September 15, 1789, the United States “Department of Foreign Affairs,” established by law in July, was renamed the Department of State and assigned a variety of domestic duties. Thomas Jefferson was the the department’s first secretary.
Category: Today
On September 14, 1741, George Frideric Handel completed his oratorio Messiah, one of the most widely beloved masterworks of western music.
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John Calvin Returns
John Calvin returned to Geneva on September 13, 1541, after three years of exile. His subsequent work in church reform and theology became known as Calvinism, and profoundly influenced the course of European and (eventually) American culture, including several concepts of servitude and liberty.
On the same date in 1989, Desmond Tutu led South Africa’s largest march aganst Apartheid.
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Switzerland
On September 12, 1848, Switzerland — known by endonyms Schweizerische Eidgenoßenschaft (German), Confédération suisse (French), Confederazione Svizzera (Italian), Confederaziun svizra (Romansh), Confoederatio helvetica (Latin) — became a unified federal state with a constitution limiting central government powers and providing decentralized state (canton) power patterned on the U.S. Constitution.
In 1880 on this date, H. L. Mencken was born. One of his earliest books was a debate with a socialist, The Men versus The Man (1910); his greatest lasting contribution was probably The American Language (1919) and its supplements (1945, 1948). His work has been collected in numerous anthologies, such as Alistair Cooke’s Vintage Mencken (1955) and the author’s own Mencken Chrestomathy.
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Alexander Hamilton
On September 11, 1789, Alexander Hamilton was appointed the first United States Secretary of the Treasury.
The date marks quite a few other, perhaps more memorable, events, too. But few Cabinet selections were more consequential to United States history than President George Washington’s appointment of Hamilton.
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Missing Money
On September 10, 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech about an “adversary that poses a serious threat to the United States of America.” Describing it as “one of the last bastions of central planning,” he said it “governs by dictating five year plans” and that “with brutal consistency it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas.”
The adversary? “The Pentagon bureaucracy — not the people, but the processes.” And he went on to state that the Pentagon could not account for more than $2.3 trillion.
The next day, the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell, along with Building No. 7 of that complex, after those two major towers were hit with commandeered jet airliners. And the Pentagon was also hit with a major explosion. It just so happened that Rumsfeld’s big news was drowned out by the story of terrorism.
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Official Names
The Continental Congress officially named its union of seceding states the United States on September 9, 1776.
Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, was named after President George Washington, on September 9, 1791.
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Statute of Kalisz
On September 8, 1264, Boleslaus the Pious, Duke of Greater Poland, promulgated the Statute of Kalisz, guaranteeing Jews safety and personal liberties and giving battei din* jurisdiction over Jewish matters.
On the same date in 1883, former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final “golden spike” completing the Northern Pacific Railway in a ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana.
* battei din, plural for beth din, a rabbinical court of Judaism.
On September 7, 2021, Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador.
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Ships Sail
On September 6, 1492, Christopher Columbus left his final port of call in the Canary Islands before crossing the Atlantic for the first time.
On September 6, 1522, the Victoria returned to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition to circumnavigate the world.
In 1620 on the Old Style date of September 6th, the Pilgrims set sail from Plymouth, England, on the Mayflower. Their aim? To settle in North America.