Monday, September 26

This Day In History

• 1777   British troops occupied Philadelphia during the American Revolution.
  
• 1789   Thomas Jefferson was appointed America's first secretary of state and John Jay the first chief justice of the United States.
  
• 1898   Composer George Gershwin was born in Brooklyn, New York.
  
• 1914   The Federal Trade Commission was established.
  
• 1950   United Nations troops recaptured the South Korean capital of Seoul from the North Koreans.
  
• 1957   The musical ''West Side Story'' opened on Broadway.
  
• 1969   The album ''Abbey Road'' by the Beatles was released.
  
• 1980   The Cuban government closed Mariel Harbor, ending the freedom flotilla of Cuban refugees that began the previous April.
  
• 1986   William H. Rehnquist was sworn in as the 16th chief justice of the United States, while Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court as its 103rd member.
  
• 1990   The Motion Picture Association of America announced it had created a new rating, NC-17, designed to bar moviegoers under age 17 from certain films without the commercial stigma of the old X rating.
  
• 1991   Four men and four women began a two-year stay inside a sealed-off structure known as Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Ariz.
  
• 1995   The prosecution began its closing argument in the murder trial of O.J. Simpson.
  
• 1996   Richard Allen Davis, the killer of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, was sentenced to death in San Jose, Calif.
  
• 2000   Slobodan Milosevic conceded that his challenger, Vojislav Kostunica, had finished first in Yugoslavia's presidential election and declared a runoff   a move that prompted mass protests leading to Milosevic's ouster.
  
• 2002   WorldCom former controller David Myers pleaded guilty to securities fraud, saying he was told by ''senior management'' to falsify records in what became the largest corporate accounting scandal in U.S. history.
  
• 2002   A state-run Senegalese ferry capsized in the Atlantic, killing more than 1,800 people.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1774   Johnny Appleseed (Chapman) (nurseryman: planter of apple orchards; died Mar 18, 1845)
  
• 1888   T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (Nobel Prize-winning poet [1948]; The Waste Land, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock; died Jan 4, 1965)
  
• 1897   Pope Paul VI (Giovanni Battista Montini) (262nd pope of the Roman Catholic Church [1963-1978]; died Aug 6, 1978)
  
• 1898   George Gershwin (Jacob Gershvin) (composer: Rhapsody in Blue, Swanee, Porgy & Bess, The Man I Love, Strike Up the Band, Funny Face, I Got Rhythm, Summertime, An American in Paris, They Can’t Take That Away from Me, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off, A Foggy Day [In London Town], Fascinating Rhythm, Embraceable You, Our Love is Here to Stay; collaborated with brother Ira; died July 11, 1937)
  
• 1914   Jack LaLanne (fitness guru)
  
• 1936   Winnie Mandela (political activist; married South African president Nelson Madela)
  
• 1948   Olivia Newton-John (singer)