On September 6, 1781, Benedict Arnold, having established himself as a traitor to the colonies a year earlier with his betrayal at West Point, further cements his status as America's ultimate villain with the burning of New London, Connecticut. Arnold leads a squad of redcoats, with the help of some loyalists, into the town the Continental Army was using as a supply depot. His men drive off the small colonial garrison, loot the town and set fire to every building. The damages exceed half a million dollars, almost $8 million in today's money. On September 6, 1915, Little Willie, the prototype for the first modern military tank, rolls off the assembly line in England. Its ridiculously slow - no more than 2 mph on anything less than a flat surface - overheats easily and can't perform the primary task for which its developed; the ability to traverse trenches in the European battlefields. A second version, called Big Willie, will perform better and see action for the first time the following summer, laying the groundwork for the development of mechanized land warfare. Little Willie is now a museum piece: On September 6, 2016, Barbara Streisand extends her lead as the best selling female vocal artist of all time, when her album, Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway, hits number one on the U.S. Pop Album charts. Its her 11th number one album, extending her lead in that category among female artists over Madonna with 8. It also moves her above Elvis Presley and ties her with Bruce Springsteen on the overall list.
Winston Churchill then First Lord of the Admiralty was the father of the tank. A graduate of Sandhurst (England’s West Point) he was a Calvary officer. He fought in Afghanistan and participated in the last massed calvary charge of the British Empire at Omdurman. He fought against the early deployment as there weren’t enough to take advantage of the surprise they would create. He was correct. The first use created a hole in the German trenches But it couldn’t be exploited.
On September 7, 1776, the first submarine used in naval warfare goes into action; the Turtle, invented by Yale student David Bushnell, attacks the HMS Eagle in New York Harbor. The Turtle is made of wood, 8-feet long, and powered by hand cranks turned by its single occupant. Bushnell also invented an underwater mine to be deployed by the Turtle, but the attack launched this day, as well as several more attempts on later dates, fails. The system invented by Bushnell to drill a hole in the hull of a ship in which to attach the mine turns out to be too complicated for any operator to use other than Bushnell, who was too frail a man himself to take the Turtle into combat. General George Washington nevertheless offered Bushnell a commission in the Continental Army as an engineer, and he eventually became the first commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. On September 7, 1996, popular rapper and hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur is shot and killed in Las Vegas. Although Tupac has a criminal record longer than his musical accomplishments, his death may have been collateral damage in an attack on another target. Earlier that night, Marion "Suge" Knight, founder of Tupac's recording label Death Row Records, had been involved in an attack on Orlando Anderson, a member of the infamous Crips gang, at the MGM Grand in Vegas. Knight and Tupac were passengers in a car later that night when another vehicle passed and sprayed their car with bullets. Tupac was hit several times, but Knight was only grazed. Tupac's mother filed a civil suit against Anderson, believing him to be the assailant, but he was killed in a L.A. shooting 2 years later before the case was adjudicated. On September 7, 1813, a newspaper reporter in Troy, New York has an amusing story for his readers. Some time before, local meat packer Samuel Wilson earned a government contract to supply meat for the U.S. Army, now engaged in the War of 1812. Wilson's employees would stamp the barrels of meat to be sent to the army with a "U.S," and soldiers had taken to referring to the stamped barrels as being "Uncle Sam's", after Wilson. America now has a nickname. Illustrator Thomas Nast would later create a cartoon character to go with the name, but it was a World War I Army recruiting poster a century later that would become the personification of "Uncle Sam."
