On September 21, 480 BC, Greeks defeated Persian forces in the massive naval battle of Salamis.
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At Salamis
Category: Today
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First U.S. budget
On September 19, 1778, the Continental Congress passed the first budget of the United States.
Congress last passed a budget in 1997.
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Cornerstone & Anti-Corn Law
On September 18, 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building.
On September 18, 1838, Richard Cobden established the Anti-Corn Law League, which eventually brought free trade to Britain.
On September 17, 1683, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote a letter to the Royal Society describing “animalcules,” later known as protozoa.
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Hong Kong Liberation
On September 16, 1945, the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong came to an end.
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.
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.