Wednesday, September 14

This Day In History

• 1741   George Frederick Handel completed his "The Messiah". It took the composer just 23 days to complete the timeless musical treasure which is still very popular during the Christmas holiday season.
  
• 1814   Francis Scott Key wrote ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' after witnessing the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812.
  
• 1847   U.S. forces under Gen. Winfield Scott took control of Mexico City.
  
• 1901   President William B. McKinley died in Buffalo, N.Y., of gunshot wounds inflicted by an assassin. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt succeeded him.
  
• 1927   Modern dance pioneer Isadora Duncan died in Nice, France, when her scarf became entangled in a wheel of her sports car.
  
• 1940   Congress passed the Selective Service Act, providing for the first peacetime draft in U.S. history.
  
• 1948   A groundbreaking ceremony took place in New York at the site of the United Nations' world headquarters.
  
• 1972   The family drama series ''The Waltons'' premiered on CBS.
  
• 1975   Pope Paul VI declared Mother Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton the first U.S.-born saint.
  
• 1982   Princess Grace of Monaco, formerly actress Grace Kelly, died at age 52 of injuries from a car crash the day before.
  
• 1982   Lebanon's president-elect, Bashir Gemayel, was killed by a bomb.
  
• 1994   Acting commissioner Bud Selig announced the cancellation of the rest of the baseball season on the 34th day of a strike by players.
  
• 2000   Microsoft Windows Me (Millennium Edition) was released. It was the successor and last version of the popular Windows 9x series of operating systems which began with the enormously popular Windows 95. It also was, “Quite possibly, the most under-hyped version of Windows ever created.” It was also much less stable than the previous version Win98se
  
• 2001   The FBI released the names of the 19 suspected hijackers who took part in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; President George W. Bush toured the ruins of the World Trade Center and addressed rescue workers over a bullhorn.
  
• 2003   An older half-sister of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, Yetunde Price, was shot to death in Compton, Calif.
  

Happy Birthday To

• 1849   Ivan Pavlov (physiologist: 1904 Nobel Laureate in Medicine; developer of Pavlov’s Theory; died Feb 27, 1936)
  
• 1867   Charles Gibson (artist: The Gibson Girl; died in 1944)
  
• 1879   Margaret Sanger (nurse, feminist: birth control advocate; 1st president of International Planned Parenthood; died Sep 6, 1966)
  
• 1914   Clayton Moore (actor: The Lone Ranger, Jesse James Rides Again; died Dec 28, 1999)
  
• 1936   Walter Koenig (actor: Star Trek)
  
• 1984   Princess Diana and Prince Charles celebrated the birth of their second child, a blue-eyed baby boy who weighed 6 pounds, 14 ounces. Prince Harry (Henry Charles Albert David) is third in line to succeed to the British throne.