September 15

September 15 is the 258th day of the year (259th in leap years). There are 107 days remaining.

Table of contents

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays

Events

608 - Saint Boniface IV becomes Pope
1620 - The Mayflower departs Plymouth, England
1789 - The United States Department of State is established (formerly known as Department of Foreign Affairs).
1821 - Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador proclaimed independent
1830 - The Liverpool to Manchester railway line opens. (see also deaths, below)
1862 - Confederate forces capture Harpers Ferry, Virginia
1883 - The Bombay Natural History Society is founded in Bombay (now Mumbai), India
1894 - Japan defeats China in the Battle of Ping Yang
1914 - The Battle of Aisne begins between Germany and France
1916 - Tanks are used for the first time in battle, at the Battle of the Somme
1935 - Nuremberg Laws deprive German Jews of citizenship
1950 - United States forces land at Inchon, Korea
1952 - United Nations gives Eritrea to Ethiopia
1959 - Nikita Khrushchev becomes the first Soviet leader to visit the United States
1963 - Four children are killed when a bomb explodes in the 16th Street Baptist Church, an African-American church in Birmingham, Alabama

1789 - James Fenimore Cooper, novelist († 1851)
1857 - William Howard Taft, President of the United States and Supreme Court Justice († 1930)
1876 - Bruno Walter, conductor
1889 - Robert Benchley, author († 1945)
1890 - Agatha Christie, writer († 1976)
1894 - Jean Renoir, film director († 1979)
1903 - Roy Acuff, country musician († 1992)
1907 - Fay Wray, actress
1913 - John N. Mitchell, former United States Attorney General and convicted Watergate criminal († 1988)
1914 - Adolfo Bioy Casares, writer († 1999)
1915 - Igor Cassini, fashion designer († 2002)
1922 - Jackie Cooper, actor, director
1924 - Bobby Short, jazz musician
1924 - Lucebert, Dutch painter and poet
1926 - Jean-Pierre Serre, French mathematician
1928 - Cannonball Adderley, saxophonist, bandleader († 1975)
1929 - Murray Gell-Mann, American physicist.
1933 - Henry Darrow, actor
1938 - Gaylord Perry, Baseball star
1940 - Merlin Olsen, American football star, actor
1946 - Tommy Lee Jones, actor
1946 - Oliver Stone, film director
1961 - Dan Marino, American football star
1984 - Prince Harry of Wales
1987 - Philip van Reeuwijk, Dutch Soccer star

1830 - William Huskisson, M.P., struck by George Stephenson's train engine `Rocket', at the opening of the Liverpool-Manchester line. The first rail fatality of history.
1859 - Isambard Kingdom Brunel, engineer
1864 - John Hanning Speke - British explorer of Africa
1885 - P.T. Barnum's famous Elephant, Jumbo, hit by locomotive while crossing tracks, died instantly. Was later stuffed and put on display with the circus.
1891 - Ivan Goncharov, Russian author of Oblomov
1893 - Thomas Hawksley, civil engineer
1898 - William Seward Burroughs, inventor of the calculator
1945 - Anton Webern, Austrian composer
1973 - Gustav VI Adolf, king of Sweden
1989 - Robert Penn Warren, poet, novelist
2003 - Josef Hiršal, novelist

In ancient Greece, the second day of the Eleusinian mysteries, when the priests of Demeter declared the public start of the rites.
In Japan, Respect for the Aged Day.