On This Day: Friday September 1, 2006

This is the 244th day of the year, with 121 days remaining in 2006.

Fact of the Day: chess pieces

In chess, the king moves one square at a time in any direction. The bishop moves diagonally across the board, while the rook travels in straight lines but not diagonally. The pawn moves forward one square at a time, and the knight can jump over other pieces to a new position. The queen can move in any direction but cannot jump. The oldest recovered chess piece, found in Persia, is dated to 790 AD.

Holidays

Cameroon: Union Nationale Camerounaise Day.
Japan: Disaster Prevention Day.
Libya: Revolution Day.
Slovakia: Constitution Day.
Tanzania: Heroes' Day.
Uzbekistan: Independence Day (from USSR, 1991).
Beginning of Orthodox ecclesiastical year.
Vietnam: Independence Day.

Events

1661 - First yacht race took place; participants were England's King Charles versus his brother, James.
1676 - Nathaniel Bacon led an uprising at Jamestown, Virginia, in which the settlement was burned down.
1773 - Phillis Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," was published, making her the first African-American poet to be published.
1807 - Former Vice President Aaron Burr was acquitted on charges of plotting to annex territory in Louisiana and Missouri to establish an independent republic.
1821 - William Becknell took a group of traders from Independence, Missouri, toward Santa Fe, blazing the Santa Fe Trail.
1836 - Marcus Whitman and wife Narcissa established the first American settlement in northern Oregon Territory. Narcissa was one of the first white women to travel the Oregon Trail.
1859 - First Pullman sleeping car was put into service.
1864 - Confederate forces, led by General John Bell Hood, evacuated Atlanta, anticipating the arrival of Union General William T. Sherman's troops.
1865 - Joseph Lister performed first surgery using antiseptics.
1870 - The Prussians defeated the French at Sedan in the last battle of the Franco-Prussian War.
1878 - Emma Nutt of Boston became the first female telephone operator.
1882 - The first Labor Day was observed in New York City by the Carpenters and Joiners Union.
1890 - First baseball tripleheader was played: Boston vs Pittsburgh.
1894 - Labor Day was declared a national holiday by an act of Congress.
1904 - Helen Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College.
1905 - Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces of Canada.
1914 - St. Petersburg, Russia changed its name to Petrograd.
1916 - Bulgaria declared war on Rumania, expanding the World War I.
1923 - The Kanto earthquake leveled Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan, killing 300,000.
1939 - Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II in Europe.
1939 - "Physical Review" published first article describing black holes.
1941 - Yellow star became obligatory wear for Jews under the Third Reich.
1945 - Japan surrendered to the United States, ending World War II. (Japan's date is 9/2.)
1969 - Moammar Gadhafi deposed King Idris in the Libyan revolution.
1970 - Dr. Hugh Scott of Washington, D.C. became the first African-American superintendent of schools of a major American city.
1971 - Qatar declared independence from Great Britain.
1972 - Bobby Fischer of the United States defeated Boris Spassky of Russia for the world chess title.
1976 - Representative Wayne L. Hayes (D-Ohio) resigned because of scandal with Elizabeth Ray.
1983 - Korean Airlines Flight 007, flying from New York to Seoul, was shot down by the Soviets after it strayed into restricted airspace over Sakhalin Island in the Sea of Japan. All 269 people aboard were killed, including 61 Americans, among them U.S. Representative Larry McDonald.
1985 - Seventy-three years after it sunk in the North Atlantic, the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic was found by a US-French expedition; it was four hundred miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Births

1875 - Edgar Rice Burroughs, American novelist who wrote "Tarzan, the Ape Man."
1907 - Walter Reuther, American labor leader who merged the American Federation of Labor with the Congress of International Organizations.
1923 - Rocky Marciano, American world heavyweight boxer who retired undefeated.
1933 - Conway Twitty, American country and western music star.
1939 - Lily Tomlin, American comedienne and actress.
1957 - Gloria Estefan, Cuban singer.

Deaths

1557 - Jacques Cartier, French explorer.
1715 - Louis XIV, king of France.
1838 - William Clark, American explorer who with Meriwether Lewis led the first overland expedition to the Pacific Northwest.
1914 - Martha, last known passenger pigeon, at Cincinnati Zoo.
1977 - Ethel Waters, American actress and singer.
1983 - Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Democratic United States Senator from Washington.
1989 - A. Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale University and Commissioner of Baseball.

Look at all the things that happened today!