09.07.2005
IT HAPPENED TODAY SEPT 1 TO SEPT 18

September 1
1939 GERMANY INVADES POLAND:
Covered by the fearsome Luftwaffe that bombed Polish cities beyond recognition, fifty-six German divisions crossed the border into Poland on September 1, 1939. The Polish army and cavalry fought bravely, but were hopelessly outmatched by Germany's modern technology and overwhelming numbers. Two days after the invasion, England and France declared war against Nazi Germany, initiating World War II in Europe.
September 2
1945 JAPAN SURRENDERS:
Although Americans had already celebrated V-J Day, for "Victory over Japan," on August 15, the war in the Pacific officially ended on September 2, 1945, aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay. There, representatives of the Japanese government and military signed the unconditional surrender of Japan. A mass of news correspondents jammed the decks along with Allied officers from all of the participating countries. American General Douglas MacArthur presided over the brief ceremony and signed the document on behalf of the combined Allied forces.
September 3
1939 World War II Begins in Europe
Two days after the German invasion of Poland, Great Britain and France declared war against Nazi Germany, and the European phase of World War II had begun. On the same day, the British passenger ship Athenia was sunk by a German U-boat, killing thirty Americans, and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt reiterated America's neutrality during a fireside chat. On August 31, despite threats of British and French intervention, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signed an order to attack Poland, and German forces moved to the frontier. That evening, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms staged a phony invasion of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the German side of the border. They also left behind a handful of dead German prisoners in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of "Polish aggression." At dawn the next morning, fifty-eight German army divisions invaded Poland all across the 1,250-mile frontier. Hitler expected appeasement from Britain and France--the same nations that had given Czechoslovakia away to German conquest in 1938 with their signing of the Munich Pact. However, neither country would allow Hitler's new desecration of Europe's borders to stand, and Germany was presented with an ultimatum: withdraw by September 3 or face war with the Western democracies. At 11:15 a.m. on September 3, a few minutes after the expiration of the British ultimatum, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeared on national radio to solemnly announce that Britain was at war with Germany. Australian and New Zealand immediately followed suit. Later that afternoon, the French ultimatum expired, and at 5:00 p.m. France declared war against Germany.
September 4
1886 Geronimo Surrenders
Legendary Apache leader Geronimo surrendered to General Nelson A. Miles at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, ending one of the last major U.S.-Indian conflicts. Geronimo had led a small band of Apache men, women, and children out of forced internment on the San Carlos reservation, successfully evading thousands of U.S. and Mexican troops, hundreds of Indian auxiliaries, and an unknown number of civilians for over eighteen months in the wilderness of the Southwest.
September 5
1914 BATTLE OF THE MARNE BEGINS:
A Serbian nationalist's June 1914 assassination of the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian empire ignited hostilities in Europe. On July 28, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, and the tenuous peace between Europe's great powers collapsed. Within a week, Russia, Serbia, Britain, and France had all allied against Germany and Austria-Hungary. Warfare began on August 1 with the German invasion of Luxembourg, and the massive German advance to the Atlantic was not halted until the bloody Battle of the Marne in early September. Beginning September 5, 1914, at the river Marne, the British and French battled the Germans for six days, saving Paris at the cost of 500,000 extinguished lives.
September 6


1861 Federal forces seize Paducah, Kentucky
1863 Confederates evacuate Fort Wagner and Morris Island, South Carolina


September 7
1776 The World's First Submarine Attack
The world's first submarine attack occurred when the submersible craft American Turtle attacked British Admiral Richard Howe's flagship Eagle in New York Harbor during the Revolutionary War. The American Turtle, constructed by inventor David Bushnell, was larger enough to accommodate one operator, and was entirely hand-powered. Piloted by Ezra Lee, the wooden submarine attached a time bomb to the hull of the Eagle, and departed unnoticed. An explosion resulted, but no significant damage occurred as the poorly secured bomb had drifted away from the ship.

September 8
1941 SIEGE OF LENINGRAD BEGINS:
Nazi Germany's siege of Leningrad began on September 8, 1941, and lasted 900 days. Some citizens were forced to subsist on bread made from sawdust while others worked through the winter in makeshift military factories without heat. Although many perished from starvation, bombings, and the cold, the city's determined resistance held the German troops at bay and helped turn the tide of World War II. When the siege finally ended in January of 1944, Leningrad's population had been reduced from 2,500,000 million people to 600,000.

