September 23

63 BC The Roman emperor Augustus was born at Ox Head, a small property on the Palatine Hill, very close to the Roman Forum in Rome on September 23, 63 BC. His full name was Gaius Octavius Thurinus, possibly commemorating his father's victory at Thurii over a rebellious band of slaves. In 27 BC Gaius was given the title of Augustus by the Roman Senate meaning "venerable, grand, majestic."

By Till Niermann - Wikipedia Commons

1215 Mongolian emperor Kublai Khan was born on September 23, 1215, the fourth son of Tolui, Regent of the Mongol Empire between 1227- 1229. His grandfather was the legendary Genghis Khan, who passed away when Kublai was 11. Kublai Khan's empire stretched from Hungary to Korea. Unlike the bloodthirsty older members of his family, Kublai was willing to negotiate before reaching for his sword. He was treated like a god, no noise was permitted within half a mile of where the Khan was.

1647 Two famous philosophers met when Rene Descartes visited Blaise Pascal on September 23, 1647. During his stay, the pair argued about the vacuum which Descartes did not believe in. Afterwards, Descartes wrote a letter to Huygens in which he said that Pascal"...has too much vacuum in his head."

1667 The first 20 African slaves were brought to England's American territories by a Dutch ship. They landed off the coast of Virginia in 1619 and were then sold into slavery in Jamestown. Slaves in Virginia were banned on September 23, 1667 from obtaining their freedom by converting to Christianity.

Sale and inspection of slave

1756 Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam was born on September 23, 1756. Having become frustrated with highways that were often impassable because of rain and mud, McAdam came up with a revolutionary method of road construction, which involved placing evenly sized stones on top of each other which, when bedded down, would hold their position. The use of hot tar to bond the stones gave us tarmacadam-still the staple of road building 200 years later.

1803 The Battle of Assaye on September 23, 1803 was fought in India between the Maratha Empire and the British East India Company under the command of Major General Arthur Wellesley (later the Duke of Wellington). The battle was Wellesley's first major victory and one he later described as his finest accomplishment on the battlefield.

1806 President Thomas Jefferson commissioned an expedition to find a practical route across the western half of North America to the Pacific Ocean. The leaders of the expedition, Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, left St. Louis with 33 volunteers in May 1804 and returned to St. Louis on September 23, 1806 after exploring the Pacific Northwest of the United States. Theirs was the first American expedition to cross the western portion of the United States.

1845 The Knickerbockers Baseball Club, the first baseball team to play under the modern rules, was founded in New York by firefighter Alexander Cartwright on September 23, 1845. The club was named the "Knickerbockers", in honor of  Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 12 of the New York City Fire Department, the fire company where Cartwright was a member.

1846 Neptune was discovered on September 23, 1846. Using mathematical predictions by French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier and Cornwall-born astronomer John Couch Adams, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle became the first person to observe Neptune and recognize it as a hitherto unknown planet.

Neptune

1857 The Third Great Awakening in the US saw the adoption of a number of moral causes, such as the abolition of slavery and prohibition. Its origins can be traced to a lunch-hour prayer meeting held at North Dutch Church in Manhattan. Former businessman turned missionary Jeremiah Calvin Lanphier hosted the sparsely attended first meeting on September 23, 1857. Week by week the gathering grew, spawning copycat prayer meetings around New York City.

1862 Russian author Leo Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, daughter of a German physician, on September 23, 1862. She was 16 years his junior. Sophia was pregnant 16 times and she gave birth to 13 children (The other three were still born). She still found the energy to work as her husband's unpaid assistant deciphering and copying his drafts. Tolstoy described his wife as "good, loving and beloved".

Sophia Tolstaya and daughter Alexandra Tolstaya

1868 A revolt led by the nationalist Ramón Emeterio Betances against Spanish rule on Puerto Rico began on September 23, 1868. Although the revolt failed to achieve its main objective, it galvanized a burgeoning nationalist movement among Puerto Ricans, Betances is considered "El Padre de la Patria" (Father of the [Puerto Rican] Nation).

1869 Mary Mallon who was known as "Typhoid Mary" was born on September 23, 1869. She was the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the United States, having contracted a mild case herself at some stage. Mallon was blamed for spreading typhoid to 51 people, three of whom died, over the course of her career as a cook.

1875 William H "Billy The Kid" Bonney was arrested for the first time for stealing a basket of laundry on September 23, 1875, six days after his 16th birthday. Bonney killed his first victim at age 18. According to legend, the outlaw killed 21 people, one for each year of his life. But the New Mexico Tourism Department puts the total closer to nine.

1884 The first milk bottles used a porcelain stopper top held on by wire. A patent for a milk bottle with a dome type tin cap was granted September 23, 1884 to Abram V. Whiteman. Another patent for a glass milk bottle with a glass lid.was granted to Whiteman's brother, Lewis Whiteman, around the same time.

Examples of milk bottles from the late 19th century made by the Warren Glass Works Company.

