September in History

1804

Science

German astronomer Karl Harding discovers Juno, the third asteroid ever found.

Juno was counted as a planet for decades, until so many asteroids had been found that a new category was needed. It is one of the larger main-belt asteroids, about 250 kilometers across.

Meanwhile in art: Neoclassicism, Romanticism

Sources: Wikipedia — 3 Juno · Wikidata — Q3009

1967

Society

Paddy Roy Bates declares the Principality of Sealand on an abandoned sea fort off the English coast.

Sealand has issued its own flag, passports and coins, but no country recognizes it. It remains the world's most famous micronation and is still run by the Bates family.

Sources: Wikipedia — Principality of Sealand · Wikidata — Q13706

1967

Society

Sweden switches from driving on the left to the right in a single morning, a day called Dagen H.

Sweden's neighbors already drove on the right, and most Swedish cars were left-hand drive. For a while the roads were even safer than before, as drivers took extra care.

Sources: Wikipedia — Dagen H · Wikidata — Q376921

1994

Technology

Kansai International Airport opens on an artificial island in Osaka Bay, Japan.

Kansai's terminal building is about 1.7 kilometres long. The island has slowly settled into the seabed since it was built, and engineers keep working to protect it from the sea.

Sources: Wikipedia — Kansai International Airport · Wikidata — Q193682

1977

Exploration

NASA launches Voyager 1, which would become the most distant human-made object.

Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter and Saturn, then headed out of the plane of the planets. It crossed into interstellar space and still sends faint signals home, decades after launch.

Sources: Wikipedia — Voyager 1 · Wikidata — Q48469

1952

Culture

CBC Television goes on the air in Montreal, the start of television broadcasting in Canada.

Television spread quickly across Canada after the first broadcast. Within a few years a microwave relay network linked stations from coast to coast.

Sources: Wikipedia — CBC Television · Wikidata — Q1022955

1822

Society

Prince Pedro declares Brazil's independence from Portugal on the banks of the Ipiranga stream.

Pedro was crowned emperor a few months later, so Brazil began as a monarchy rather than a republic. The country marks the date each year as its Independence Day.

Meanwhile in art: Neoclassicism, Romanticism

Sources: Wikipedia — Independence of Brazil · Wikidata — Q1548600

1966

Culture

Star Trek premieres on NBC with the episode 'The Man Trap.'

The original series ran only three seasons, but reruns turned it into a phenomenon. It inspired films and many spin-offs, and some scientists and astronauts say it sparked their careers.

Sources: Wikipedia — The Man Trap · Wikidata — Q1287667

1886

Society

The Berne Convention is signed, requiring nations to protect the copyrights of foreign authors.

Before the convention, a book protected in one country could be freely copied in another. Today almost every country in the world is a member.

Meanwhile in art: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism

Sources: Wikipedia — Berne Convention · Wikidata — Q217398

1960

Sports

Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila wins the Olympic marathon in Rome running barefoot.

Bikila won the 1960 marathon in a world-best time, running barefoot because his new shoes gave him blisters. He won again in Tokyo in 1964, that time in shoes.

Sources: Wikipedia — Athletics at the 1960 Summer Olympics – Men's marathon · Wikidata — Q3628531

1997

Society

Scottish voters back the creation of a Scottish Parliament in a referendum.

The 1997 referendum passed with about 74% in favour and led to the Scotland Act 1998. The Scottish Parliament met for the first time in 1999.

Sources: Wikipedia — 1997 Scottish devolution referendum · Wikidata — Q2690249

1940

Culture

Four teenagers in southwestern France stumble on the Lascaux cave, filled with Ice Age paintings.

The paintings show horses, deer, bulls and other animals in vivid colors. The cave was opened to visitors but closed when their breath began damaging the art, and replicas now let the public see it.

Meanwhile in art: Early Modernism

Sources: Wikipedia — Lascaux · Wikidata — Q172125

1985

Culture

Nintendo releases Super Mario Bros. in Japan, the side-scrolling game that became a worldwide phenomenon.

Designer Shigeru Miyamoto's game set the template for platform games. It helped revive home video games after a market crash in North America.

Sources: Wikipedia — Super Mario Bros. · Wikidata — Q11168

2015

Science

LIGO detects gravitational waves for the first time, from two black holes merging over a billion light-years away.

The discovery was announced months later and confirmed a major prediction of Einstein's general relativity. Three physicists behind LIGO shared the Nobel Prize, and gravitational-wave astronomy was born.

Sources: Wikipedia — First observation of gravitational waves · Wikidata — Q22683173

2007

Nature

A meteorite crashes near the Peruvian village of Carancas, blasting a crater near Lake Titicaca.

Scientists were surprised that a stony meteorite could reach the ground fast enough to dig a crater. Fragments were collected and studied by researchers around the world.

Sources: Wikipedia — 2007 Carancas impact event · Wikidata — Q1035398

1987

Nature

Nations sign the Montreal Protocol to phase out chemicals destroying Earth's ozone layer.

