On this date...
In 1664, Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam, the capital of New Netherland, to an English naval squadron under Colonel Richard Nicolls. Stuyvesant had hoped to resist the English, but he was unpopular, and his Dutch subjects refused to rally around him. Following its capture, New Amsterdam’s name was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York, who organized the mission.
In 1739, Early in the morning, twenty Black Carolinians met near the Stono River, approximately twenty miles southwest of Charleston. At Stono’s bridge, they took guns and powder from Hutcheson’s store and killed the two storekeepers they found there. “With cries of ‘Liberty’ and beating of drums,” historian Peter H. Wood writes in the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, “the rebels raised a standard and headed south toward Spanish St. Augustine…Along the road they gathered Black recruits, burned houses, and killed white opponents, sparing one innkeeper who was ‘kind to his slaves’.”
In 1776, Congress officially declared the republic the United States of America. Up until then, it was known as the “United Colonies.”
In 1776, Major General William Heath sends alarming intelligence to General Washington. Informants from Long Island report that the British are moving boats into position, using wagons to haul them overland, while pilots prepare to guide 30 transports up the Sound.
In 1776, General George Washington asks for a volunteer for an extremely dangerous mission: to gather intelligence behind enemy lines before the coming Battle of Harlem Heights. On September 8, 1776, Captain Nathan Hale of the 19th Regiment of the Continental Army stepped forward and subsequently became one of the first known American spies of the Revolutionary War.
In 1781, a bloody battle began at Eutaw Springs, South Carolina, as Major General Nathanael Greene of the Continental Army resumed offensive action against Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Stewart and the British soldiers at Eutaw Springs, located on the banks of the Santee River in South Carolina.
In 1850, California became the 31st state of the Union.
In 1861, Sally Louisa Tompkins was commissioned as a cavalry captain; she was the only woman to be commissioned in the Confederate army.
In 1863, On September 8, 1863, at the Second Battle of Sabine Pass, a small Confederate force thwarts a Federal invasion of Texas at the mouth of the Sabine River on the Texas-Louisiana border.
In 1900, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history hit Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900, killing more than 6,000 people. The storm caused so much destruction on the Texas coast that reliable estimates of the number of victims are difficult to make. Some believe that as many as 12,000 people perished, which would make it the deadliest day in American history.
In 1919, the Boston Police Strike began after the city denied police the right to unionize.
In 1926, the National Broadcasting Co. was incorporated by the Radio Corporation of America.
In 1935, Senator Huey Long was shot in the Louisiana state capitol building. He died about 30 hours later.
In 1945, U.S. troops landed in Korea to begin their postwar occupation of the southern part of that nation, almost exactly one month after Soviet troops had entered northern Korea to begin their own occupation. Although the U.S. and Soviet occupations were supposed to be temporary, the division of Korea quickly became permanent.
In 1947, the Harvard Mark II, one of the earliest computers, encountered a bug. Quite literally, a moth was stuck in Relay 70, Panel F. Each relay was a small mechanical switch, and anything interrupting the circuit was a major problem.
In 1954, Having been directed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to put together an alliance to contain any communist aggression in the free territories of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, or Southeast Asia in general, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles forges an agreement establishing a military alliance that becomes the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
In 1956, rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction, a measure primarily concerned with protecting voting rights. It also established a Civil Rights Division in the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 1957, Althea Gibson became the first African American to win the U.S. Open, beating Louise Brough, 6-3, 6-2. Afterward, Vice President Richard Nixon presented her with the championship trophy. “Now I have been doubly honored,” Gibson says. “I won Wimbledon before Queen Elizabeth II, and now I have won here before our vice president.”
In 1965, one of the most important strikes in American history began when over 2,000 Filipino-American farm workers refused to go to work picking grapes in the valley north of Bakersfield, California; they set in motion a chain of events that would extend over the next five years. We know it as the Delano Grape Strike.
In 1966, “Star Trek” premiered on NBC, launching what would become the most “successful failure” in television history.
In 1968, at nearly three in the morning, Saundra Williams walks across a stage with a cream rhinestone cape around her shoulders, a sash across her torso and a scepter in her hand, ready to be crowned as pageant royalty. Though it was the same night as the Miss America pageant, Williams’ crowning wasn’t just about beauty. It was about protest.
In 1971, Prisoners seized control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, N.Y., beginning a four-day siege that claimed 43 lives.
In 1998, Special Prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr sent to Congress the report on his investigation into the actions of U.S. President Bill Clinton in the Whitewater affair and subsequent matters, including Clinton’s improper sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky.
In 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) responded to growing piracy of digital music files by announcing a new and controversial strategy: filing lawsuits against individual music fans who use file-sharing sites, some of them children.
In 2003, the Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese agreed to pay $85 million to 552 people to settle clergy sex abuse cases.
In 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress on health care.
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