TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – SEPT 1
1676 Nathaniel Bacon leads an uprising against English Governor William Berkeley at Jamestown, Virginia, resulting in the settlement being burned to the ground. Bacon’s Rebellion came in response to the governor’s repeated refusal to defend the colonists against the Indians.
1715 King Louis XIV of France dies after a reign of 72 years—the longest of any major European monarch.
1773 Phillis Wheatley, a slave from Boston, publishes a collection of poetry, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in London.
1799 The Bank of Manhattan Company opened in New York City, NY. It was the forerunner of Chase Manhattan
1807 Aaron Burr is arrested in Mississippi for complicity in a plot to establish a Southern empire in Louisiana and Mexico.
1821 William Becknell leads a group of traders from Independence, Mo., toward Santa Fe on what would become the Santa Fe Trail.
1836 Protestant missionary Dr. Marcus Whitman leads a party to Oregon. His wife, Narcissa, is one of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail emigrants who chose to follow Stephen Meek thought his shortcut would save weeks of hard travel. Instead, it brought them even greater misery.
1870 The Prussian army crushes the French at Sedan, the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.
1882 The first Labor Day is observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.
1894 By an act of Congress, Labor Day is declared a national holiday.
1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan become Canadian provinces.
1916 Bulgaria declares war on Romania as the First World War expands.
1941 Jews living in Germany are required to wear a yellow star of David
1942 A federal judge in Sacramento, Cal., upholds the government’s detention of Japanese-Americans and Japanese nationals as a war measure.
1945 V-J Day, formal surrender of Japan aboard USS Missouri marks the end of WW II (US date, 2nd September in Japan)
1969 Colonel Muammar Gaddafi seizes power in Libya following a coup.
1979 US spacecraft Pioneer 11 makes the first-ever flyby of Saturn.
1983 A Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 was shot down by a Soviet jet fighter, killing all 269 people aboard.
2004 Armed terrorists take children and adults hostage in the Beslan school hostage crisis in North Ossetia, Russia.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
