Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel debuts

Year
2000
Month Day
September 19

Michael Chabon’s third novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is published on September 19, 2000. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year. 

Chabon, who was born in Washington, D.C., in 1963, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and earned a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine. His first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, a coming-of-age story set in the city named in the title, was written as his graduate school thesis. Published in 1988, the book became a best-seller and was later made into a movie.

Among Chabon’s other credits are The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, a 2007 detective novel; Telegraph Avenue, a 2012 novel; and Moonglow, a 2016 novel. He has also written screenplays and several collections of short stories. 

Chabon is married to writer Ayelet Waldman, with whom he has four children. 

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Unabomber manifesto published

Year
1995
Month Day
September 19

On September 19, 1995, a manifesto by the Unabomber, an anti-technology terrorist, is published by The New York Times and Washington Post in the hope that someone will recognize the person who, for 17 years, had been sending homemade bombs through the mail that had killed and maimed innocent people around the United States. After reading the manifesto, David Kaczynski linked the writing style to that of his older brother Ted, who was later convicted of the attacks and sentenced to life in prison without parole. All told, the Unabomber was responsible for murdering three people and injuring another 23.

READ MORE: Why the Unabomber Evaded Arrest for 17 Years 

Theodore John Kaczynski was born May 22, 1942, in Evergreen Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. As a student, he excelled at math, graduated from Harvard and received a Ph.D. in math from the University of Michigan. In 1967, he got a teaching job at the University of California at Berkeley, but quit two years later. In 1971, Kaczynski purchased some property in Lincoln, Montana, with his brother. There, the future Unabomber built a small, secluded cabin where he lived off the land as a recluse from the late 1970s until his arrest on April 3, 1996.

In May 1978, an un-mailed package was found in a University of Illinois, Chicago, parking lot; a security guard was later injured when he opened the package. The following year, another bomb exploded at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois, injuring one person. In November of that same year, 12 people on an American Airlines flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., were treated for smoke inhalation when a bomb in a mailbag aboard the plane caught fire. Investigators eventually linked the three incidents, as the bombings continued and spread around the country. In December 1985, the owner of a computer store in Sacramento, California, was killed by a bomb filled with nail fragments. After a similar explosion in Salt Lake City two years later, investigators got their first eyewitness description of the bomber after someone reported seeing a man in aviator sunglasses and a hooded sweatshirt at the scene of the crime. In April 1995, The New York Times received a letter from the Unabomber stating that the killings would stop if the paper printed a 35,000-word manifesto. In September of that year, the Times and the Post complied, and David Kaczynski eventually recognized his brother Ted’s writing as that of the Unabomber and contacted the FBI.

In January 1998, Kaczynski agreed to a plea bargain with the government and was sentenced to life in prison.

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Perón deposed in Argentina

Year
1955
Month Day
September 19

After a decade of rule, Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón is deposed in a military coup. Perón, a demagogue who came to power in 1946 with the backing of the working classes, became increasingly authoritarian as Argentina’s economy declined in the early 1950s. His greatest political resource was his charismatic wife, Eva “Evita” Perón, but she died in 1952, signaling the collapse of the national coalition that had backed him. Having antagonized the church, students, and others, he was forced into exile by the military in September 1955. He settled in Spain, where he served as leader-in-exile to the “Peronists”—a powerful faction of Argentines who remained loyal to him and his system.

Born into a lower middle class family in 1895, Juan Domingo Perón built a career in the army, eventually rising to the rank of colonel. In 1943, he was a leader of a group of military conspirators that overthrew Argentina’s ineffectual civilian government. Requesting for himself the seemingly minor cabinet post of secretary of labor and social welfare, he began building a political empire based in the labor unions. By 1945, he was also vice president and minister of war in the military regime.

