Ray Chapman in the head with a pitch and Chapman died the next day.
1973 – Billie Jean King (age 29) beats Bobby Riggs (age 55) in the “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match. King is now 81 years old. Riggs died in 1995 at age 77. Watch a report about the match.
2001 – President George W. Bush declares a “war on terror” in an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people.
2011 – The U.S. ends its “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, allowing gay men and women to serve openly in the military for the first time. The policy was initiated by the Clinton Administration in 1994.
September 21
1780 – Benedict Arnold gives British Major John Andre the plans for an attack on West Point. Major Andre was captured and thern hanged on October 2nd. He was 30 years old. Benedict Arnold escaped and became an officer in the British Army. He died in 1801 at age 80.
1897 – The New York Sun runs the famous “Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus” editorial in response to a letter written by 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon. Virginia met Santa Claus in 1969. She died in 1971 at age 81. Santa Claus is still living.
1922 – President Warren G. Harding signs a joint resolution of approval to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
1954 – The first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, is commissioned under the Command of Eugene P. Wilkinson. It was named for Jules Verne’s fictional submarine in “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea.” The Nautilus was the first vessel to navigate the North Pole. It was decommissioned in 1980 and is now a museum ship at the Submarine Force Library Museum in Groton, Connecticut.
1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor becomes the first female Supreme Court Justice. She served until retirement on January 31, 2006. O’Connor died in 2023 at age 93. Watch a brief bio.
1981 – The IBM-PC computer is introduced. When it went on sale to the public in August it cost $1,565.
2008 – Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the two last remaining independent investment banks on Wall Street, become bank holding companies as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis.
Image from: today.com
