This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“The secret to happiness is freedom.
The secret to freedom is courage.” Carrie Jones
Sept. 8-14, 2025
September 8
1565 – St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the U.S., is established.
1892 – The “Pledge of Allegiance” first appears in print in The Youth’s Companion. Baptist minister Francis Bellamy is the author.
1900 – Over 8,000 people are killed when a hurricane and tidal wave destroy Galveston, Texas. It is the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history.
1916 – President Woodrow Wilson signs the Emergency Revenue Act, doubling the rate of income tax and adding inheritance and munitions profits tax.
1921 – The first Miss America, 16-year-old Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C, is crowned in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The Fall Frolic, held a year earlier as a way to keep tourists in Atlantic City, is the precursor to the pageant. The longest serving Miss America Pageant host was Bert Parks (1955-1979).
1951 – Japan signs a treaty of peace with 48 countries in San Francisco following the end of World War I.
1974 – President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon of all federal crimes related to the Watergate scandal.
1994 – The MTV awards feature newlyweds Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. They were secretly married four months earlier and filed for divorce in 1996. Michael died in 2009 at age 50 and Lisa Marie died in 2023 at age 54. Watch the pair open the awards ceremonies.
2005 – Two EMERCOM Il-76 aircraft land at a disaster aid staging area at Little Rock Air Force Base, making it the first time Russia had flown such a mission to North America.
September 9
1675 – The New England colonies declare war on the Wampanoag Indians, who live in what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island. It is believed that Thanksgiving is based on the interaction between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Indians years earlier.
1776 – The Continental Congress renames the “United Colonies” the “United States.”
1861 – Sally Tompkins becomes the only female Confederate Army commissioned officer during the Civil War. Captain Tompkins, called “The Angel of the Confederacy,” founded and directed Robertson Hospital in Richmond, Virginia.
1945 – Grace Hopper discovers the first “bug” in a computer while working with her associates at Harvard. A moth was removed from a relay with tweezers.
1955 – Elvis Presley makes his first of three appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. Actor Charles Laughton hosts for Ed, who is recovering from a serious car accident. Watch Elvis in a 1956 performance.
1963 – Gov. George Wallace (D-AL) is served with a federal injunction to stop his orders that state police bar black students from enrolling in white schools in Alabama.
2008 – The iTunes Music Store reaches 100 million applications downloaded.
2009 – The iTunes Music Store reaches 1.8 billion applications downloaded.
2014 – Apple unveils the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, Apple Watch, Apple Watch Sport, and Apple Watch Edition.
September 10
1608 – John Smith is elected president of the Colony Council in Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent British colony in North American.
1858 – John Holden hits the first recorded home run during a baseball game between the Brooklyn Eckfords and the New York Mutuals.
1913 – The Lincoln Highway opens as the first paved coast-to-coast highway. It measures 3,389 miles from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco, California. Over the years the Lincoln Highway was replaced with numbered highways.
1924 – Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb are found guilty of murdering Bobby Franks, a 14-year-old acquaintance. Their lawyer was Clarence Darrow. (The following year Darrow represented a teacher in the Scopes Monkey Trial.) Leopold and Loeb, teenagers at the time of the murder, were sentenced to life in prison. Loeb was killed in prison in 1936. In 1958, after thirty-four years of confinement, Leopold was released from prison. He moved to Puerto Rico, where he died in 1971 at the age of 65.
1948 – Mildred “Axis Sally” Gillars is indicted for treason in Washington, DC. She was convicted and spent 12 years in prison. Gillars was a Nazi radio propagandist during World War II.
1953 – Swanson sells its first “TV dinner.” It was a turkey dinner. Watch a 1955 commercial.
1984 – Alex Trebek hosts his first episode of daily syndicated version of the game show Jeopardy! Art Fleming was the first Jeopardy! host. Trebek died in 2020 at age 80. Just nine days after being named the new Jeopardy! host, Mike Richards quit. Guest hosts Ken Jennings ($2.5 million winner) was tagged as the new host.
1992 – Lucy Van Pelt in the Peanuts comics raises her Psychiatric Help from 5 cents to 47 cents.
2018 – John Legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Tim Rice win Emmys for the live TV performance of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” making them all EGOT winners (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), with Legend becoming the first black male EGOT winner.
September 11 (National Day of Service and Remembrance)
1941 – Construction begins on the Pentagon and it is completed on January 15, 1943. The Pentagon is actually located in Northern Virginia just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC.
2001 – Two passenger planes hijacked by terrorists crash into New York City’s World Trade Center Towers, causing the collapse of both buildings and killing of 2,752 people. Terrorists hijacked another passenger plane and crashed it into the Pentagon, killing of 125 people. A fourth hijacked airplane crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew attempted to regain control of the aircraft. All 64 people on board were killed. Let’s roll!
