September 10 Archives - PopHistory.org

CERN Large Hadron Collider is powered up

Year: 2008

Month Day: September 10

On September 10, 2008, scientists successfully flip the switch for the first time on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) lab in Geneva, kicking off what many called history’s biggest science experiment.

Testing particle physics theories, the $8 billion LHC is the largest particle accelerator in the world, made up of superconducting magnets that allow engineers and physicists to study subatomic particles including protons, electrons, quarks and photons. The LHC can create 600 million collisions per second.

The 17-mile underground ring, located beneath the Swiss-French border, sends particle beams at the speed of light, causing them to collide and recreate debris caused by the Big Bang. At the time of its launch, some scientists and environmentalists speculated that the LHC would create a mini black hole that could end the world. These claims were refuted by CERN and physicist Stephen Hawking, who said any mini black holes would evaporate instantly.

The goal of the LHC, the largest scientific instrument on the planet, was to create and discover the Higgs boson, better known as “the God particle.” In 1964, Peter Higgs and Francois Englert came up with the theory that the particle associated with a mass-transmitting energy field was the key to how everything in the universe acquires mass.

In 2012, CERN announced the LHC experiments had allowed researchers to observe a particle consistent with the Higgs boson. On Oct. 8, 2013, Higgs and Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.”

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Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is released as a single

Year: 1991

Month Day: September 10

You either had to be part of a fairly small subculture of music fans or a professional on the business side of the music industry to have heard of Nirvana before the autumn of 1991. To the few who followed their particular brand of alternative music before “alternative” went mainstream, Nirvana had announced themselves as a band to watch with their independently produced 1989 album Bleach. And to the music-business pros who knew that Bleach sold 30,000 copies after being produced for only $600, Nirvana was seen as a prime candidate for a breakout with their second album being released by the major label Geffen Records. But absolutely no one—not Nirvana’s biggest fans, not their biggest industry supporters and certainly not the band-members themselves— suspected the magnitude of what was about to happen. In just a few short months, a group that was a complete nonentity to the mainstream music-buying public would become the most important rock band on earth. The transformation began on September 10, 1991, with the release of Nirvana’s landmark single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

The song Nirvana’s label and management hoped would be a hit off the band’s forthcoming album, Nevermind, was “Come as You Are,” which was set for release later in the fall. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released quietly and without significant promotion in the hopes that it would begin building awareness of the new album among listeners to college and alternative radio. “None of us heard it as a crossover song,” Nirvana’s manager, Danny Goldberg, later recalled, “but the public heard it and it was instantaneous. They heard it on alternative radio and then they rushed out like lemmings to buy it.”

Kurt Cobain, Nirvana’s guitarist, lead singer and primary songwriter, had to be talked into even including “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on Nevermind by his bandmates bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl. He was self-conscious about a song he’d written as a conscious rip-off of the Pixies’ hard-and-loud, then soft-and-quiet style. But most of the millions who would soon become Nirvana fans had probably never heard of The Pixies or the other punk, hardcore and alternative bands that had inspired and influenced Kurt Cobain. He was the product of an underground scene far outside the pop-music mainstream, but his gift for channeling the noise and anger of that scene into brilliantly accessible songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” ended up redefining the mainstream itself.

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The guillotine falls silent

Year: 1977

Month Day: September 10

At Baumetes Prison in Marseille, France, Hamida Djandoubi, a Tunisian immigrant convicted of murder, becomes the last person executed by guillotine.

The guillotine first gained fame during the French Revolution when physician and revolutionary Joseph-Ignace Guillotin won passage of a law requiring all death sentences to be carried out by “means of a machine.” Decapitating machines had been used earlier in Ireland and England, and Guillotin and his supporters viewed these devices as more humane than other execution techniques, such as hanging or firing squad. A French decapitating machine was built and tested on cadavers, and on April 25, 1792, a highwayman became the first person in Revolutionary France to be executed by this method.

The device soon became known as the “guillotine” after its advocate, and more than 10,000 people lost their heads by guillotine during the Revolution, including Louis XVI and Mary Antoinette, the former king and queen of France.

Use of the guillotine continued in France in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the last execution by guillotine occurred in 1977. In September 1981, France outlawed capital punishment altogether, thus abandoning the guillotine forever. There is a museum dedicated to the guillotine in Liden, Sweden.

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The Battle of Lake Erie

Year: 1813

Month Day: September 10

In the first unqualified defeat of a British naval squadron in history, U.S. Captain Oliver Hazard Perry leads a fleet of nine American ships to victory over a squadron of six British warships at the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.

