What Happened on September 14
Historical Events
- 1752 Britain and the British Empire (including the American colonies) adopt the Gregorian calendar (no Sept 3 - Sept 13)
- 1936 1st prefrontal lobotomy in America performed by Walter Freeman and James W. Watts at George Washington University Hospital in Washington D.C.
- 1939 World’s 1st practical helicopter, the VS-300 designed by Igor Sikorsky takes (tethered) flight in Stratford, Connecticut
- 1949 India's Constituent Assembly adopts Hindi as an official language. Celebrated today as Hindi Day.
- 1956 IBM introduces the RAMAC 305, 1st commercial computer with a hard drive that uses magnetic disk storage, weighs over a ton
- 1960 Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi-Arabia and Venezuela form the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
- 2020 Astronomers report possible sign of life on Venus, after detecting phosphine in planets's atmosphere by telescope [1]
- 2021 1 in 500 Americans have died of COVID-19 as the nation's known death toll reaches 663,913 (Johns Hopkins) [1]
- More Historical Events
Sep 14 in Music
- 1741 George Frideric Handel finishes his "Messiah" oratorio after working on it non-stop for 23 days
Did You Know?
Francis Scott Key pens the poem "Defence of Fort M'Henry", later known as "The Star-Spangled Banner" while witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry from a ship in Baltimore harbor
On September 14, 1814
Would You Believe?
14 yr old Texan Ahmed Mohamed arrested at school when home-made clock assumed to be a bomb - Mark Zuckerberg and US President Barack Obama send supportive tweets
On September 14, 2015
Famous Weddings
- 1830 Princess WFLC Marianne marries Albrecht of Prussia
- 1835 American leading transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson (33) marries 2nd wife Lydia (Lidian) Jackson in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
- 1838 Newly escaped slave Frederick Douglass marries free woman Anne Murray in New York
Famous Divorces
- 1962 Actress Janet Leigh (35) divorces actor Tony Curtis (37) after 10 years of marriage
- 1984 Film director John Carpenter (36) and actress Adrienne Barbeau (39) divorce after 5 years of marriage
More Weddings & Divorces
Articles, Photos and Quiz
Fatal Legacy of a Beautiful Riviera
Two famous American women – Grace Kelly and Isadora Duncan, both died after tragic motoring accidents in the same area on this day, though half a century apart.
September 14, 1982Weekly Quiz for September 9-15
In 1776 US Congress officially adopted the name 'United States of America', what was the previous name? Which war saw the 1st use of tanks on the battlefield?