TIME TRAVELING, September 26: 1580 English explorer Francis Drake returns to Plymouth, England, in the “Golden Hind” after a nearly three-year journey, becoming the first British navigator to circumnavigate the globe. 1777 British troops occupy Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War. 1789 Thomas Jefferson is appointed the United States’ first Secretary of State, while John Jay is appointed the first Chief Justice, Samuel Osgood the first Postmaster General, and Edmund Jennings Randolph the first Attorney General. 1820 Pioneering frontiersman Daniel Boone, age 86, dies quietly in his sleep at his son’s home near present-day Defiance, Mo. 1892 John Phillip Sousa and his band make their public debut with the “Liberty Bell March” in Plainfield, N.J. 1914 The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is established. 1918 The Meuse-Argonne offensive against the Germans begins. It is the final Allied offensive on the western front during World War I. 1945 Lt. Col. Peter Dewey, a U.S. Army officer with the Office of Strategic Services in Vietnam, becomes the first American soldier killed in Vietnam when he is shot and killed in Saigon. He was head of a seven-man team sent to Vietnam to search for missing American pilots and to gather information on the situation in the country after the surrender of the Japanese in World War II. It was later determined that Viet Minh soldiers fired on Dewey, thinking he was French, as he was on his way to the airport to leave the country. 1950 United Nations troops recapture the South Korean capital of Seoul from the North Koreans during the Korean War. 1954 1,000 people die when the commercial ferry “Toya Maru” sinks in Tsugaru Strait, Japan. 1955 With news of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s heart attack two days earlier made public, the New York Stock Exchange suffers its worst decline since 1929. 1960 For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is televised when Vice-President Richard M. Nixon and Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy meet in a Chicago studio to discuss domestic matters. 1962 “The Beverly Hillbillies” debuts on CBS TV. 1969 “Abbey Road,” the Beatles last album together as a group, is released. 1980 The Cuban government closes Mariel Harbor to end the flotilla of Cuban refugees that began five months earlier. 1981 The Boeing 767 makes its maiden flight in Everett, Wash. 1985 Shamu, the first killer whale to survive birth in captivity, is born at Sea World in Orlando, Fla. 1986 Bobby Ewing returns from the dead on “Dallas.” 1986 William H. Rehnquist becomes chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court after the retirement of Chief Justice Warren Burger. 1991 Four men and four women begin a two-year stay inside “Biosphere II,” a project designed to develop technology for future space colonies. 1993 Eight people who stayed in “Biosphere II” emerge from their sealed-off environment. 1996 U.S. astronaut Shannon Lucid returns to Earth in the U.S. space shuttle “Atlantis” after 188 days in orbit aboard the Russian space station “Mir,” setting a new space endurance record for an American and a world endurance record for a woman. 1996 Richard Allen Davis, killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, is sentenced to death in San Jose, Calif. 2001 Hundreds of people begin the process of filing for death certificates for family members still missing in the ruins of New York City’s World Trade Center. Fifteen days after the terror attack, 6,300 people are still unaccounted for. 2002 The overloaded ferry “Joola” capsizes off the coast of Gambia, and only 64 of approximately 1,035 aboard are rescued. 2007 Music producer Phil Spector’s trial for the murder of actress Lana Clarkson ends in a mistrial when the jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict. 2008 Paul Newman, one of the leading movie stars of the 20th century, dies of cancer at the age of 83 at his home in Westport, Conn.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 06:28:04 +0000
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