2002 – The Pentagon is rededicated after repairs are completed, exactly one year after the terrorist attack on the building.
2011 – The Memorial Plaza at the National September 11th Memorial in New York City opens for the first time during a ceremony at the World Trade Center site.
September 12
1776 – Nathan Hale, recruited by George Washington, slips behind enemy lines on Long Island, New York, on his first spy mission. Hale was arrested by the British on September 21st and hanged the following day. He was 21 years old. Hale is credited with saying, “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”
1910 – Alice Stebbins Wells is appointed the world’s first female police officer by the Los Angeles Police Department.
1935 – Millionaire Howard Hughes sets a speed record of 352.46 mph in the H-1 Racer, an airplane of his own design. He went on to design and build the largest aircraft ever flown, the Spruce Goose, in 1947. The aircraft is on display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon.
1954 – “Lassie” makes its television debut on TV. The last show aired in 1974. A total of nine collies played Lassie, all males, and all descendants of the original Lassie, named Pal, that died in 1958. Watch the preview of the first show.
1983 – Security guard Victor Gerena robs a Wells Fargo armored car facility of $7 million. He was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in 1984 but was never captured. Gerena holds the distinction of being on the Most Wanted List for the longest period of time, although he was removed from the list in 2016. There is still a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.
2001 – Article V of the NATO agreement is invoked for the first and only time in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States. Article V states that an attack against one NATO member country is an attack against them all and allows for the use of armed force.
2003 – The U.N. lifts sanctions against Libya after it accepts responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and agrees to compensate the families of the victims, including 35 students from Syracuse University.
September 13
1788 – New York City becomes the capital of the United States. Washington, DC, becomes our nation’s permanent capital in 1790.
1934 – Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball’s first commissioner, sells the rights to the World Series broadcast rights (for the first time ever) to the Ford Motor Company for $100,000.
1939 – Igor Sikorsky makes the first (tethered) flight of the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300, one of the first viable U.S. helicopters. Watch a newsreel of the helicopter being flown to the Henry Ford Museum in 1943.
1948 – Margaret Chase Smith (R-ME) is elected as a senator, making her the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.
1977 – The first TV “viewer discretion” warning is issued before the airing of “Soap,” a sitcom featuring Billy Crystal.
2001 – Civilian aircraft flights resume after the 9-11 attacks.
2017 – The International Olympic Committee announces that Los Angeles will host the 2028 Summer Olympics. The last two Summer Olympics held in the U.S were in Atlanta in 1996 and Los Angeles in 1984. The last Winter Olympics held in the U.S. was in Salt Lake City in 2002.
September 14
1752 – Britain and the American colonies adopt the Gregorian calendar. There is no September 3 – September 13.
1807 – Former Vice President Aaron Burr is acquitted of treason and misdemeanor charges for trying to “raise and levy war” against the United States. Burr was also acquitted of murdering Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel.
1814 – Francis Scott Key is inspired to write the poem “Defense of Fort McHenry” while he is a prisoner on board a ship near Fort McHenry outside Baltimore, Maryland. The poem was renamed “The Star-Spangled Banner” and put to music written by English composer John Stafford Smith. The song became our national anthem in 1931. That original flag, now restored, is on display of the Museum of American History in Washington, DC.
1899 – Henry Bliss becomes the first automobile fatality in the U.S. He was struck and killed by a taxi when he stepped off a streetcar in New York City. Manslaughter charges against the taxi driver were dropped.
1940 – Congress passes the Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime military draft in the U.S. The last men were conscripted on June 30, 1973, during the Vietnam War.
1948 – The groundbreaking ceremony for the United Nations world headquarters building is held in New York City. The building was completed in 1952. Representatives from 50 member countries signed the U.N. Charter in June of 1945.
1964 – Walt Disney is awarded the Medal of Freedom at the White House by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
1975 – Pope Paul VI canonizes Mother Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton as the first U.S.-born saint. She was the founder of the first American group of religious nuns, the Sisters of Charity.
1984 – Bette Midler and Dan Aykroyd host the first MTV awards (now called the VMAs) at Radio City Music Hall. Michael Jackson took home 3 awards for “Thriller.” Watch the show’s dramatic opening.
2001 – An historic National Prayer Service is held at the Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks.
2015 – Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old Texas student, is arrested at school when his home-made clock is thought to be a bomb. It turned out to be a hoax. Mark Zuckerberg and President Barack Obama sent out tweets supporting the student. The Mohamed family moved to Qatar a month later.
Image from: en.wikipedia.org