The battle was closely contested for hours, and Perry’s flagship Lawrence was reduced to a defenseless wreck. He then transferred to the Niagara and sailed directly into the British line, firing broadsides and forcing the British to surrender. Perry had won a complete victory at the cost of 27 Americans killed and 96 wounded; British casualties were 40 dead and 94 wounded. After the battle, Perry sent a famous dispatch to U.S. General William Henry Harrison that read, “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” The Battle of Lake Erie forced the British to abandon Detroit, ensuring U.S. control over Lake Erie and the territorial northwest.

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John Smith elected to lead Jamestown

Year: 1608

Month Day: September 10

English adventurer John Smith is elected council president of Jamestown, Virginia—the first permanent English settlement in North America. Smith, a colorful figure, had won popularity in the colony because of his organizational abilities and effectiveness in dealing with local Native American groups.

In May 1607, about 100 English colonists settled along the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown. The settlers fared badly because of famine, disease, and Indian attacks, but were aided by the 27-year-old John Smith, who directed survival efforts and mapped the area. While exploring the Chickahominy River in December 1607, Smith and two colonists were captured by Powhatan warriors. At the time, the Powhatan Indian confederacy consisted of around 30 Tidewater-area tribes led by Chief Wahunsonacock, known as Chief Powhatan to the English. Smith’s companions were killed, but he was spared and released (according to a 1624 account by Smith) because of the dramatic intercession of Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan’s 13-year-old daughter.

READ MORE: What Was Life Like in Jamestown?

In 1608, Smith became president of the Jamestown colony, but the settlement continued to suffer. An accidental fire destroyed much of the town, and hunger, disease, and Indian attacks continued. During this time, Pocahontas often came to Jamestown as an emissary of her father, sometimes bearing gifts of food to help the hard-pressed settlers. She befriended the settlers and became acquainted with English ways. In 1609, Smith was injured from a fire in his gunpowder bag and was forced to return to England.

John Smith returned to the New World in 1614 to explore the New England coast, carefully mapping the coast from Penobscot Bay to Cape Cod. That April, Pocahontas married the English planter John Rolfe in Jamestown. On another voyage of exploration, in 1615, Smith was captured by pirates but escaped after three months of captivity. He then returned to England, where he died in 1631.

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Picasso’s “Guernica” is returned to Spain

Year: 1981

Month Day: September 10

Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s monumental anti-war mural Guernica is received by Spain after four decades of refugee existence on September 10, 1981. One of Picasso’s most important works, the painting was inspired by the destruction of the Basque town of Guernica by the Nazi air force during the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, Picasso gave the painting to New York’s Museum of Modern Art on an extended loan and decreed that it not be returned to Spain until democratic liberties were restored in the country. Its eventual return to Spain in 1981–eight years after Picasso’s death–was celebrated as a moral endorsement of Spain’s young democracy.

Early in the Spanish civil war, Spain’s leftist Republican government commissioned Picasso to paint a mural for the 1937 Paris International Exposition. Working in Paris, Picasso read in horror of the April 1937 German bombing of Guernica, a Basque town that had sided with the Republicans against General Francisco Franco’s right-wing Nationalist forces. Guernica was well behind the battle lines, but Franco authorized the attack as a means of intimidating his foes in the region. The attack was later admitted to be an experiment by the German Luftwaffe in carpet bombing–air raids that targeted civilians and civilian infrastructure. More than 1,000 residents of Guernica were killed in the three-hour attack.

Outraged by the brutality of the act, Picasso seized on the bombing as the subject of his mural, which he completed in just three weeks. The enormous painting, which measures 11.5 feet by 25.5 feet, is a savage indictment of man’s inhumanity to man. Painted in desolate tones of black, white, and gray, the painting shows a gored horse, a screaming mother holding a dead child, a bewildered bull, and other nightmarish images that effectively evoke the horror of war.

Guernica was exhibited in the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition and in 1939 was sent to New York on a tour for the benefit of the Spanish Refugee Committee. When World War II broke out later that year, Picasso requested that Guernica and a number of his other works be held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on extended loan. After the war, most of these works were returned to Europe, but Picasso asked that Guernica and its preliminary studies be kept by MoMA until the “reestablishment of public liberties” in Spain. The painting was occasionally lent to European museums at the request of Picasso.

Francisco Franco ruled over Spain as dictator for the rest of Picasso’s life, and the artist never returned to his native country. In 1967, Franco restored some liberties, and in 1968 his government made an effort to recover Guernica. Picasso refused, clarifying that the painting would not be returned until democracy was reestablished. In 1973, Picasso died in France at the age of 91. Two years later, Franco died and was succeeded as Spanish leader by King Juan Carlos I, who immediately began a transfer to democracy. Spain then called for the return of Guernica, but opposition by Picasso heirs who questioned Spain’s democratic credentials delayed its transfer until 1981. Finally, Picasso’s former lawyer gave his ascent to the transfer.

On September 10, 1981, Guernica arrived in Madrid under heavy guard. The painting was to be housed in a new annex of the Prado Museum, only two blocks from the Spanish parliament, which had been the scene of an abortive military coup in February 1981. King Juan Carlos defused the revolt by convincing military commanders to remain loyal to Spain’s democratic constitution.

