September 6th in History

Mayan Round / Long Count
Calendar

3114 BC   According to the proleptic Julian calendar the current era in the Mayan Long Count Calendar started. A proleptic calendar is one which is extended backwards to establish dates, from the date the Calendar is created, instead of the more customary direction of calendars going forwards chronologically. Contrary to the popular myth that the Mayan calendar predicts some cataclysmic end of the world on December 21, 2012, it is in fact simply the beginning of the next calendar calculation period, identified as the 14th "b'ak'tun' in using the Mayan round calendar.

Coin showing likeness of
losing Pagan Western
Roman Emperor Eugenius

Coin showing likeness of
winning Christian Eastern
Roman Emperor Theodosius I

394   The Christian Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius I defeats and kills the pagan  Western Roman Emperor Eugenius and his Frankish magister militum Arbogast, at the Frigidus River in what is modern Slovenia.  The battle was significant for two reasons; one, it unified the Roman Empire again as one, instead of East and West, and two, it allowed Theodosius successfully to Christianize the entire Roe man Empire, making Christianity the only official Roman Empire religion.

1492   Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic 'Ocean blue' for the first time.

1522    The Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition, returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.

Tyndale's execution

1536    Death of William Tyndale, Protestant bible translator (b. c.1494)  Tyndale was a 16th century scholar; his expertise was in translation.  Like his predecessors, Luther and Erasmus, who made translations of the Bible available to non-clergy. Luther translated the Bible into German; Erasmus made the new testament available in Greek. Tyndale in turn translated the Bible into English, and had it printed using the new printing press technology.  In making the Bible more directly accessible, Tyndale offended the perogatives of the Roman Catholic Church AND the Anglican Church, which as the official state religion was backed up by the power and authority of the state.  The Church did not want the Bible available in the vernacular.   Cardinal Wolsey called Tyndale a heretic.  Sir Thomas Moore called him a heretic AND a traitor. Not content to stop there, Tyndale wrote a treatise in 1530 that took issue with the divorce of Henry the VIII for violating scrptural law prohibitions.  Tyndale was arrested and imprisoned in Belgium, near Brussels by Church authorities - because they could do that.  He was tried in 1536 for heresy, found guilty, strangled and burned at the stake - which was a slightly nicer sentence than being burned at the stake while still alive.  Ironically, four years after Tyndale was executed for translating the Bible, King Henry VIII had four translation of the Bible published in England, including the official 'Great Bible' which was to be read aloud in Anglican church service - based on Tyndale's translation. In 1611, Tyndale's translation was widely used as the foundational basis for the King James Bible translation; some estimates put around 75% of the Old Testament as Tyndale's work; and nearly 85% of the New Testament as his translation. Tyndale's experience provides an interesting perspective to freedom of religion, official approval of faith, and the vagaries of public opinion towards different religious ideas and practice. 

1620   The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower to settle in North America.

1628   The Puritans settle Salem, which will later become part of Massachusetts Bay Colony.


1634   Thirty Years' War: In the Battle of Nördlingen the Catholic Imperial army defeats Protestant armies of Sweden and Germany.

1757   Birth of Marquis de Lafayette, French soldier and statesman, American Revolutionary War hero (d. 1834)

1766   Birth of John Dalton, British chemist, meteorologist, and physicist (d. 1844), early pioneer in modern atomic theory, and color blindness - a problem for Dalton himself.  Dalton's accomplishments are the more remarkable because, as a Quaker, or 'dissenter', he was barred from attending or teaching at English Universities.  Dalton was a prestigious scientist in his own time, a member of both the English Royal Society and the French Academie des Sciences.

1870   Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming becomes the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.

Schreck as silent film
vampire villain, Nosferatu

1879    Birth of Max Schreck, German actor (d. 1936) of stage and both silent and sound films.  He is most famous for his role as Nosferatu in the F. W. Murnau film of the same name. Appropriately, Schreck in Middle High German means 'fright' or 'terror', but as an actor he performed a range of roles, including comedy.