On September 8, 1943, General Dwight Eisenhower publicly announces the surrender of Italy to the Allies. Benito Mussolini had been ousted as head of the fascist government in July, and his successor, Gen. Pietro Badoglio, immediately began negotiating with the Allies with the permission of King Victor Emmanuel. There was still the matter of dealing with occupying Nazi troops. Simultaneously on the 8th, Allied troops began landing near Salerno in southern Italy (with the government's blessing), but the Germans launched Operation Axis, the Nazi occupation of Italy. The war for the Italians was far from over. On September 8, 1974, President Gerald Ford formally pardons his predecessor, Richard Nixon, for "any crimes he committed or participated in during his administration." Ford would later tell the House Judiciary Committee his intent was to unify the nation after the Watergate scandal, but he was excoriated in the media and the polls for the move, especially coming so quickly - exactly one month - after Nixon's resignation. Historians generally agree the pardon ruined any chance of Ford being elected to a full term in 1976, but in 2001, the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation gave Ford its Profiles in Courage Award for "putting love of country ahead of his own political future." On September 8, 1965, what is known as the Delano Grape Strike begins, as several thousand Filipino-American farm workers refuse to go to work in the grape vineyards near Bakersfield, CA. The workers, many of whom are aging refugees from WWII, are seeking health and retirement benefits. They are helped to organize by the leaders of the mostly Mexican-American National Farm Workers Association, who's workers surprise their leaders by joining the strike. A bitter standoff between strikers and farmers lasting 5 years follows, and when the public begins boycotting non-union picked grapes, the farmers cave. The strike ends in July 1970, with the now-named United Farm Workers getting health benefits, an hourly pay raise with incentive bonuses, and measures to protect workers from the effects of pesticides.
On September 9, 1776, the Continental Congress formally designates the name of their new nation to be the "United States of America." Up to that point, all official correspondence and documentation, including the Declaration of Independence, had referred to the "United Colonies." On September 9, 1956, Elvis Presley makes the first of his 3 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. What many may forget about that first appearance was that neither Presley nor Sullivan were actually there. Sullivan had been in a car accident a few days earlier, and British actor Charles Laughton filled in as guest host in Sullivan's New York studio. Presley, meanwhile, was filming a movie in Hollywood, and made his appearance remotely from a Los Angeles TV station. He sang 4 songs, including "Love Me Tender" and "Hound Dog." (photo is from the 9/9/56 performance) On September 9, 1967, Sergeant Duane D. Hackney is presented with the Air Force Cross for bravery in rescuing an Air Force pilot in Vietnam. He is the first living Air Force enlisted man to receive the award, which, in tandem with the Distinguish Service Cross and the Navy Cross, is the nation’s second highest award for bravery in action. In February, Hackney was aboard one of two rescue helicopters dispatched to rescue the downed pilot. Hackney rode a winch to the ground twice in search of the pilot, finding him the second time. He then rode the winch up to the rescue chopper with the pilot, then gave him his parachute when the chopper took enemy fire. Hackney went down with the chopper - the only person to survive the crash - then evaded capture before being rescued himself. In all, Hackney flew more than 200 rescue missions and was decorated 70 times, including 4 Distinguished Flying Crosses (even though he wasn't a pilot).
@KevinWS First time I saw Rush was spring of the same year. They played Subdivisions and The Analog Kid as a preview of soon-to-be-released music, and they were both so riveting that I can still remember how they sounded that night.
When I saw them on that Spring Training Tour, I was still new enough to them that I wasn't outraged by a primarily-synthesizer song. There are some 40+years fans out there that can't stand the "synthesizer era." They played La Villa Strangiato as the encore that night, and some guy turned to me and yelled,"I knew they wouldn't leave without playing La Villa!" I gave him one of those I'm-pretending-to-know-what-you're-talking-about agreements.
On September 10, 1776, General George Washington, sensing that a big battle is coming in or near New York City, asks for a volunteer to get behind the British lines and send back covert intelligence. One man steps forward; a captain in the 19th Regiment named Nathan Hale. The Yale-educated Hale assumes the guise of a Dutch schoolmaster and, over the next two weeks, successfully reports on the movements of General William Howe's troops. But his success will be short-lived..... On September 10, 2008, scientists successfully flip the switch for the first time on the $8 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) lab in Geneva. The largest piece of scientific equipment on the planet, the LHC is a 17-mile underground ring lined with superconducting magnets, located beneath the Swiss-French border, built to accelerate particle beams to the speed of light, cause them to collide and simulate debris caused by the Big Bang. Some scientists and environmentalists speculated that the LHC would create a mini black hole that would literally end the world. What it actually does (in 2012) is prove the existence of the Higgs boson - the so-called "God particle" theorized in 1964 by Peter Higgs and Francois Englert that was the key to how everything in the universe acquires mass. On September 10, 1897, a 25-year old London cab driver named George Smith crashes his cab into a building. Police arrive and, observing that Smith appears intoxicated, make history's first arrest for drunk driving. Smith pleads guilty and pays a 25 shilling fine.