On October 25—the 100th anniversary of Picasso’s birth—Guernica went on exhibit to the public behind a thick layer of bullet-proof glass. Picasso’s preparatory sketches for the painting, likewise protected behind thick glass, were housed in adjacent rooms. The threat of terrorism against the highly politicized work required high security, and visitors passed through a metal detector to view the paintings. Because the painting had been damaged in its years of travel, curators at the Prado said it was unlikely that Guernica would ever go on tour again.

A number of groups in Spain, particularly Basque nationalists, objected strongly to Guernica‘s permanent exhibition in Madrid. Complaints escalated after the painting was relocated to the new Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 1992. Since the 1997 opening of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museo, Basque nationalists have been calling for its transfer there.

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First drunk driving arrest

Year: 1897

Month Day: September 10

On September 10, 1897, a 25-year-old London taxi driver named George Smith becomes the first person ever arrested for drunk driving after slamming his cab into a building. Smith later pleaded guilty and was fined 25 shillings.

In the United States, the first laws against operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol went into effect in New York in 1910. In 1936, Dr. Rolla Harger, a professor of biochemistry and toxicology, patented the Drunkometer, a balloon-like device into which people would breathe to determine whether they were inebriated. In 1953, Robert Borkenstein, a former Indiana state police captain and university professor who had collaborated with Harger on the Drunkometer, invented the Breathalyzer. Easier-to-use and more accurate than the Drunkometer, the Breathalyzer was the first practical device and scientific test available to police officers to establish whether someone had too much to drink. A person would blow into the Breathalyzer and it would gauge the proportion of alcohol vapors in the exhaled breath, which reflected the level of alcohol in the blood.

Despite the invention of the Breathalyzer and other developments, it was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s that public awareness about the dangers of drinking and driving increased and lawmakers and police officers began to get tougher on offenders. In 1980, a Californian named Candy Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, after her 13-year-old daughter Cari was killed by a drunk driver while walking home from a school carnival. The driver had three previous drunk-driving convictions and was out on bail from a hit-and-run arrest two days earlier. Lightner and MADD were instrumental in helping to change attitudes about drunk driving and pushed for legislation that increased the penalties for driving under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. MADD also helped get the minimum drinking age raised in many states. Today, the legal drinking age is 21 everywhere in the United States and convicted drunk drivers face everything from jail time and fines to the loss of their driver’s licenses and increased car insurance rates. Some drunk drivers are ordered to have ignition interlock devices installed in their vehicles. These devices require a driver to breath into a sensor attached to the dashboard; the car won’t start if the driver’s blood alcohol concentration is above a certain limit.

Despite the stiff penalties and public awareness campaigns, drunk driving remains a serious problem in the United States. Each year, roughly 1,500 people die in alcohol-related crashes and almost 1.5 million people are arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

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New York City parade honors World War I veterans

Year: 1919

Month Day: September 10

On September 10, 1919, almost one year after an armistice officially ended the First World War, New York City holds a parade to welcome home General John J. Pershing, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), and some 25,000 soldiers who had served in the AEF’s 1st Division on the Western Front.

The United States, which maintained its neutrality when World War I broke out in Europe in the summer of 1914, declared war on Germany in April 1917. Though the U.S. was initially able to muster only about 100,000 men to send to France under Pershing’s command that summer, President Woodrow Wilson swiftly adopted a policy of conscription. By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918, more than 2 million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives. Demobilization began in late 1918; by September 1919 the last combat divisions had left France, though an occupation force of 16,000 U.S. soldiers remained until 1923, based in the town of Coblenz, Germany, as part of the post-war Allied presence in the Rhine Valley determined by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles.

Before the AEF’s combat units left service, the U.S. War Department gave citizens the chance to honor their troops. “New York lived yesterday probably the last chapter in its history of great military spectacles growing out of the war,” trumpeted The New York Times of the parade that took place September 10, 1914. According to the paper, an enthusiastic crowd turned out to cheer the 25,000 members of the 1st Division, who filed down Fifth Avenue from 107th Street to Washington Square in Greenwich Village, wearing trench helmets and full combat equipment.

The Times report continued: “It was the town’s first opportunity to greet the men of the 1st Division, and to let them know it remembered their glorious part in the American Army’s smashing drives at Toul, at Cantigny, at Soissons, at St. Mihiel, and at the Meuse and the Argonne.” The loudest cheers were for Pershing himself, who “was kept at almost continual salute by the tributes volleyed at him from both sides of the avenue.”