September 9
1942 Japanese Incendiaries Dropped on Oregon
In a rare raid against the U.S. mainland, Japanese balloons dropped incendiaries over Oregon in an attempt to set fire to the forests of the Northwest. The forests failed to ignite, but Pacific Coast citizens stepped-up their blackout drills in preparation for future Japanese raids. The Oregon attack was one of only a handful of Japanese raids against the continental United States. Only one resulted in casualties: on May 5, 1945, a woman and five neighborhood children were killed in Lakeview, Oregon, when a Japanese balloon they were attempting to drag out of the woods exploded. The U.S. government eventually gave several thousand dollars in compensation to the victims' families. In comparison, three years earlier, on April 18, 1942, the first squadron of U.S. bombers dropped bombs on the Japanese cities of Tokyo, Kobe, and Nagoyo, surprising Japanese military command who believed their home islands to be out of reach of Allied air attacks. When the war ended on August 14, 1945, some 160,000 tons of conventional explosives and two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan by the United States. Approximately half-a-million Japanese civilians were killed during these bombing attacks.
September 10
1862 Rabbi Becomes First Jewish Army Chaplain
Four months after the U.S. Congress amended its law requiring all Army chaplains to be Christians, Rabbi Jacob Frankel of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, became the first Jewish Army chaplain. For the rest of the Civil War, Frankel served principally at the United States Hospital in Philadelphia.
September 11 2001
At 8:46 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashes into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors. As the evacuation of the tower and its twin got underway, television cameras broadcast live images of what initially appeared to be a freak accident. Then, 18 minutes after the first plane hit, a second Boeing 767--United Airlines Flight 175--appeared out of the sky, turned sharply toward the World Trade Center, and sliced into the south tower at about the 60th floor. The collision caused a massive explosion that showered burning debris over surrounding buildings and the streets below. America was under attack.
The attackers were Islamic terrorists from Saudi Arabia and several other Arab nations. Reportedly financed by Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organization, they were allegedly acting in retaliation for America's support of Israel, its involvement in the Persian Gulf War, and its continued military presence in the Middle East. Some of the terrorists had lived in the United States for more than a year and had taken flying lessons at American commercial flight schools. Others had slipped into the U.S. in the months before September 11 and acted as the "muscle" in the operation. The 19 terrorists easily smuggled box-cutters and knives through security at three East Coast airports and boarded four flights bound for California, chosen because the planes were loaded with fuel for the long transcontinental journey. Soon after takeoff, the terrorists commandeered the four planes and took the controls, transforming the ordinary commuter jets into guided missiles.
As millions watched in horror the events unfolding in New York, American Airlines Flight 77 circled over downtown Washington and slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m. Jet fuel from the Boeing 757 caused a devastating inferno that led to a structural collapse of a portion of the giant concrete building. All told, 125 military personnel and civilians were killed in the Pentagon along with all 64 people aboard the airliner.
Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in a massive cloud of dust and smoke. The structural steel of the skyscraper, built to withstand winds in excess of 200 mph and a large conventional fire, could not withstand the tremendous heat generated by the burning jet fuel. At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed. Close to 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center and its vicinity, including a staggering 343 firefighters and 23 policemen who were struggling to complete an evacuation of the buildings and save the office workers trapped on higher floors. Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 other people were treated for injuries, many severe.
Meanwhile, a fourth California-bound plane--United Flight 93--was hijacked about 40 minutes after leaving Newark International Airport in New Jersey. Because the plane had been delayed in taking off, passengers on board learned of events in New York and Washington via cell phone and Airfone calls to the ground. Knowing that the aircraft was not returning to an airport as the hijackers claimed, a group of passengers and flight attendants planned an insurrection. One of the passengers, Thomas Burnett, Jr., told his wife over the phone that "I know we're all going to die. There's three of us who are going to do something about it. I love you, honey." Another passenger--Todd Beamer--was heard saying "Are you guys ready? Let's roll" over an open line. Sandy Bradshaw, a flight attendant, called her husband and explained that she had slipped into a galley and was filling pitchers with boiling water. Her last words to him were "Everyone's running to first class. I've got to go. Bye."
The passengers fought the four hijackers and are suspected to have attacked the cockpit with a fire extinguisher. The plane then flipped over and sped toward the ground at upwards of 500 miles per hour, crashing in a rural field in western Pennsylvania at 10:10 a.m. All 45 people aboard were killed. Its intended target is not known, but theories include the White House, the U.S. Capitol, the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, or one of several nuclear power plants along the eastern seaboard.
At 7 p.m., President George W. Bush, who had spent the day being shuttled around the country because of security concerns, returned to the White House. At 9 p.m., he delivered a televised address from the Oval Office, declaring "Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve." In a reference to the eventual U.S. military response he declared: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them."
Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S.-led international effort to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and destroy Osama bin Laden's terrorist network based there, began on October 7.


