George Washington lays the cornerstone to the United States Capitol building, the home of the legislative branch of American government
The 27-year-old guitarist asphixiated on his own vomit.
Future President Jimmy Carter files a report with the International UFO Bureau on September 18, 1973, claiming he had seen an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) in October 1969. During the presidential campaign of 1976, Democratic challenger Carter was forthcoming about his belief that he had seen a UFO. He described waiting outside for a Lion’s Club […]
Newspaper heiress and wanted fugitive Patty Hearst is captured in a San Francisco apartment and arrested for armed robbery. On February 4, 1974, Patricia Hearst, the 19-year-old daughter of newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by two black men and a white woman, all three of whom were armed. […]
On September 18, 1987, cesium-137 is removed from an abandoned cancer-therapy machine in Brazil. Hundreds of people were eventually poisoned by radiation from the substance, highlighting the danger that even relatively small amounts of radiation can pose. In 1985, the Goiania Institute of Radiotherapy moved to a new location and left behind an obsolete Cesium-137 […]
Anne Hutchinson, an Englishwoman who would become an outspoken religious thinker in the American colonies, arrives at the Massachusetts Bay Colony with her family. She settled in Cambridge and began organizing meetings of Boston women in her home, leading them in discussions of recent sermons and religious issues. Soon ministers and magistrates began attending her […]
On September 18, 1981, the 20,000-car parking lot at Canada’s West Edmonton Mall makes the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest parking lot in the world. The mall has held other records, too: At one time or another it’s been the World’s Largest Shopping Mall (5.2 million square feet, or about 48 city […]
Serial killer Harvey Glatman is executed in a California gas chamber for murdering three young women in Los Angeles. Resisting all appeals to save his life, Glatman even wrote to the appeals board to say, “I only want to die.” Glatman had been a smart kid. As a Boy Scout, he developed an obsession with […]
On September 18, 1987, the thriller Fatal Attraction, about a married man who has a fling with a woman who then becomes obsessed with him and stalks his family, opens widely in U.S. theaters. The film, which starred Michael Douglas and Glenn Close, was a box-office hit and garnered six Academy Award nominations, including Best […]
On September 18, 1974, actress Doris Day wins a $22.8 million malpractice suit against her former lawyer. Day, one of the biggest box office draws of the 1950s and ’60s, had allowed her third husband, Martin Melcher, to handle her finances. After his death in 1968, she discovered that her $20 million in life savings […]
Fidel Castro arrives in New York City as the head of the Cuban delegation to the United Nations. Castro’s visit stirred indignation and admiration from various sectors of American society, and was climaxed by his speech to the United Nations on September 26. By the time Castro arrived in New York City in September 1960, […]
More than one million people gather at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing for the funeral of Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party and chairman of the People’s Republic of China since 1949. Mao, who died on September 9, 1976, at the age of 82, was born on December 26, […]
Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s army pulls away from Antietam Creek, near Sharpsburg, Maryland, and heads back to Virginia. The day before, at the Battle of Antietam, Lee’s force had engaged in the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War against the army of General George B. McClellan. The armies struggled to a standstill, but […]