September 6 – Some important events on this day.
3114 BC 👉🏼 Date Maya/Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar starts dating from (as corresponds to the Julian Calendar).
394 👉🏼 Battle of Frigidus in Northern Italy: forces of Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeat those of Western Emperor Eugenius
1522 👉🏼 Ferdinand Magellan’s Spanish expedition aboard the Vitoria returns to Spain without their captain. First to circumnavigate the earth.
1620 👉🏼 The Mayflower departs Plymouth, England with 102 Pilgrims and about 30 crew for the New World
1642 👉🏼 English Long Parliament issues Ordinance ordering closure of London theatres including the Globe theatre, once part-owned by William Shakespeare
1651 👉🏼 King Charles II of England spends a day hiding in an oak tree during his escape after losing the Battle of Worcester
1666 👉🏼 After St Paul’s Cathedral and much of the city had been burned down over four days, the Great Fire of London is finally extinguished.
1776 👉🏼 Hurricane hits Martinique. 100 French and Dutch ships sink, 600 die
1839 👉🏼 Cherokee Nation unites and ratifies constitution at Tahlequah, Oklahoma.
It was US President Andrew Jackson’s policy to removing Native Americans from their ancestral lands to make way for settlers and speculators that led to the infamous Trail of Tears in the 1830s.
The Cherokees of Georgia initially tried legal means to resist the policy and actually won their case in the US Supreme Court. However President Jackson refused to acknowledge the judgement and 20,000 were eventually marched west at gunpoint. A quarter of their number would perish on the journey.
1901 👉🏼 US President William McKinley is shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist, while visiting the Pan-American Exposition in New York
1909 👉🏼 New York Times headline announces American explorer Robert Peary had discovered the North Pole 5 months earlier
1913 👉🏼 1st aircraft to loop the loop – Adolphe Pégoud in France
1914 👉🏼 World War I: First Battle of the Marne begins, French and British forces prevent German advance on Paris (till the 12th Sept).
The First Battle of the Marne took place 6th – 12th September 1914 and was a major turning point during World War I. It was fought on the bank of the river Marne near Paris in France and won by Allied forces.
The Allies, made up of the French army and the British Expeditionary Force halted the German advance and forced them to retreat, saving Paris, but leading to four years of trench warfare along the Western Front. Casualties were high with 250,000 killed or injured on the Allied side and a similar total estimated for the German army.
1915 👉🏼 First tank produced
On this day, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from an overnight success. It weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour. However, improvements were made to the original prototype and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields.
1916 👉🏼 1st true supermarket, the “Piggly Wiggly” is opened by Clarence Saunders in Memphis, Tennessee.
Piggly Wiggly was the first true self-service grocery store and the originator of various familiar supermarket concepts such as checkout stands, individual item price marking and shopping carts.
The concept of the “self-serving store” was patented by Saunders himself one year later, in 1917.
1924 👉🏼 Assassination attempt on Benito Mussolini fails
1992 👉🏼 Gay Kelleway becomes the 1st female jockey to ride a winner at England’s famous Royal Ascot
1997 👉🏼 Some 2.5 billion TV viewers watch Princess Diana’s funeral.
Diana, Princess of Wales, died at the age of 36 in a car crash in Paris the week before, on August 31.
2017 👉🏼 Hurricane Irma makes landfall on Caribbean islands of Barbuda, Sint Maartens and British Virgin Islands. Prime Minister Gaston Browne reports 95% of buildings in Barbuda damaged.