September 12
1944 U.S. Troops Reach German Territory
In the first American engagement on German soil during World War II, the U.S. First Army pushed five miles into Germany as part of the Allied effort to establish a spearhead across the lower Rhine. The Allies proved unable to stabilize their advance, and much of the territory was lost during the last major German offensive of the war, the Battle of the Bulge.
September 13
1943 SKORZENY RESCUES MUSSOLINI:
In a daring rescue, Otto Skorzeny, Adolf Hitler's commando leader, kidnapped Fascist leader Benito Mussolini from the Italian resistance forces that held him in a villa in the Abruzzi Mountains. Skorzeny and his men landed gliders and a small plane on the on the edge of the mountain, seized Mussolini, and whisked him back to Germany where he was greeted by Hitler on September 13, 1943. Skorzeny, who was acquitted by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, said he was proud to have served Hitler.
September 14
1814 Key Composes "The Star-Spangled Banner"
Francis Scott Key composed the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner" after witnessing the massive British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Maryland during the War of 1812. Key, an American lawyer, watched the siege while under detainment on a British ship, and penned the famous words after observing that the U.S. flag over Fort McHenry had survived the 1,800-bomb assault. After circulating as a handbill, the patriotic lyrics were published in a Baltimore newspaper on September 20, 1814. Key's words were later set to the tune of "To Anacreon in Heaven," a popular English song. Throughout the nineteenth century, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was regarded as the national anthem by the U.S. armed forces and other groups, but it was not until 1916, and the signing of an executive order by President Woodrow Wilson, that it was formally designated as such. In 1931, the U.S. Congress passed in act confirming Wilson's presidential order, and on March 3, President Hoover signed it into law.
September 15
1916 Tanks Introduced into Warfare at the Somme
During the Battle of the Somme, the British launched a major offensive against the Germans, employing, for the first time in history, tanks. At Flers Courcelette, several of the fifty or so primitive tanks advanced over a mile into enemy lines, but were too slow to hold their positions during the German counterattack. However, General Douglas Haig, commander of Allied forces at the Somme, saw the promise of this new instrument of war, and ordered the war department to produce over one thousand more. On July 1, the British launched a massive offensive against German forces in the Somme River region of France. The assault began with an intense bombardment of 250,000 shells along the Western Front, followed by the explosion of mines planted under the German trenches. Before the smoke and dust cleared, 100,000 British soldiers poured out of their trenches and across no-man's-land. Unfortunately, they were met with a lethal barrage of machine-gun fire from the enforced German trenches, which had survived the artillery onslaught. By nightfall, 20,000 British were dead, including 1,000 officers, and 40,000 were injured. The next day, both sides settled down to a war of attrition, characterized by ineffectual but costly offensives and the horrendous conditions of trench life. Even Britain's September introduction of tanks into warfare for the first time in history failed to break the deadlock along the Western Front. On November 18, 1916, Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, called off the Battle of the Somme after nearly five months of mass slaughter. The offensive amounted to a total gain of just 125 square miles, at a cost of over 600,000 British and French soldiers killed, wounded, or missing in action. German casualties were over 650,000. Although Haig was severely criticized for the costly battle, his willingness to commit massive amounts of men and resources to the stalemate along the Western Front eventually contributed to the collapse of an exhausted Germany in 1918.
September 16
1782 The Great Seal of the United States
The first impression of the Great Seal of the United States was made on a document authorizing General George Washington to negotiate a prisoner of war agreement with the British. The seal was an image of a spread eagle, bearing on its breast a shield with thirteen red and white stripes, with an olive branch in its right claw, and thirteen arrows in its left.
September 17
1862 The Battle of Antietam
In the bloodiest single day of fighting in the American Civil War, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in action at the Battle of Antietam in western Maryland. At heavy cost to both armies, Union General George McClellan repulsed the forces of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, ending the Southerners' advance into Northern territory. The next day, Lee's crippled army waited in its retreated position for the final Union assault. McClellan, general in chief of all Union forces, never ordered the expected attack, and, after a day of waiting, Lee led his forces out of Maryland and into the safety of Virginia. McClellan, consistently cautious on the battlefield, was relieved of his duties by President Abraham Lincoln for his failure to crush Lee.
September 18
1861 Siege of Lexington, Missouri continues
1863 Skirmish at Bristol in east Tennessee
1863 Confederates force way across Chickamauga Creek