In 1945, Perón oversaw the return of political freedoms in the country, but this led to unrest and mass demonstrations by opposition groups. Perón’s enemies in the navy seized the opportunity and had him arrested on October 9. Labor unions organized strikes and rallies in protest of his imprisonment, and Perón’s beautiful paramour, the radio actress Eva Duarte, was highly effective in enlisting the public to the cause. On October 17, Perón was released, and that night he addressed a crowd of some 300,000 people from the balcony of the presidential palace. He vowed to lead the people to victory in the coming presidential election. Four days later, Perón, a widower, married Eva Duarte, or Evita, as she became affectionately known.

In the subsequent presidential campaign, Perón suppressed the liberal opposition, and his Labor Party won a narrow, but complete, election victory. President Perón removed political opponents from their positions in the government, courts, and schools, nationalized public services, and improved wages and working conditions. Although he restricted constitutional liberties, he won overwhelming support from the masses of poor workers, whom Evita Perón called los descamisados, or the “shirtless ones.” Evita served an important role in the government, unofficially leading the Department of Social Welfare and taking over her husband’s role as caretaker of the working classes. She was called the “First Worker of Argentina” and “Lady of Hope,” and was instrumental in securing passage of a woman suffrage law.

In 1950, Argentina’s postwar export boom tapered off, and inflation and corruption grew. After being reelected in 1951, Perón became more conservative and repressive and seized control of the press to control criticism of his regime. In July 1952, Evita died of cancer, and support for President Perón among the working classes became decidedly less pronounced. His attempt to force the separation of church and state was met with considerable controversy. In June 1955, church leaders excommunicated him, encouraging a clique of military officers to plot his overthrow. On September 19, 1955, the army and navy revolted, and Perón was forced to flee to Paraguay. In 1960, he settled in Spain.

Meanwhile, a string of civilian and military governments failed to resolve Argentina’s economic troubles. The memory of Perón’s regime improved with time, and Peronismo became the most powerful political force in the country. In 1971, the military regime of General Alejandro Lanusse announced his intention to restore constitutional democracy in 1973, and Perón was allowed to visit Argentina in 1972. In March 1973, Peronists won control of the government in national elections, and Perón returned in June amid great public excitement and fighting among Peronist factions.

In October 1973, Perón was elected president in a special election. His wife, Isabel Perón, an Argentine dancer he married in 1961, was elected vice president. She was much resented by millions still devoted to the memory of Evita Perón.

Economic troubles continued in Perón’s second presidency and were made worse by the Arab oil embargo of 1973 and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that devastated Argentina’s beef industry. When Perón died on July 1, 1974, his wife became president of a nation suffering from inflation, political violence, and labor unrest. In March 1976, she was deposed in an air-force-led coup, and a right-wing military junta took power that brutally ruled Argentina until 1982.

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New Zealand first in women’s vote

Year
1893
Month Day
September 19

With the signing of the Electoral Bill by Governor Lord Glasgow, New Zealand becomes the first country in the world to grant national voting rights to women. The bill was the outcome of years of suffragette meetings in towns and cities across the country, with women often traveling considerable distances to hear lectures and speeches, pass resolutions, and sign petitions. New Zealand women first went to the polls in the national elections of November 1893.

The United States granted women the right to vote in 1920, and Great Britain guaranteed full voting rights for women in 1928.

READ MORE: Suffrage in the U.S.: A Timeline

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Nevada is site of first-ever underground nuclear explosion

Year
1957
Month Day
September 19

On September 19, 1957, the United States detonates a 1.7-kiloton nuclear weapon in an underground tunnel at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), a 1,375-square-mile research center located 65 miles north of Las Vegas. The test, known as Rainier, was the first fully contained underground detonation and produced no radioactive fallout. A modified W-25 warhead weighing 218 pounds and measuring 25.7 inches in diameter and 17.4 inches in length was used for the test. Rainier was part of a series of 29 nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons safety tests known as Operation Plumbbob that were conducted at the NTS between May 28, 1957, and October 7, 1957.