1889 Nintendo Koppai (Later Nintendo Company, Limited) was founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce and market the playing card game Hanafuda. No one, including late Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, knows what the name "Nintendo" means. Nintendo's first electronic product was a children's walkie-talkie set, which they sold in the mid 1960s.

1896 On September 23, 1896, Queen Victoria usurped her grandfather George III as the longest-reigning monarch in British history, up to that point. Queen Victoria's reign lasted for 63 years and 216 days, known as the Victorian era.. Her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II surpassed her on September 9, 2015.

1904 A young German engineer named Christian Hülsmeyer was the first to use radio waves to detect the presence of distant objects. He obtained a British patent on September 23, 1904 for his apparatus which he called a Telemobiloscope. Hülsmeyer is often credited with the invention of radar, but his "Telemobiloscope," could not directly measure distance to a target and thus does not merit this full distinction.

1909 The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialization in the French newspaper Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910.  It was published in volume form in late March 1910 and an English edition came out the following year.

1911 American aeronautical engineer and aviator Earle Ovington piloted the first official airmail flight in the United States in a Blériot XI on September 23, 1911. He took off from Nassau Boulevard aerodrome, Garden City, New York with a sack of mail and circled 500 feet above Mineola, New York. Ovington tossed the bag containing 640 letters and 1,280 postcards over the side of the cockpit and the sack burst on impact, scattering the contents.

Edward M. Morgan, Frank Harris Hitchcock, and Earle Lewis Ovington and the Blériot XI

1913 French aviator Roland Garros started his aviation career in 1909 flying a Demoiselle (Dragonfly) monoplane, an aircraft that only flew well with a small lightweight pilot. Two years after Garros established a new world altitude record of 18,410 feet (5,611 metes), he became on September 23, 1913, the first person to fly a plane across the Mediterranean (from St. Raphael, France to Bizerte, Tunisia).

1930 Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia on September 23, 1930 and raised in Greenville, Florida. His name was Raymond Charles Robinson. Charles dropped the "Robinson" from his name as a young performer to avoid confusion with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. By the age of seven, Charles had gone completely blind, most likely due to glaucoma. He  began playing piano and saxophone while attending the St. Augustine School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, Florida.

1932 At the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire continued to control or have a suzerainty over most of the Arab peninsula. King Ibn Saud united the Arab peninsular into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. On September 23, 1932, the regions of Hejaz and Nejd merged to form the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with Ibn Saud as the first monarch and Riyadh as the capital city. 

1939 In 1923 the first signs of cancer of the jaw affecting Sigmund Freud was detected. From then on speech was very difficult for him and he had to endure over thirty surgical procedures; pain and discomfort marked the rest of his life. By mid-September 1939, Freud's cancer was causing him increasingly severe pain and had been declared to be inoperable. His doctor friend Max Schur, administered fatal doses of morphine and Freud died in his study on September 23, 1939.

1943 Hollywood star Clark Gable flew five combat missions during World War II often under enemy fire, including one to Germany, as an observer.  His last one was on September 23, 1943. He was awarded the Air Medal and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Gable's missions were filmed for Combat America, a propaganda film.

1949 Bruce Springsteen was born at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, New Jersey on September 23, 1949. His father was mostly unemployed and his legal secretary mother was the main breadwinner.  Springsteen recalled to Rolling Stone how hearing The Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on his mother's car radio changed his life. “I  immediately called my girl and said, ‘Have you heard this band called the Beatles? And after that, it was nothing but rock & roll with guitars.”

1951 The stress of World War II took its toll on King George VI of the United Kingdom's health exacerbated by his heavy smoking and subsequent development of lung cancer among other ailments, including arteriosclerosis and thromboangiitis obliterans. On September 23, 1951 thoracic surgeon Clement Price Thomas removed part of the king's lung in Buckingham Palace. He died 136 days later.

1953 Richard Nixon delivered his "Checkers speech" on September 23, 1953, during his Republican vice-presidency campaign. During his speech Nixon refuted accusations of improprieties with contributions to his campaign. Nixon said the family Cocker Spaniel, Checkers, was the only gift he'd received. 

1980 Bob Marley, suffering from cancer, played his last concert at a show in Pittsburgh's Stanley Theater on September 23, 1980. He played "Redemption Song" as the very last song before he collapsed on stage. Marley was rushed to New York's Sloan-Kettering Hospital for treatment. He died eight months later.

2002 The initial version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, often referred to as simply "Firefox," was released by the Mozilla Organization on September 23, 2002. Firefox quickly gained popularity for its speed, security, and open-source nature, becoming a major competitor to other web browsers like Internet Explorer. It has since gone through numerous updates and versions, maintaining its reputation as a popular and user-friendly web browser.

2019 Thomas Cook Group plc originated in 1841 when the Baptist Thomas Cook chartered a train to take a party of 570 people from Leicester to a temperance rally 11 miles away. The company grew to become one of the largest and most well-known travel agents but ceased trading on September 23, 2019 after experiencing financial difficulties. Around 21,000 worldwide employees were left without jobs and 600,000 customers were left abroad, triggering the UK's largest peacetime repatriation.