Pershing led a similar parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. on September 17; two days later, he addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, which that same month created a new rank for him—”General of the Armies,” a rank only he has held—making him the highest-ranking military figure in the country. During his tenure as chief of staff of the U.S. Army, from 1921 to 1924, Pershing completely reorganized the structure of the army, combining the regular army, the National Guard, and the permanent army reserves into one organization. Upon his retirement, he headed up a commission supervising the construction of American war memorials in France. Pershing died in 1948.

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Andrew Jackson shuts down Second Bank of the U.S.

Year: 1833

Month Day: September 10

President Andrew Jackson announces that the government will no longer use the Second Bank of the United States, the country’s national bank, on September 10, 1833. He then used his executive power to remove all federal funds from the bank, in the final salvo of what is referred to as the “Bank War.”

A national bank had first been created by George Washington and Alexander Hamilton in 1791 to serve as a central repository for federal funds. The Second Bank of the United States was founded in 1816; five years after this first bank’s charter had expired. Traditionally, the bank had been run by a board of directors with ties to industry and manufacturing, and therefore was biased toward the urban and industrial northern states. Jackson, the epitome of the frontiersman, resented the bank’s lack of funding for expansion into the unsettled Western territories. Jackson also objected to the bank’s unusual political and economic power and to the lack of congressional oversight over its business dealings.

Jackson, known as obstinate and brutish but a man of the common people, called for an investigation into the bank’s policies and political agenda as soon as he settled in to the White House in March 1829. To Jackson, the bank symbolized how a privileged class of businessmen oppressed the will of the common people of America. He made clear that he planned to challenge the constitutionality of the bank, much to the horror of its supporters. In response, the director of the bank, Nicholas Biddle, flexed his own political power, turning to members of Congress, including the powerful Kentucky Senator Henry Clay and leading businessmen sympathetic to the bank, to fight Jackson.

Later that year, Jackson presented his case against the bank in a speech to Congress; to his chagrin, its members generally agreed that the bank was indeed constitutional. Still, controversy over the bank lingered for the next three years. In 1832, the divisiveness led to a split in Jackson’s cabinet and, that same year, the obstinate president vetoed an attempt by Congress to draw up a new charter for the bank. All of this took place during Jackson’s bid for re-election; the bank’s future was the focal point of a bitter political campaign between the Democratic incumbent Jackson and his opponent Henry Clay. Jackson’s promises to empower the “common man” of America appealed to the voters and paved the way for his victory. He felt he had received a mandate from the public to close the bank once and for all, despite Congress’ objections. Biddle vowed to continue to fight the president, saying that “just because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned Judges [does not mean] he is to have his way with the bank.”

On September 10, 1833, Jackson removed all federal funds from the Second Bank of the U.S., redistributing them to various state banks, which were popularly known as “pet banks.” In addition, he announced that deposits to the bank would not be accepted after October 1. Finally, Jackson had succeeded in destroying the bank; its charter officially expired in 1836.

Jackson did not emerge unscathed from the scandal. In 1834, Congress censured Jackson for what they viewed as his abuse of presidential power during the Bank War.

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Serial killers Charlene Williams and Gerald Gallego meet

Year: 1977

Month Day: September 10

Charlene Williams meets Gerald Gallego at a poker club in Sacramento, California, resulting in one of the worst serial killing teams in American history. Before they were finally caught, the Gallegos killed and sexually assaulted at least 10 people over a two-year period.

Within a week of their first encounter, Charlene moved in with Gerald. The son of the first man to be executed in Mississippi’s gas chamber, Gerald had amassed seven felony convictions by the age of 32. He had also been married five times and, it was later revealed, had been sexually abusing his young daughter. By the time Charlene met Gerald, she had already gone through two marriages and had acquired a hard-drug habit.

Gerald brought home a teenage runaway so that he could indulge in a threesome shortly after Charlene moved in with him. However, he became extremely angry when he found out that Charlene and the girl were engaging in sex without him.

The couple soon decided to find victims that could keep Gerald sexually satisfied. After two months of planning, they abducted their first victims in September 1978: two teenage girls, whom they sexually assaulted, beat with a tire iron, and then shot in the head.

The couple, now married, waited until the following June before striking again, grabbing two young girls in Reno, Nevada. However, this time Charlene became mad at Gerald because he started raping the girls without her, while she was driving the van. When she began firing shots at him, he quickly killed the victims.

The pace of the couple’s killings quickened in 1980. In April, they kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered two girls from a mall near Sacramento. Two months later, they found another victim during a vacation in Oregon. This time they buried their victim alive.

In July, the Gallegos kidnapped and killed a couple as they were leaving a fraternity party. However, partygoers got the license plate of their car, and a manhunt was instituted. The Gallegos managed to elude authorities for a few months but were finally caught in November in Omaha, Nebraska. While awaiting trial, Charlene agreed to testify to save her own life. Gerald Gallego was tried in both Nevada and California and received death sentences in both states. Charlene was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in jail and was released in July 1997.

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