Category: Today

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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* battei din, plural for beth din, a rabbinical court of Judaism. 

On September 7, 2021, Bitcoin became legal tender in El Salvador.

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.

Responding to British Parliament’s enactment of the Coercive Acts in the American colonies, the first session of the Continental Congress convened at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia, on September 5, 1774. Virginian Peyton Randolph (pictured) was appointed as the first president of Congress. John Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay and George Washington were among the delegates.

On September 4, A.D. 476, child emperor Romulus Augustulus (Dominus Noster Romulus Augustus Pius Felix Augustus) was deposed by barbarian soldier (and Arian Christian) Odoacer, who proclaimed himself “King of Italy,” yet represented himself as the client of Zeno, the Eastern Roman Emperor in Constantinople.

September 4, 476, is the traditional end date for the Western Roman Empire.

On September 3, A.D. 301, San Marino, one of the smallest sovereign political organizations in the world and the world’s oldest still-existing republic, was founded by Saint Marinus.

San Marino is bounded on all sides by northeastern Italy.

On September 2, 44 B.C., Pharaoh Cleopatra VII of Egypt declared her son co-ruler as Ptolemy XV Caesarion. On the same day of the same year, Cicero launched the first of his 14 Philippicae (oratorical attacks) on Mark Antony. Just a few years later on the same day, in 31 B.C., the Battle of Actium ended off the western coast of Greece, where forces of Octavian defeating troops under Mark Antony and Cleopatra. Thus ended the Roman Republic, with the consolidation of power by Gaius Octavius (Octavian; Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus), though he was not renamed “First Citizen” Imperator Caesar divi filius Augustus until January 16, A.D. 27.

Slovakia celebrates a Constitution Day on September 1, for the Constitution passed by the Slovak National Council on September 1, 1992.

The Slovaks place their rights provision early in their document, like most American states, and not as amendments, as in the Constitution of the United States of America.