The protocol is often called the most successful environmental treaty ever. The ozone layer is slowly recovering and is expected to heal around the middle of this century.

Sources: Wikipedia — Montreal Protocol · Wikidata — Q219438

1978

Society

Egypt's Anwar Sadat and Israel's Menachem Begin sign the Camp David Accords at the White House.

The Camp David Accords of 1978 led to the Egypt–Israel peace treaty in 1979. Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sources: Wikipedia — Camp David Accords · Wikidata — Q309204

2006

Culture

The CW, a new American television network formed from The WB and UPN, goes on the air.

The CW became known for teen dramas and superhero series such as Arrow and The Flash, and for keeping long-running shows like Supernatural on the air for years.

Sources: Wikipedia — The CW · Wikidata — Q212252

1926

Sports

Milan's San Siro stadium opens with a match between Inter and AC Milan.

San Siro has hosted World Cup matches and several European Cup and Champions League finals. With its spiral access towers, it is one of the most famous football grounds in Europe.

Meanwhile in art: Early Modernism

Sources: Wikipedia — San Siro · Wikidata — Q133566

1984

Culture

The Cosby Show premieres on NBC and soon becomes the most-watched programme in America.

The Cosby Show ran from 1984 to 1992 and was the top-rated US show for five seasons in a row. It is credited with bringing sitcoms back to popularity.

Sources: Wikipedia — The Cosby Show · Wikidata — Q463999

1937

Culture

J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit is published in London.

The first printing sold out within months. The publisher asked for a sequel, which grew into The Lord of the Rings.

Meanwhile in art: Early Modernism

Sources: Wikipedia — The Hobbit · Wikidata — Q74287

1955

Culture

ITV goes on air in London, ending the BBC's monopoly on British television.

Independent Television brought commercials to British screens for the first time. Its regional companies went on to produce long-running hits such as Coronation Street.

Sources: Wikipedia — ITV (TV network) · Wikidata — Q220072

1846

Science

Astronomers in Berlin find Neptune, guided by a position predicted by mathematics alone.

Le Verrier calculated the position from unexplained wobbles in Uranus's orbit, and John Couch Adams made similar predictions in England. The find was a triumph for Newton's law of gravity.

Meanwhile in art: Romanticism, Realism

Sources: Wikipedia — Neptune · Wikidata — Q332

1957

Sports

FC Barcelona's Camp Nou stadium opens.

Camp Nou opened in 1957 and could later hold nearly 100,000 fans. It has hosted a World Cup match, a European Cup final and the Olympic football final of 1992.

Sources: Wikipedia — Camp Nou · Wikidata — Q159848

1890

Nature

Sequoia National Park is established in California to protect groves of giant sequoia trees.

It is the second-oldest national park in the United States, after Yellowstone. Loggers had begun cutting giant sequoias, prompting campaigns to protect them.

Meanwhile in art: Impressionism, Post-Impressionism

Sources: Wikipedia — Sequoia National Park · Wikidata — Q152660

1964

Culture

Gilligan's Island premieres on CBS, stranding seven castaways on an uncharted desert isle.

Gilligan's Island ran for only three seasons from 1964 but became a classic in reruns. Its castaways later returned in TV films, finally rescued.

Sources: Wikipedia — Gilligan's Island · Wikidata — Q1141741

1954

Culture

The Tonight Show premieres on the NBC network, hosted by Steve Allen.

The Tonight Show began on NBC in 1954 and is one of the longest-running talk shows in the world. Its hosts have included Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon.

Sources: Wikipedia — Tonight Starring Steve Allen · Wikidata — Q7821462

1928

Science

Alexander Fleming spots a mold wiping out bacteria in a forgotten culture dish, the first step toward penicillin.

Fleming noticed that bacteria near a stray patch of mold had died, and he named the active substance penicillin. Turning it into a practical drug took more than a decade of work by Howard Florey, Ernst Chain and others, but antibiotics went on to save millions of lives.

Meanwhile in art: Early Modernism

Play this day: September 28, 2026

Sources: Live Science — Fleming discovers the first antibiotic · World History Encyclopedia — Discovery of Penicillin

1954

Science

CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, officially comes into being.

When the founding convention entered into force, twelve European states committed to pooling money and talent for fundamental physics. The lab near Geneva grew into the world's largest particle physics center, home of the Large Hadron Collider and birthplace of the World Wide Web.

Play this day: September 29, 2026

Sources: CERN Timeline — The European Organization for Nuclear Research is born · CERN Council — Convention for the Establishment of CERN

1791

Culture

Mozart's opera The Magic Flute premieres at a suburban theater in Vienna, with the composer conducting.

The Magic Flute opened at the Theater auf der Wieden and quickly became a hit with ordinary Viennese audiences. Its blend of slapstick, fantasy and Enlightenment ideals, plus showpieces like the Queen of the Night's arias, keeps it among the most performed operas in the world.

Meanwhile in art: Neoclassicism

Play this day: September 30, 2026

Sources: Britannica — The Magic Flute · Interlude — On this day: Mozart's Magic Flute premiered