September 8

1504 Michelangelo’s 13-foot marble statue of David is unveiled in Florence, Italy.

1529 The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman re-enters Buda and establishes John Zapolyai as the puppet king of Hungary.

1565 Spanish explorers found St. Augustine, Florida, the first permanent European settlement in what is now the United States.

1628 John Endecott arrives with colonists at Salem, Massachusetts, where he will become the governor.

1644 The Dutch colony of New Amsterdam surrenders to the British fleet that sails into its harbor. Five years later, the British change the name to New York.

1755 British forces under William Johnson defeat the French and the Indians at the Battle of Lake George.

1760 The French surrender the city of Montreal to the British.

1845 A French column surrenders at Sidi Brahim in the Algerian War.

1863 Confederate Lieutenant Dick Dowling thwarts a Union naval landing at Sabine Pass, northeast of Galveston, Texas.

1903 Between 30,000 and 50,000 Bulgarian men, women and children are massacred in Monastir by Turkish troops seeking to check a threatened Macedonian uprising.

1906 Robert Turner invents the automatic typewriter return carriage.

1915 Germany begins a new offensive in Argonne on the Western Front.

1921 Margaret Gorman of Washington, D.C., is named the first Miss America.

1925 Germany is admitted into the League of Nations.

1935 Senator Huey Long of Louisiana is shot to death in the state capitol, allegedly by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, Jr.

1944 Germany’s V-2 offensive against England begins.

1945 Korea is partitioned by the Soviet Union and the United States.

1951 Japanese representatives sign a peace treaty in San Francisco.

1955 The United States, Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Thailand sign the mutual defense treaty that established the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

1960 Penguin Books in Britain is charged with obscenity for trying to publish the D.H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterly’s Lover.

1960 President Eisenhower dedicates NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

1971 The Kennedy Center opens in Washington, DC with a performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.

1974 President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard M. Nixon for any crimes arising from the Watergate scandal he may have committed while in office.

1988 Wildfires in Yellowstone National Park in the US, the world’s first national park, force evacuation of the historic Old Faithful Inn; visitors and employees evacuated but the inn is saved.

1991 Macedonian Independence Day; voters overwhelmingly approve referendum to form the Republic of Macedonia, independent of Yugoslavia.

1994 USAir Flight 427 crashes on approach to Pittsburgh International Airport, killing all 132 people aboard; subsequent investigation leads to changes in manufacturing practices and pilot training.

Born on September 8

1841 Antonin Dvorak, composer and violinist.

1886 Siegfried Sassoon, British author and poet famous for his anti-war writing about World War I.

1889 Robert A. Taft, U.S. Senator from Ohio who unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination from the 1940s until 1952.

1900 Claude Pepper, Democratic senator and congressman from Florida, champion of senior citizens rights.

1922 Sid Caesar, comedian and television star, best known for "Your Show of Shows," and "The Sid Caesar Show."

1925 Peter Sellers, English comic actor, famous for his role as Inspector Clouseau.

1932 Patsy Cline, country singer ("Crazy", "I Fall to Pieces").

1933 Michael Frayn, playwright (A Very Private Life, Noises Off).

1947 Ann Beattie, writer (Chilly Scenes of Winter, Picturing Will).

1954 Anne Diamond, journalist, TV host (Good Morning Britain) social activist; led Back to Sleep campaign that drastically reduced the number of cot deaths (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) among UK infants.
1954 Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society and editor of Skeptic magazine.

1963 Brad Silberling, screenwriter, director (City of Angels); wrote and directed Moonlight Mile (2002) based on the murder of his girlfriend, actress Rebecca Schaeffer, by a stalker.

1970 Yuji Nishizawa, highjacked All Nippon Airways flight, July 23, 1999.

1971 Martin Freeman, actor (The Office BBC Two TV series; Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey).

1979 Pink (Alecia Beth Moore), multiple award-winning singer, including three Grammys ("Lady Marmalade," "Trouble," "Imagine."

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