September 9th in History

Romanticized depiction of Arminius
(winged helmets may look impressive,
but are uncomfortable and impractical in battle -
weapons and things get tangled up on ornamentation.
Contrary to the football team's helmets, real Vikings
did NOT have horned headgear.)

       9  Arminius' alliance of six Germanic tribes ambushes and annihilates three Roman legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.  The Romans called the battle the Clades Variana, Varian's Disaster.  Arminius was later assassinated by other members of his fractious alliance, and the alliance subsequently failed.  But this battle and some continuing resistance by the Germanic tribes effectively stopped further significant northern expansion by the Roman Empire.  Arminius is the latinized form of the germanic name Herman.  Varus was notorious for his ruthless punishment of rebellion, including the crucifixions of prisoners. Arminius had been a Roman hostage as a child, and had actually been given a Roman education, including a military education, and the Roman rank of Equestrian, a status of nobility.
  

Japanese Imperial Standard

  910  First celebration of Chrysanthemum Day or Kiku no Sekku (Japan), it is one of the five ancient sacred festivals of Japan.  Chrysanthemum shows are associated with the celebration; the Chrysanthemum is the symbol of the Japanese Emperor.  The Japanese monarchy is the oldest continuous hereditary monarchy in the world, dating back to 660 BC.  The seat of the Monarchy is known as the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Bayeux Tapestry

1087  Death of King William I of England, better recognized as William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, victor in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 in the Normans' defeat of King Harold II and the Saxons.  William I challenged the succession of the Harold Godwinson, after the death of King Edward the Confessor, claiming he had been promised the throne.  Harold II and his army were exhausted after battling Harold Hadrada of Norway's Viking invasion, along with Harold II's own brother fighting against him at the earlier Battle of Stamford Bridge in York.  The famous Bayeux tapestry is an embroided cloth, roughly 18 inches by nearly 225 feet long, illustrating the events in needlework.

1493   Battle of Krbava field, a decisive defeat of Croats in Croatian struggle against the invasion of the Balkans westward by the Ottoman Empire.

1513   James IV of Scotland is defeated and dies in the Battle of Flodden Field, ending Scotland's involvement in the War of the League of Cambrai.

1543    Mary Stuart, at nine months old, is crowned "Queen of Scots" in the central Scottish town of Stirling.

1569    Death of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Flemish painter

1585    Birth of Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu, French statesman (d. 1642)

1737   Birth of Luigi Galvani, Italian physician and physicist (d. 1798)

1739   The Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising in Britain's mainland North American colonies prior to the American Revolution, erupts near Charleston, South Carolina.

1754  Birth of William Bligh, British naval officer (d. 1817), who lost his ship, Bounty, in the famous mutiny.

1776  The Continental Congress officially names its new union of sovereign states the United States.

1791   Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is named after President George Washington.

1801   Alexander I of Russia confirms the privileges of Baltic provinces.

1815   Death of John Singleton Copley, American painter (b. 1738)

1828   Birth of Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist (d. 1910)

1839   Sir John Frederick William Herschel, son of astronomer Sir Frederick Wilhelm Herschel, takes the first glass plate photograph. He also invented the modern blue print process.

1850   California is admitted as the thirty-first U.S. state.
           The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas's claimed territory (now parts of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming) to federal control in return for the U.S. federal government assuming $10 million of Texas's pre-annexation debt.

1886    The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works is finalized.

1901    Death of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter (b. 1864)

1914    In World War I: The creation of the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, the first fully mechanized unit in the British Army.

1922    Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 ends with Turkish victory over the Greeks.

1923   Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, founds the Republican People's Party.

1924   The Hanapepe Massacre occurs on Kauai, Hawaii.

1926   The National Broadcasting Co. (NBC) was created as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

1940   George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer.

1942   In World War II: A Japanese floatplane drops an incendiary bomb on Oregon.

1944   In World War II: The Fatherland Front takes power in Bulgaria through a military coup in the capital and armed rebellion in the country. A new pro-Soviet government is established.

1945  End of the Second Sino-Japanese War; Japan formally surrenders to China.

1947  First actual case of a computer bug being found: a moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University.

1948   Republic Day of Democratic People's Republic of Korea first celebrated.

1954   Birth of Jeffrey Combs, American actor

1957 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the first civil rights bill to pass Congress since Reconstruction.

1965  The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is established.

1965  Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, Louisiana, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion ($10–12 billion in 2005 dollars) in damages, becoming the first hurricane to top $1 billion in unadjusted damages.

1966   The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1970   A British airliner is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to Dawson's Field in Jordan.

1971   The four-day Attica Prison riot begins, which eventually results in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers retaking the prison.

1976    Death of Mao Zedong, Chinese communist leader (b. 1893)

1991   Tajikstan gains independence from the Soviet Union, part of the mass exodus of Soviet satellite nations.

1993  The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state.

2001  Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al Qaeda assassins who claimed to be Arab journalists wanting an interview.

2001   The Pärnu methanol tragedy occurs in Pärnu County, Estonia.

2003 The Boston Roman Catholic Archdiocese agreed to pay $85 million to 552 people to settle clergy sex abuse cases.

2004  A bomb explodes outside the Australian embassy in Jakarta, killing 10 people.

2005  Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown, the principal target of harsh criticism of the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina, was relieved of his onsite command.