Today in History – September 14 in History
What happened on this day in history – September 14 in History around the world
1146 | Zangi of the Near East is murdered. The Sultan Nur ad-Din, his son, pursues the conquest of Edessa. | |
1321 | Dante Alighieri dies of malaria just hours after finishing writing Paradiso. | |
1544 | Henry VIII’s forces take Boulogne, France. | |
1773 | Russian forces under Aleksandr Suvorov successfully storm a Turkish fort at Hirsov, Turkey. | |
1791 | Louis XVI swears his allegiance to the French constitution. | |
1812 | Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Russia reaches its climax as his Grande Armee enters Moscow–only to find the enemy capital deserted and burning, set afire by the few Russians who remained. | |
1814 | Francis Scott Key writes the words to the “Star Spangled Banner” as he waits aboard a British launch in the Chesapeake Bay for the outcome of the British assault on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. | |
1847 | U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott capture Mexico City, virtually bringing the two-year Mexican War to a close. | |
1853 | The Allies land at Eupatoria on the west coast of Crimea. | |
1862 | At the battles of South Mountain and Crampton’s Gap, Maryland Union troops smash into the Confederates as they close in on what will become the Antietam battleground. | |
1901 | Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as the 26th President of the United States upon the death of William McKinley, who was shot eight days earlier. | |
1911 | Russian Premier Piotr Stolypin is mortally wounded in an assassination attempt at the Kiev opera house. | |
1943 | German troops abandon the Salerno front in Italy.. | |
1960 | Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia form OPEC. | |
1966 | Operation Attleboro, designed as a training exercise for American troops, becomes a month-long struggle against the Viet Cong. | |
1975 | Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton becomes the first native-born American saint in the Roman Catholic Church. | |
1979 | Nur Muhammad Taraki, president and former prime minister of Afghanistan, is assassinated in a coup in which prime minister Hafizullah Amin seizes power. | |
1982 | Bachir Gemayel, president-elect of Lebanon, is killed along with 26 others in a bomb blast in Beirut. | |
1984 | Joe Kittinger, a former USAF fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, becomes the first person to pilot a gas balloon solo across the Atlantic Ocean. | |
1994 | Major League Baseball players strike over a salary cap and other proposed changes, forcing the cancellation of the entire postseason and the World Series. | |
2007 | Northern Rock Bank suffers the UK’s first bank run in 150 years. | |
Born on September 14 | ||
1769 | Baron Freidrich von Humbolt, German naturalist and explorer who made the first isothermic and isobaric maps. | |
1849 | Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist who studied dogs’ responsiveness. | |
1860 | Hamlin Garland, author who wrote about the Midwest in novles such as A Son of the Middle Border and The Book of the American Indian. | |
1864 | Lord Robert Cecil, one of the founders of the League of Nations and its president from 1923 to 1945. | |
1867 | Charles Dana Gibson, illustrator, creator of the ‘Gibson Girl.’ | |
1879 | Margaret Sanger, birth-control advocate and founder of Planned Parenthood. | |
1898 | Hal B. Wallis, film producer (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca). | |
1921 | Constance Baker Motley, first African-American woman to be appointed a federal judge. | |
1930 | Allan Bloom, writer (The Closing of the American Mind). | |
1934 | Kate Millet, feminist writer, author of Sexual Politics. | |
1936 | Ferid Murad, Albanian-American physician and pharmacologist, is co-winner of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research on nitroglycerin’s effects the cardiovascular system. | |
1948 | Marc Reisner, author and environmentalist best known for his book Cadillac Desert, a history of water management in the Western portion of the US. | |
1955 | Geraldine Brooks, Australian-American journalist and author; her novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2005). | |
1961 | Wendy Thomas (Melinda “Wendy” Thomas Morse), namesake, mascot and spokesperson for the Wendy’s chain of fast-food restaurants. | |
1983 | Amy Winehouse, singer-songwriter; her five Grammy wins (out of six nominations) for her Back to Black album (2006) tied the existing record for most wins by a female artist in a single night; won Brit Award for Best British Female Artist (2007). |