Flying Tigers logo

1893  Birth of Lieutenant General Claire Chennault, American pilot (d. 1958), founder and commander of the Flying Tigers in China in WW II.  The Flying Tigers flew planes authorized by the U. S. through the Lend Lease program, and the ground staff and pilots were a combination of volunteers and mercenaries.  After the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Cheannault's Flying Tigers were the first American forces to have success against the Japanese military.

1901   Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shoots and fatally wounds US President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

1909 American explorer Robert Peary sent word that he had reached the North Pole five months earlier.

1916 The first self-service grocery store, Piggly Wiggly, was opened in Memphis, Tenn., by Clarence Saunders.

Rackham illustration
"Sigfried Awakens
Brunnhilde", Richard
Wagner's "The Ring"

1917    Birth of Philipp von Boeselager, German Wehrmacht officer, failed assassin of Adolf Hitler (d. 2008)

1930  Democratically elected Argentine president Hipólito Yrigoyen is deposed in a military coup.

1939   Death of Arthur Rackman, English book illustrator (b. 1867)

1940   King Carol II of Romania abdicates and is succeeded by his son Michael.

1941 Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas were ordered to wear yellow Stars of David.

1943   The Monterrey Institute of Technology, one of the largest and most influential private universities in Latin America, is founded in Monterrey, Mexico.

1949   Allied military authorities relinquish control of former Nazi Germany assets back to German control.
           A former sharpshooter in World War II, Howard Unruh kills 13 neighbors in Camden, New Jersey, with a souvenir Luger to become the first U.S. single-episode mass murderer.

1952   Canada's first television station, CBFT-TV, opens in Montreal.

1955   Istanbul Pogrom: Istanbul's Greek and Armenian minority are the target of a government-sponsored pogrom.

1963   The Centre for International Industrial Property Studies (CEIPI) is founded.

1965   War of 1965: India retaliates following Pakistan's failed Operation Grand Slam which resulted in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 that is ended following the signing of the Tashkent Declaration.

1966   In Cape Town, South Africa, the architect of Apartheid, Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, is stabbed to death during a parliamentary meeting.
          Death of Margaret Sanger, American birth control activist (b. 1879)

1970   Two passenger jets bound from Europe to New York are simultaneously hijacked by Palestinian terrorist members of PFLP and taken to Dawson's Field in Jordan.

1972   Munich Massacre: 9 Israel athletes taken hostage at the Munich Olympic Games by the Palestinian "Black September" terrorist group died (as did a German policeman) at the hands of the kidnappers during a failed rescue attempt. 2 other Israeli athletes are slain in the initial attack the previous day.

1976   Cold War: Soviet air force pilot Lt. Viktor Belenko lands a MiG-25 jet fighter at Hakodate on the island of Hokkaidō in Japan and requests political asylum in the United States.

1983   The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Flight KAL-007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace.

1986   In Istanbul, two terrorists from Abu Nidal's organization kill 22 and wound six inside the Neve Shalom synagogue during Shabbat services.

1991   The Soviet Union recognizes the independence of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
           The name Saint Petersburg is restored to Russia's second largest city, which had been renamed Leningrad in 1924.

1992   Hunters discover the emaciated body of Christopher Johnson McCandless at his camp 20 miles west of the town of Healy, Alaska.
 
1998   Death of Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director (b. 1910)
 
2002   Meeting outside Washington D.C., for only the second time since 1800, Congress convened in New York to pay homage to the victims and heroes of Sept. 11, 2001.
 
2005   The California Legislature became the first legislative body in the nation to approve same-sex marriages. (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger later vetoed the bill.)
 
2006    President George W. Bush acknowledged previously secret CIA prisons around the world and said 14 high-value terrorism suspects had been transferred from the system to Guantanamo Bay for trials.

2007   Deaths of Madeleine L'Engle, American author (b. 1918), Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor (b. 1935),
and Alex, African Grey parrot "student" of Dr. Irene Pepperberg (b. 1976)