In December 1941, the U.S. government committed to building the world’s first nuclear weapon when President Franklin Roosevelt authorized $2 billion in funding for what came to be known as the Manhattan Project. The first nuclear weapon test took place on July 16, 1945, at the Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. A few weeks later, on August 6, 1945, with the U.S. at war against Japan, President Harry Truman authorized the dropping of an atomic bomb named Little Boy over Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, on August 9, a nuclear bomb called Fat Man was dropped over Nagasaki. Two hundred thousand people, according to some estimates, were killed in the attacks on the two cities and on August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers.

1957’s Operation Plumbbob took place at a time when the U.S. was engaged in a Cold War and nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. In 1963, the U.S. signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, underwater and outer space. A total of 928 tests took place at the Nevada Test Site between 1951 and 1992, when the U.S. conducted its last underground nuclear test. In 1996, the U.S signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits nuclear detonations in all environments.

READ MORE: Hiroshima, Then Nagasaki: Why the US Deployed the Second A-Bomb

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Germans bombard Leningrad

Year
1941
Month Day
September 19

On September 19, 1941, as part of their offensive campaign in the Soviet Union, German bombers blast through Leningrad’s antiaircraft defenses, and kill more than 1,000 Russians.

Hitler’s armies had been in Soviet territory since June. An attempt by the Germans to take Leningrad (formerly St. Petersburg) in August by a massive panzer invasion had failed. Hitler had wanted to decimate the city and hand it over to an ally, Finland, who was attacking Russia from the north. But Leningrad had created an antitank defense sufficient to keep the Germans at bay—and so a siege was mounted. German forces surrounded the city in an attempt to cut it off from the rest of Russia. (Finland eventually stopped short of an invasion of Leningrad, happy just to recapture territory it had lost to the Soviet invasion in 1939.)

The halt of the German land attack and the withdrawal of the panzer divisions to be used elsewhere did not stop the Luftwaffe from continuing to raid the city. (“The Fuhrer has decided to have St. Petersburg wiped off the face of the Earth,” declared Hitler to his generals.) The air attack of the 19th was particularly brutal; many of those killed were already recuperating from battle wounds in hospitals, which were hit by German bombs.

The siege of Leningrad would last a total of 872 days and would prove devastating to the population. More than 650,000 Leningrad citizens died in 1942 alone, from starvation, exposure, diseases, and artillery shelling from German positions outside the city. The only route by which supplies could enter the city was via Lake Ladoga, which entailed sleds negotiating ice during the winter. But the resources that got through were only enough to prolong the suffering of the Leningraders. Even tales of cannibalism began leaking out of the city. Soviet forces were finally successful in breaking the siege in January 1944, pushing the Germans 50 miles from the city.

Among those trapped in the city was an air-raid warden born in St. Petersburg named Dimitri Shostakovich, who wrote his Seventh Symphony during the siege. He was eventually evacuated and able to perform his masterwork in Moscow. The U.S. premiere of the piece raised relief funds for the desperate Russians.

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Nixon cancels draft calls for November and December

Year
1969
Month Day
September 19

President Nixon announces the cancellation of the draft calls for November and December. He reduced the draft call by 50,000 (32,000 in November and 18,000 in December). This move accompanied his twin program of turning the war over to the South Vietnamese concurrent with U.S. troop withdrawals and was calculated to quell antiwar protests by students returning to college campuses after the summer.

READ MORE: How the Vietnam War Draft Spurred the Fight for Lowering the Legal Voting Age

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President James Garfield dies

Year
1881
Month Day
September 19

On September 19, 1881, President James A. Garfield, who had been in office just under four months, succumbs to wounds inflicted by an assassin 80 days earlier, on July 2.

Garfield’s assassin was an attorney and political office-seeker named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau was a relative stranger to the president and his administration in an era when federal positions were doled out on a “who you know” basis. When his requests for an appointment were ignored, a furious Guiteau stalked the president, vowing revenge.

On the morning of July 2, 1881, Garfield headed for the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad station on his way to a short vacation. As he walked through the station toward the waiting train, Guiteau stepped behind the president and fired two shots. The first bullet grazed Garfield’s arm; the second lodged below his pancreas. Doctors made several unsuccessful attempts to remove the bullet while Garfield lay in his White House bedroom, awake and in pain. Alexander Graham Bell, who was one of Garfield’s physicians, tried to use an early version of a metal detector to find the second bullet, but failed.

Historical accounts vary as to the exact cause of Garfield’s death. Some believe that his physicians’ treatments—which included the administration of quinine, morphine, brandy and calomel and feeding him through the rectum–may have hastened his demise. Others insist Garfield died from an already advanced case of heart disease. By early September, Garfield, who was recuperating at a seaside retreat in New Jersey, appeared to be recovering. He died on September 19. Autopsy reports at the time said that pressure from his internal wound had created an aneurism, which was the likely cause of death.

Guiteau was deemed sane by a jury, convicted of murder and hanged on June 30, 1882. Garfield’s spine, which shows the hole created by the bullet, is kept as a historical artifact by the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.

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Jim Bowie stabs a Louisiana banker with his famous knife

Year
1827
Month Day
September 19

After a duel turns into an all-out brawl on September 19, 1827, Jim Bowie disembowels a banker in Alexandria, Louisiana, with an early version of his famous Bowie knife. The actual inventor of the Bowie knife, however, was probably not Jim Bowie, but rather his equally belligerent brother, Rezin Bowie, who reportedly came up with the design after nearly being killed in a vicious knife fight.

The Bowie brothers engaged in more fights than the typical frontiersman of the day, but such violent duels were not uncommon events on the untamed margins of American civilization. In the early nineteenth century, most frontiersmen preferred knives to guns for fighting, and the Bowie knife quickly became one of the favorites. Rezin Bowie had invented such a nasty looking weapon that the mere sight of it probably discouraged many would-be robbers and attackers. 

 Designs varied somewhat, but the typical Bowie knife sported a 9- to 15- inch blade sharpened only on one side for much of its length, though the curved tip was sharpened to a point on both sides. The double-edged tip made the knife an effective stabbing weapon, while the dull-edge combined with a brass hand guard allowed the user to slide a hand down over the blade as needed. The perfect knife for close-quarter fighting, the Bowie knife became the weapon of choice for many westerners before the reliable rapid-fire revolver took its place in the post-Civil War period.

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Earthquake shakes Mexico City

Year
1985
Month Day
September 19

On September 19, 1985, a powerful earthquake strikes Mexico City and leaves 10,000 people dead, 30,000 injured and thousands more homeless.

At 7:18 in the morning, the residents of Mexico City were jolted awake by an 8.1-magnitude earthquake, one of the strongest to ever hit the area. The effects of the quake were particularly devastating because of the type of ground upon which the city sits. Mexico City is on a plateau surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. The plateau region was covered by lakes in ancient times. As the aquifer under the city has slowly drained, it has been discovered that the city sits atop a combination of dirt and sand that is much less stable than bedrock and can be quite volatile during an earthquake.

The quake on September 19 was centered 250 miles west of the city but, due to the relatively unstable ground underneath the city, serious shaking lasted for nearly 3 minutes. The prolonged ground movement caused several old hotels, including the Regis, Versailles and Romano, to crumble. A building at the National College of Professional Education fell, trapping hundreds of students who were attending early-morning classes. Many factories in the city, built with shoddy materials, also could not stand. Further, the tremors caused gas mains to break, causing fires and explosions throughout the city.

When the damage was finally assessed, 3,000 buildings in Mexico City were demolished and another 100,000 suffered serious damage.

READ MORE: The Deadliest Earthquake Ever Recorded 

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